Soaked to the skin!
Text by Jayne Hecate. Photos by Carol Jadzia.
I hate the cold, it never used to be this way, but as I have got older and my body less resilient, the cold has grown increasingly uncomfortable. Riding bikes in the UK means that almost all of us has got caught in freshly falling snow while on the commute to work at least once. The first and only time that it happened to me I was terrified and I vowed never to do it again.
So given how I dislike the cold, you can imagine my surprise when at in April 2014, I found myself riding through what I can only call a monsoon, while wearing the thinnest, riding kit available. My only option was to pull over and seek shelter from the rain in a bus stop.
Luckily we had less than ten miles to go and I knew that as soon as I got to Khao Sok, I would be greeted by my friend Sai and a bowl of gorgeous yellow Thai curry. Yeah, even in the tropics, riding in the rain can get cold.
Yet despite the weather, were you to ask me where my favourite place to ride is, I would still say that it is the rain forest of Khao Sok, in Southern Thailand. In my former life as a professional climber, I climbed mountains and crags in several countries and visited some of the most beautiful places that Europe has to offer, yet for me, nothing compares to the beauty of the rain forest of Thailand.
Every time I find myself heading south into the Rain Forest, it always feels like I am coming home. This is a place where I have shared a toilet with a seven inch Huntsman spider, had a wild forest Scorpion climb up my arm and across my shoulder and had troops of leaches attack my ankles. As strange as this may sound, I do not regret a single one of these experiences.