January 4th: Erawan to Wat Pa San Tom – 59 km

Day 83

From the look of the roads ahead, our pleasure tour was turning back into an adventure. We met the owner of the resort we stayed in last night, a Dutch who settled down in Thailand 7 years ago. Despite his warning of extremely mountainous terrain ahead of us, we were glad to hear that he described the view as “little Switzerland”.

Before long we met the mountains that were waiting for us, and they did not disappoint. With 10% grade and somehow very little downhills, we had to work hard for every km gained. Much to our disappointment, there was no “little Switzerland” to be found, except plenty of farms selling potted plants. We had our lunch break under a rubber tree, pondering if we had our expectation too high for the “little Switzerland”.

Having put many uphills behind and gone the distance we set out to do, we were happy to find a camp ground. However they wanted to charge us 240 Baht for two people so we kept on moving. The next hotel was 600, and then to our surprise the following “resort” wanted 2,500 for a room. Moving on yet again we found a restaurant with some tents pitched behind it. We were quoted at 200 but after pointing out that we had our own tent and some bargain, the owner accepted and we were happy just to find an affordable place to stay for the night. Somehow we managed to travel into a very expensive tourist area with no tourists. From the look of things we were in the off-season and many of the hotels were empty. The strange part was that no one really wants to bargain despite the vacancy.