Thailand 2025. Day 19. Moving west to the coast of the Andaman Sea

I left Chumphon early in the morning, and started on the 300 km trek across Thailand, from east to west, to get to the west coast. I feel a bit disappointed that the trip has now evolved into a simple road trip from A to B. There are distractions along the way, but the road signs are so poor that I have to think twice about deviating from the main road to go see a waterfall that I might never find. There are of course any number of temples, but by now I have visited enough to make me an honorary Buddhist. Now, as I move south I am getting closer to the international border with Malaysia, which is a Muslim country, so I am beginning to see mosques here and there. Obviously some of the folks from Malaysia have "diffused" into Thailand.

My goal was to reach the Andaman Sea, so I made a reservation at a home stay shortly after the road started paralleling the coast. My host was a young surfer dude who had moved from the mountains of Chiang Mai to be at the coast, and who built three rooms on the second floor of his house for fellow surfers to stay at. The room had a futon in it, a fan, and little else. Because I didn't get a chair or a table I skipped writing the day's reflections right then and there.

I only had to cross the highway to be at the shore, A belt of conifers provides some shade and then you go straight into the beach, which is warm, clean, and beautiful. The breakers were really small, however, so I later learnt that my surfer friend has to go toward the rockheads at the sides of the bay to do his surfing. 

I had a delicious dinner of a giant fish braised in lemon grass stock, which I honored by not leaving anything but bones and a few sprigs of cilantro behind.

The Andaman Sea gets its name from the Andaman Islands, which if memory serves are the northernmost islands of the Indonesian Archipelago. The shores of the Andaman Sea were hard hit by the 2004 Indonesian tsunami, which caused much destruction in this part of Thailand. As in other of the places I visited, the recovery of the vegetation and the people has been truly spectacular, although the inhabitants are aware that such an event could be repeated in the  future.