January 3, 2015
A Perfect Day
January 2, 2015
A Perfect Day
We got going early from Boontawee Hotel in Phon Phisai. It was pretty cold and the first couple of hours were invigorating. The night before I had written myself notes, an itinerary of sorts, directing us on an obscure route as close to the Mekong River as possible. We had to start out on the busy main highway, Rt. 212, but quickly turned towards the river. Immediately the peaceful quiet enveloped us.
The people in the first little town we rode through had barely emerged from their homes and were bundled up on their porches as if it was below zero. They seemed surprised to see us riding by. The more awake and warmed up ones had friendly greetings. We hadn't eaten anything but it was way too early for any noodle soup stands to be up and running. I like to see lots of steam coming from the big pot of broth before I will eat from them. We were enjoying the ride without vehicles so much that food was not on our minds.
The road wound around and consulting my notes we turned right, then left, and right onto smaller and smaller roads and pavement eventually ran out. The gravel quickly turned to soft sand and we were fishtailing. One might think it was at that point that we either thought we were on the wrong road or that we were getting angry about our predicament. But the countryside was so beautiful there was no way we could be angry. And I was pretty certain we were still on my planned route. I hadn't noticed the sand road when viewing Google Earth but we were next to a lake that I remembered seeing. The lake was fairly large and mostly covered with lotus. Just two feet above the large pads were hundreds of swallows enjoying insects that must have been emerging from the surface of the lake - breakfast. As we stood and watched the hundreds of fast moving specks across the entire lake, other birds in the trees on shore sang their morning songs. It was about as peaceful a place as there ever could be.
The sand forced us to stop a couple of times and we talked about how much we were reminded of both Montana and Minnesota countryside. There was a damp tall grass smell and stillness and something else in the air that said 'home' to us. But the bird whose song sounded a lot like a meadow lark was the thing that transported us most effectively.
As we continued, the sand road turned harder and wound around some more before it joined a paved road. That was as far as my notes went. They ended saying simply, "Turn left on the larger road. Follow it." So, that's what we did and it was a nice quiet road for miles. Every now and then we rode right through a very small town. "Town" is not exactly how I would describe them however. They were a group of houses strung along the road. Maybe there would be a small temple, usually not. Stores were not like normal stores as we know them but like little general stores which merged into living quarters. There were very few noodle soup shops and they were still not open. The noodle soup places were also not like normal restaurants but more like extensions of houses as well. There were few of them as I suspect the people were too poor to eat away from their homes very often. I'm sure everyone knew every detail of everyone's life in the small groupings of homes. It seemed like a lot of the people wanted to know all about us too as they enthusiastically hollered to us in as much English as they knew which was only a few words. I know enough Thai and Lao to notice that the people in this part of Thailand (which used to be Laos before the Thais took it over) all speak Lao and Thai mixed together and interchangeably. I just wish I was conversational in either.
From the number of plastic chairs, long tables and huge banks of speakers it looked as though large events were about to take place in several places along our route. It may be auspicious to get married early in the new year. There are a lot of Lao people here and the Lao love a good party with lots of whiskey, beer, dancing and music at eardrum-damaging decibels. We figured from the way some were already revving up the music and drinking they must be Lao. Those early birds called to us most enthusiastically. I'm sure that if we had slowed even just a little bit or looked at them long enough they would have waved us in or even come out to haul us in to have a drink of Lao Lao -(rice whiskey/white lightning). But we had more quiet, peaceful miles we wanted to enjoy without falling off our bikes.
Eventually we did merge with the main highway, 212, again but it was probably a good thing to do for awhile. It allowed us to find some breakfast - noodle soup. These soups are all different, each woman making it the way she wants. This time each of our bowls of noodle soup included two thin, dark brown slabs that strongly resembled old shoe leather. I tried it and it tasted like nothing at all which made me even less interested in eating it. The dog was looking for something from us but I didn't really think I should try to slip him the leather pieces. People around here notice everything. And what if the dog ate it and then vomited. Or, what if the dog gladly took it from me and then, with it hanging out of his mouth, went over to eat it next to the woman who made the soup. Busted! That would be embarrassing. But I wasn't going to eat it. I asked Andrea if she wanted my portion but she declined.
While we were trying to get the pieces of shoe leather to stick to the sides of the bowl so we could get at the rest of the soup, an elephant walked by! No, this is not necessarily normal even around this part of Thailand. The neighbor kids were as intrigued as we were. The elephant was being led by his owner and rides were available for only about sixty cents but we were eating our breakfast. The elephant went on down the road and the rest of our time eating the noodle soup, and trying to get the shoe leather to behave, I was telling Andrea that I really wanted an elephant. I love elephants. But she said that our garden would really be a mess if we had an elephant back there.
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As we were leaving the soup place I noticed a muffin on the ground with only a small dog bite taken out of it. That dog was finicky! I'm glad I didn't give him the shoe leather. It would have been a disaster.
There were two other reasons it was good that we joined back up with 212. We found a cute little coffee place, rather modern, B.B Coffee, and it turned out to be some of the best coffee of the entire trip so far. There is nothing quite like a really great cup of coffee.
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And then we encountered pineapple stands along the road. I wouldn't have believed that pineapple would be ripe this time of year way up north where we are. I stopped at the first stand. The woman selling them thwaaped them with her index finger for me, one after another. I didn't know anything about pineapple but when one sounded different from all the others I stopped her and said, "That one." She nodded and started laughing because that was exactly right - no words necessary. It was the one with a more hollow sound. The pineapple was thirty cents.
As we rode on I thought that maybe we should get another one since we didn't know if we would see anymore. That's the way things go here. You have to strike when you are in front of them because it is very possible you won't see them again down the road. It's odd that way. The other day we came to a few stands of absolutely great tasting bananas. Fortunately I bought a few but we haven't seen bananas since. Other times we have seen splayed out chickens roasting on grills, one after another. I have been threatening that if we see them again I'm stopping and we are going to rip apart and eat one entire chicken right there on the road. Andrea is all for it.
So, we stopped at another pineapple stand. There the woman said something I figured was, "No, my pineapples are not good tasting this year. You won't like them." Before I could stop her she'd cut one open and was serving us large slices from her large knife. It was delicious, a bit tart but that's what we prefer. She couldn't believe that we liked it so she threw three pineapples in the bag and wanted only thirty cents. She seemed disgusted with her harvest and just wanted her pineapples to go away. Plus, she gave us a whole bag of homemade candies - pineapple/coconut wads rolled up in multicolored papers. She said, "Sawatdee pimai!" - Happy New Year.
I strapped everything onto my bike while marveling at our good fortune. We were going to eat lots of sweet pineapple and some sticky wads of candy.
Soon after, we again turned left off 212 on a nice road towards the Mekong. This time the road was even more remote, quiet, peaceful and wonderful. We rode on it, mostly down the middle of it, for more than fifteen miles, again marveling at our good fortune. I think it must be the old original road along the Mekong, cement in most places and now largely abandoned. The only people who seemed to use it were farmers with farms next to it. We saw lots of orchards, rice paddies, chilies, tomatoes and other produce in beautiful manicured plots. And we found ice cream in one Wall's brand freezer inside a small store. We sat on the ground in front of the store while savoring the chocolaty goodness. I don't even care one bit about ice cream but on this trip Andrea has wanted one of the Wall's "Cornettos" every day that we ride. There is some difference of opinion about the rules. Andrea thinks that if for some reason she doesn't get her Cornetto on a day we ride she can accumulate them. No, no, no. She can't do that! But now she has me in the clutches of addiction to Cornettos which means I may soften my stand on the rules.
Some parts of the road surface had been recently drizzled with a thick layer of oil and a thin coating of sand or fine gravel spread on top of it. It was the old school way of resealing a road. As we rode Andrea told me a long story about her childhood when the road in front of her house had been coated with oil. It's actually a thick tarry sort of oil. A bad girl who lived a block away from Andrea asked her if she wanted to go to the other side. Andrea sort of did want to go to the other side since there wasn't much else to do. When something is off limits that's when it is most intriguing. The bad girl told Andrea she would carry her across and when she wanted to go back she promised to carry her back home. I guess the bad girl had shoes on that she didn't care much about. Andrea was little and barefoot. The bad girl carried Andrea across the road but after a little while disappeared. Andrea was stranded on the other side of the tarry road barefoot. She called for help but no one came. Isn't this a sad story? You know where it's going too. She finally panicked and ran across the road in tears. Her mother put her on top of the washer and cleaned her feet with lighter fluid while telling little Andrea to stay away from that bad girl. Andrea has been repulsed by the smell of lighter fluid ever since.
We had gone well past the town in which we had sort of planned to stay in, Pak Khat, but the beauty of the road was worth every extra mile. It's odd how the miles click away on roads like that whereas on 212, with cars and trucks whizzing close to us, miles take forever to add up. On that nice road I could have ridden a hundred miles today. Instead we rode fifty when we came across the first place to stay, a resort called Wang Kham Resort. It's right on the Mekong River. In fact, the front door of our beautiful modern $9 bungalow looks right at the river. I lie in bed typing this with the door open and there's the river.
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A real plus is that the owners serve food as well. Being way out in the country means that food might be hard to come by so we were pretty happy that they would make us anything. The shower is the hottest of the trip, there is nobody else staying here, the internet works great, neither of us got injured biking, there were no bad girls, no gooey tarry oil and best of all, no odor of lighter fluid. I'd say it stacks up to be a pretty perfect day of riding.
Lovebruce
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