After another 7Eleven breakfast, we unrolled the tarp and got to work repairing my rear hub. We went through the now too familiar process of removing the rear wheel and rear hub. A quick inspection showed that two of the bolts had backed off by several threads, one was starting to loosen, leaving only one still snugly fastened. We once again, put it back together with Loctite and as much torque as I could put on it. I received an email from an experience mechanic who suggested that our problem now was probably due to the threading being overstretched, and that replacing the bolts and nuts is next step. If I had access to a drill and a couple of 1/16” high-carbon bits, I would safety wire the bolt heads. I actually brought several feet of safety wire with us and should have brought the matching drill bits. Until I can do one of those two things, I will just have to be sure to inspect the bolts every thousand miles or so. Both Re and I seem to be infected with a bit of forgetfulness, since I got the rear wheel completely installed without reinstalling the chain (!) and Re reattached the brake rod without the spring (double !). We should be able to do this in our sleep by now. After putting everything right (or so we thought), we packed up the tools and got cleaned up.

About 10:30, we jumped in the water for a quick swim and a little sun before grabbing some books and spending the rest of the morning reading in one of the berugas (a beruga is a raised platform with a roof, usually thatched, to protect you from the sun and rain). Since we're both still pretty pale, we wanted to stay out of the direct sun during peak hours. We were comfortable where we were and ordered lunch from the kitchen and ate in the beruga as well. In the middle of the afternoon, we went back to our bungalow to work on some ride reports. At around 4:15 pm, Re headed back to the beach, and I followed about fifteen minutes later. After a quick dip, we were walking along the beach picking up shells, when we slowly noticed that we were just about the only people on the beach. Huh. Re walked up the steps from the beach in time to see the managers of the bungalows and their daughter heading out the front gate with suitcases and their pet rabbit. Double huh. Obviously slow on the uptake, we returned to our shell collecting on the beach. About ten minutes later, we were joined on the beach by another woman, who had just waded into the water, when the owner of the bungalows one row back from the water motioned for all of us to come talk to him. Mr Hutyee does not speak a lot of English, but he was able to explain to us that there had been a big earthquake off of Indonesia, and that there was now a tsunami warning for Koh Lanta. I guess that's where everyone went. We asked him if it was dangerous and if we should leave for higher ground with everybody else, and he said we would know when it was time to leave. Unlike the people managing our bungalows, he was a local guy and seemed a bit smarter too. Re and I went to our bungalow, packed the essential stuff, and placed it by the front door. The rest of the stuff, we put up on the furniture or hung on hooks on the wall. The floor of our bungalow was about five feet off the ground, and that ground was probably another five feet above the beach level. Feeling as prepared as we wanted to be, we walked back down to our beruga and waited for something to happen.

After a while, Mr Hutyee joined us in our beruga, and with his limited English, told us the story of the 2004 tsunami. He witnessed it from this exact beach, and told us that the water receded between a quarter and a half mile before the wave appeared. He said people were actually out on the sand, picking up the fish that were left behind when the water receded so rapidly. Then about 20 to 30 minutes later, he could see a large, black wall out on the water, heading north and west towards Phuket and Phang-Nga. He said that on Koh Lanta, which was partially spared a direct hit, the wave crashed on the beach, and then the water rose to the level of the ground we were sitting on, and that area was covered with one to two feet of water. He told us that if we saw the water recede quickly, it would be a very good time to leave. Awesome! Fleeing the incoming water with the waves lapping at our little wheels would be an awesome story. So we sat and waited, and waited, and since it was low tide, the water did go out farther than we'd seen so far, but nothing ever happened. We sat and watched for about two hours, until the sun set, and then decided to go get some dinner.

When we went back to our bungalow, there was still no one to be seen anywhere, except for Mr Hutyee and his son. We took a quick shower and got dressed for dinner. In the shower we both discovered that we were a little sunburned. Apparently we didn't account for the angle of the setting sun and the fact that the beruga was no longer protecting us. When we rode out to get some dinner, we found that most of the restaurants on the main road, which has another hundred feet of elevation from the beach, were closed. One of the few places that was open was the Jumrat, which we'd looked at last night. They were packed, and we ended up waiting for nearly an hour for our food to arrive. But it was very good. We hit the 7Eleven for and cookies and made the short ride back to the bungalow. The managers had still not returned, and we were the only people here again. All in all, a strange day.