The road tracklog
from Chiang Mai to Sing Buri
from 02/03 to 11/03/2009

The 02/03 I left the Rest Park at a noisy crossroads about 08:30 to first of all to go to do shopping at Tesco Lotus on road 106. Then I headed towards Doi Tao where there is a wide lake which I reached about 12:30 to note that it was mainly dry, dry season obliges. I had lunch in the village before continuing towards Thoen. At about fifteen kilometres away before the junction with the road n°1 I stopped in mountain to have a cold night.

The 03/02 was a long driving day on the Highway n°1 to Bangkok. At the end of the morning I stopped in Kamphaeng Phet to consult my mailbox and to have lunch then around 5:00 p.m. it was a stop at a PTT service station after Sing Buri to fill the water tanks and to bivouac. PTT neon sign is a meeting point for truckman's to have a night pause.

 
Enseigne PTT station 
Sing Buri 
03/03/2009 

I left the PTT station the 04/03 around 06:30 a.m. to head to the bivouac in Pak Nam Pran Beach close to Pran Buri. It was necessary to cross Bangkok by taking a Tollway without mistaking. Alas it was not the case. By a bad interpretation of a signpost I left it inopportunely. After a few kilometres of wandering I required a help of a policeman whom I begged to put me on the Tollway. I succeeded in rendering comprehensible me, I crossed Bangkok and I took the road n°35 then the n°4 towards the bivouac with a stop in Hua Hin to consult my mailbox.

 
The road tracklog 
From Sing Buri to Pak Nam Pran Beach 
the 04/03/2009 

 
Tollway 
Bangkok 
04/03/2009 

It was my fourth stay with Pak Nam Pran Beach. In Pran Buri on the n°4 there are Tesco Lotus and a cybercafé, a dream. I remained three days at the edge of the beach to look after my truck and to prepare my future trips.

 
Low angle light in the late afternoon 
Pak Nam Pran Beach 
07/03/2009 

 
Low angle light in the late afternoon
Pak Nam Pran Beach 
07/03/2009 

The 08/03 I left the peace haven of Pak Nam Pran Beach as of the sunrise to head towards another beach close to Chaiya, Lean Pho Beach. It was a long driving day of extremely tedious.

Exceptional evening and night
Sound and olfactive landscape

This evening there at Lean Pho Beach at the night fallen a group of young people in the motorcycles and pick-ups 4x4 equipped with a over boost SoundBlaster with luminescent diodes sprinkled the beach of low deafening penetrating in the cell of my truck which was transformed into case of resonance; it was devilish. I continued my work without thinking of it! Then when I finished around 8 p.m. I was going to see these rowdy characters with the intention to ask them to lower sound. Alas with the noise and the English language it was incommunicability, finally I were expressed by gesture in particular by boring my index on my temple. They laughed with deployed throat. I noticed that to supply this equipment the vehicle engines turned to a constant mode. Thus to sound pollution the pollution of exhaust fumes was added. Of course one or more vehicles raced along the beach with force vroum vroum, horn, brake application etc The circus ended around 10 p.m., silence fell like a mass on the beach where only the noise of waves and wind came to rock the hot night, 29°C and wet, 82% humid.
My night could start. At the foot of the door of the cell a dog assembled the guard without anything to beg, but in the early morning I realized that it and its congeners pissed abundantly the wheels of my truck.
I was not quiet for as much. About midnight a round of police by motorcycles turned around my truck with torches while howling in pseudo English to require of me who I was, where I went,… I rose and answered them politely while insisting on fact that I was sleeping … Alas three hours later another round carried out the same horse-gear, I rose again and answered them always also politely but they insisted in gibberish with their torches in my eyes. I saw red, I took down a Mag-Lite with which I dazzled them of halogenous light; they laughed noisily and went away.
In the early morning, around five a.m., fishermen went back at the port with their boats, long tail, driven by an cultivator engine fixed on an axis provided with a propeller which plunges in rocker more or less in water. These engines are in free exhaust without silencer. It was another concert with sonorities very different to each other.

 
The road tracklog 
From Pak Nam Pran Beach to Lean Pho Beach 
the 08/03/2009 

I left this idyllic beach around seven a.m.. The 09/03 was still a driving day; I stopped this time still in Hua Sai to consult my mailbox. Then at few kilometres southwards away I choose a small beach Prag Mueang Beach to bivouac.

The 10/03 was the last long driving day in Thailand without any interest, but it was necessary to approach the border of Malaysia. From Songkhla I entered the Moslem provinces shaken sporadically by separatist claims.
After Pattani I took the coastal road 4136 cut by many police baffles. On the move I crossed patrols made up of a pick-up and two motorbikes with police in battledress strongly armed. However I noticed that their attack rifles did not have inserted chargers. I stopped successively two among they to ask where I could bivouac in safety, I received the same answer, the beach of Narathat in Narathiwat. It was primarily occupied by men with their male children in Islamic getup and some rare Thai couples with children of the two sexes. At the end of the day the atmosphere was good child. The beach was emptied abruptly around 7 p.m. I spent a quiet night.

The 11/03 it remained less than one hundred kilometres to head to the border of Thailand and Malaysia. There are two border posts of which that in Tak at seashore requiring a transhipment by a ferry boat, not knowing if it accepted trucks I determined to use that in Sungai Kolok again.

 
The road tracklog 
From Lean Pho Beach to Rantau Pajang 
From 09 to 11/03/2009 

A new border post is under construction in Sungai Kolok, soon it will not have there more queue at Immigration Office. I gave a customs officer the Simplified Customs Declaration Form then I was heading with my truck to do a tail at immigration by blocking the road! The procedure lasted approximately ten minutes without any difficulty. For all countries in South-East Asia my truck was never visited by customs. The entry Malaysia is presented by the travelog of the country.