Globe Gallivanting- motorbiking across the world

 We rode down from Ko Samui to Ko Lanta.   The roads were still the same and not much changed, making for a fairly unadventurous ride.  Except for the pig transporters. We got to Ko Lanta, and did in fact go to the bungalows the Non-speaking Cool Guy from the previous post told us about- the one we met on the train who gave us his number, and led us to believe he lived in a tiny isolated hut he had built with his bare hands, surrounded by fishermen and kids playing in the dirt… We found his bungalows, off the main strip of the second most populated beach in Ko Lanta.  They were sturdy huts with bamboo concealing the concrete foundations.  Our man was nowhere to be seen.  The management didn’t in fact know who he was.  And they were built fifteen years ago, ten years before he allegedly arrived.   We drank cocktails in the bar and watched the sun go down, amazed at the Cool Man‘s fibs.  It was a very fine location thoug...

In Koh Samui we saw middle age Thai women with bad facelifts try very hard to look young, while their gross old foreign counterparts, twenty years older than them, drank beer and slapped each other on the back.  We found them in the British bar in Chaweng.  The men had Brummy accents.  One was so old and liver-damaged he could barely walk to the door.  The women sat apart from their husbands and laughed, in Thai. We tried to go exploring.  There were dirt tracks leading through the island interior with wooden huts where the more normal folk lived.  We attempted the drive up in Steve’s hire car, even gave it a good shot with a run up, but we bounced back down, backwards.  It made loud noises as it tried to deal with the pain of the rocks hitting its underbelly.  The dirt tracks were steep and covered in water drain-offs.  We tried another way, but fell off the end of the concrete road.  It was still being built.   Event...