Mid-afternoon, with the sun losing a bit of its strength, I set off from home with the modest target of getting to the sea and back. That's only a round trip of 30km in a flat landscape but with the secondary aim of stopping to take photographs of whatever catches my eye I probably won't get back until after sunset.
After a couple of very familiar kilometres I turn onto a less travelled road that takes me passed some rural communities and the paddyfields that support them. I stop at a Chinese shrine beside the road, which looks like it's in daily use with all the burnt incense sticks. The gourd-shaped oven used to burn offerings to ancestors has a lovely patina that would look great in our garden.
Something that stands out is the few homes that have made some effort to produce an attractive frontage. One clearly wealthy family has two relief artworks either side of their gate. One of a happy elephant herd together with other wildlife, and one of rice farmers in olden times before the internal combustion engine spoiled the peace. In this second image there is also a man climbing a bamboo pole up a sugarpalm tree to collect either the nectar or fruit, which is exactly the same way it is still done today!
Then another home has a beautiful display of yellow flowers. I could see no obvious commercial reason for it so like to think it is just a generous way to brighten up the community and perhaps show-off a little.
In contrast, there are always some less appealing results of our habits around, such as this road-killed snake dried into the number six, and an incongruous old chair abandoned amongst the ricefields.
A local authority sign also catches my eye due to the lovely cracking pattern weathering has produced. If you get your signs made on the cheap then this is what happens - abstract art! If anybody is interested in getting a sign of their own like this then the maker's number is in the bottom right corner.
I then take the chance to visit an intriguing temple that I had often seen from a distance. As you can imagine from the photos it does stand out very well in this flat land! It's main building is in the shape of a galleon mixed with Chinese features complete with masts, anchors, propellers, and a strange assortment of other nautically-themed statues and carvings. It is a striking building made to dazzle and with lots of great detail. I had never come across human-snails or horse-fish before! Apparently, they feature in local folklore.
However, I think my favourite part of the temple is this little carved character sitting at the base of a lamp-post staring up at all the shining ocean antics. I wonder what he's thinking.
Within a few kilometres of the coast the flat landscape changes from rice-growing to shrimp-ponds and then a lot of salt-pans. It is these salt-pans that give the area it's biggest attraction at this time of year. A long stretch along this coast supports enormous numbers and a great variety of wintering water-birds especially waders. Some of them are very rare. Most bird-watchers visiting the country in winter will come to the Petchaburi coast hoping for a glimpse of a spoon-billed sandpiper or Asian dowitcher or Nordmann's greenshank. I have never looked carefully enough to have a chance of seeing any of them. Wintering waders are tough to tell apart, although, I can manage a few like this black-winged stilt.
The salt-pan landscape is a particularly harsh one in the middle of the day but turns to a very appealing one with the low sun of late afternoons and early mornings. I reached them at the right time and slowly pedalled around some of the small tracks just enjoying the birds' presence as part of the background like little clockwork toys in the shallows. One lane leads down through low mangroves, which are recovering after years of abuse, and reaches the sea. At this point it's not a pretty seaside with too much debris and scrub so I just said "Hi" and turned back.
The coastal road here is advertised as a scenic route from Bangkok towards the resort towns further south, which means it is good quality and therefore a bit fast. Squeezed in at the side there is what I think of as a psuedo-bike lane but fortunately there is never heavy traffic so it is pleasant and safe cycling.
I have never seen much activity on the salt-pans other than the bird life so was pleased to see this man riding around on his roller-car preparing the pan for the next sea-water intake, which is then left to evaporate to leave salt.
After lingering to watch the sun setting somewhere over Myanmar I ride along the rough back lane that takes me straight home. Bumpy but very quiet. The biggest problem with cycling here at dusk is the insects, which tonight are out in force and enough to make me put on my sunglasses as protection. In the near-dark I either looked really cool or an absolute idiot.
