Wandergliding: Banging a Gong & Slinging Some Arrows

October 3^rd, 2024

Day 2 of my scooter adventures. Today I planned to check out the northwest corner of Ko Phangan, and wouldn’t be logging as many miles as yesterday. I headed south along the coastline before cutting inland and then heading back north.

The start of my ride:

I pulled into this empty lot that had some interesting grafitti.

Can you figure this one out? I couldn't. Don't know what the first guy is, then there's joint, a slice of pizza that looked like it had teeth, a happy martini, a green moon smoking a joint and then some sloppy pieces of pizza...hmm...

This one was even more bizarre, the only thing that made sense was the bum farting in the middle.

A few kilometres down the road was this defunct water park. The two slides down the middle had a ramp at the end and looked like they would have been exciting.

By chance, I passed by a Chinese Temple called Kuan Yin, that I had seen on some YouTuber’s video of things to check out on the island. I did a quick U-turn and came back to the entrance and parked the bike. The entrance fee was only 40 baht (less than $2) and it was worth the short visit.

The entrance to the temple.

I wandered around the small, vibrantly coloured temple buildings and enjoyed the views.

Oh, and some of the statues were good too.

Buddha's hiding in there.

So was Vishnu from Hinduism:

You have to like Buddha's always happy demeanor.

The temple was set in a lovely location.

Hard to see, but above the building is the ocean.

Some kind of dragon totem pole:

One of the main buildings:

Probably the highlight was a big metallic bell-shaped gong with a wooden dragon sculpture that was hanging from a few lines which was to be used to swing into the gong. The gong was perfectly sized and hung at the right height that allowed me to stick my head under it in order to hear the fantastic resonating sound.

A gong with some kind of wooden dragon "knocker":

Do you like my hat?!?

Time to bang a gong...

A big drum:

"Don't quit your day job Dave."

This was a cool bridge:

Scootering towards Chaloklum Beach:

After my twenty-minute visit, I hopped back on the bike to make my way towards Chaloklum Beach. Out the corner of my eye, I got a glimpse of sign for the “First Bow & Arrow Club”. I pulled over and did a quick search on my phone and it looked like a family run business that accepted drop-ins. I backtracked to check it out.

The place was empty, and I was greeted by a woman named Jan who showed me a price list on the wall. You could rent a bow and five arrows for a specific amount of time. Having never done archery before, I opted for the ½ hour deal for 300 baht ($12-13) as I figured that my fingers and/or arms might be tired by then. She gave me some instructions and did a demo and then outfitted me with a forearm protector on my left forearm and a piece of leather with a small hole that went over my right-hand middle finger for pulling on the string.

My instructor Jan:

Jan gives me some instructions.

Trying as best as I could to follow her example and her pointers, the first few rounds I had moderate success. Half of the arrows missed the board completely. She recalibrated by targeting scope (just a little metal circle really) and slowly I started to get the hang of it…and it was quite fun.

Need to get that elbow higher...

The targets were 18 meters away.

Check it out...

Ya Baby!!! I almost wanted to quit my short archery career right then and there!

A German couple showed up and the guy shot some arrows for about 15 minutes with me…not sure why he didn’t continue as he was doing quite well. In the end, I stayed for an hour but then I was starting to feel it in my fingers and it was starting to show in my shots. Apart from my bullseye, my highest scoring rounds were 26, 24 and 24 (the max is 50 – 5 x 10 bullseyes). It was a lot of fun and I’ll try it again sometime.

I loved these mini-gas stations, although I didn't end up using one.

A beautiful view from the north end of the island.

I briefly checked out Chakloklum Beach before moving on to a restaurant that I also saw from that YouTubers video which was called “360 Restaurant”, due to its views but has recently been rebranded to the “420 Club”, I gather since marijuana has been legalized in this country. It did have fantastic views, the food was decent and the service was excellent.

The view from the 420 Club. The little strip of sand is Koh Ma beach (Koh means island so that tiny island is Koh Ma).

Awesome storm brewing over the ocean.

In the middle of the picture you can see a waterspout trying to form. It extended a bit closer to the water but then retracted back into the cloud.

Looking towards the mainland.

This was not planned...but my bill at the 420 Club was 420 bahts!

The parking lot below the restaurant. That's my bike on the right.

My last stop of the day was to visit Koh Ma Beach before returning the scooter and walk along the 100-meter-long stretch of sand towards the little island.

Koh Ma beach: