As I hadn't made any plans to meet up with Boris and Maude as I still felt like a bit of a gooseberry, I borrowed one of the free push bikes from the hotel and thought I would head down to the beach which was a few kilometres away and go and see what it’s like and also to catch a few rays at the same time. At least this time I wasn’t going to fall off and break a rib. The bike had no gears or suspension but did have a rather attractive basket on the front! lol

I had a choice of two parts of the beach to go to, one nearer to town but busier or the one a little further away but nice and quiet. I chose the quiet one to head to. It took about 20 minutes to cycle down there although the hotel told me it would take around 40 minutes to get to the furthest one but I guess it was mainly due to the face that it is pretty flat around here and other people must be a little slower than me. When I got down to the beach I had to pay to park and first of all they tried to charge me the unofficial "tourist" price but I had a good idea now of how much places charge you to leave a motorbike so surely the push bike would be cheaper. Anyway I managed to get a more reasonable price although it may not have been the “locals” price it was a lot cheaper than first quoted so I was happy.

The beach itself was pure white sand that went on for miles in both directions. I decided to head right (south) as I knew this went to the other part of the beach that I could have cycled to. You could tell this was not so much of a tourist beach as there were many little fishing boats, which resembled round wicker baskets that were no bigger than 2 meters in diameter and I guess took some balancing when in the water to make sure you don’t capsize.

I really wanted to go for a swim, or at least just go in the sea to cool down a little but there were hundreds of large jelly fish all around the beach where the waves were breaking and also a few stranded on the beach. So I decided that it would be best not to get stung by one of those things and stayed well away from the water. I guess the fishermen in the water know something that I don’t or are just so used to getting stung that it doesn’t bother them anymore.

I must have walked for about an hour and a half along the beach and I still didn’t get to the other more touristy area, so I decided to turn around and head back before getting too sunburnt. I grabbed my bike and paid for the parking, luckily I checked my change as it was wrong and when I mentioned it to the boy he just so happened to have the additional money in his back pocket, so I guess he was just trying to push his luck. I wonder how many people he gets away with short changing as they do not check their change properly as they are not used to this currency. At least I caught him out!

As it was a full moon today there was a lunar celebration in the town tonight, which if any of you know is absolutely nothing like the Full Moon party I had missed by 1 day while on Koh Samui, although I wish it had been. This was basically a celebration of the full moon where people floated lanterns down the river from the centre of town. There was also a band and some dancer in the main square in the centre of town but that was about it. I am not sure if this was just put on for the tourists or whether it was actually the people of the town.