Saturday, March 16, 2013

Ban Krut

Ban Krut was recommended to us by two separate Thai people, so we felt it was probably worth checking out. It also happened to be a couple of stops further down the train line and turned out to be a relaxed little beach town full of resorts, seafood restaurants and beach bars. Most importantly, it had a 7/11 and a pancake man.

It was here that we happened upon a delightful new snack, green tea flavoured Sponge Crunch - which turned out to be very tasty little crunchy sponge rings. They also come in chocolate and strawberry flavour, but the chocolate wasn't up to much and who likes strawberry flavoured anything?


We spent a week in Ban Krut. There's not a lot happening in the area - local attractions include a temple on a hill, a big gold Buddha on a hill, a cave full of buddhas, a couple more temples, the beach and some very pretty scenery. However, there is a lot of seafood to be eaten and we did our best, falling into a daily routine of swimming, bike rides, tasty food and hiding from the midday sun. The beach was lovely with nice sand, gentle waves and incredibly warm water.


We went up the hill to see the Buddha - the resort had free bikes which were single gear and often in quite a state - you'd be lucky to get one brake, let alone two, so while going up the hill was hard work, coming back down again was plain scary (also, very squeaky). However, it was worth the trip - the Buddha statue was very impressive and we got some lovely sunset views over the surrounding mountains and coconut plantations.

Coconuts and mountains

Big gold Buddha

Another ride took us south along the coast towards Bang Saphan and then inland through some beautiful countryside - we saw cows, fields, coconut trees and also found some baby pineapples.

Pineapple

Dgym marvels at a pina colada plantation

I really wish I had a better picture of this - this guy rode past us carrying two enormous long poles, each several metres long. We were busy being impressed by that when his passenger came into view. You see that on the back of the motorbike? That's a monkey.

Monkey on a motorbike

More pictures from Ban Krut:

Beach bar

Temple lit up at night

Beach swings

Stormy day

Squid snacks

Boats

Cow and bird

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