January 4, 2015
A Schizophrenic Journal Entry
Bad and good writing exist on both sides of paradise
Phon Phisai to Wangkham Resort 50 1-2
Wangkham Resort to Bung Kla 46 1-3
Bung Kla to Na Prachai 49 1-4
Na Prachai to Nakhon Phanom 45 1-5
Dear little friends,
Before we get started, I want to acknowledge that we are a bit behind on the blog. So I am taking the lazy way and posting a bunch of crap writing first, the kind of note-taking no-pronoun swill I swore we would not use in our journal, and I'm doing this simply because I am lazy, plus this leaves time and space for me to write about what I REALLY want to discuss. If you don't care where we are or what we ate you can skip to Part 2. So without further ado:
Part 1- Crap Writing Section: Where we were and what we ate
1-2 Early morning, took a back road, sometimes sandy road through wetlands, back on 212, then another back road to unexpected resort. Very quiet night, Lao mountains very pretty. Lots and lots of rubber trees. B.B Coffee (Dao coffee from Laos, Bolaven plateau) Ate at the resort, khao pat. Woman gave us three pineapple for the price of one, plus pineapple-coconut New Year's sweets.
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1-3 Left the resort, Bruce photographing everything, visited "navel of the Mekong" stopped 16 miles later in Bueng Kan, at Tesco Lotus, bought cheese and bread and muesli, ate sandwiches, chugged along 212, visited with friendly border police with a trek bike, another back road to "24 hour" Rimkhong Resort, pretty funky, hard bed. Friendly people, beautiful villages, good food, we ate at the Bung Kla night market. Sunny but pleasant temps.
1-4 Little traffic, pounded down the highway again until Ban Phaeng, went into Amazon Coffee, big disappointment, wifi was impossible to register for and coffee overpriced. We ate cheese sandwiches on the sly. Back road from there for the afternoon, it's starting to heat up! Stopped for snacks at a crematory with no chimney. Through some sweet villages, we had to circle back and Bruce startled some kids who had been yelling "Hello!" earlier, they all cracked up when he was the first one to yell hello! Back on the stupid 212, I was super tired because of no sleep on the hard bed in Bung Kla, but the "No-tell Motel" at this mysterious crossroads town is even worse, except that we got a new room because the door lock didn't work. Dinner from a nearby night market, some very delicious food in our new bowls.
1-5 Left the no-tell motel a little after 7, it was 212 all day through a lot of forest and Monday morning traffic until we finally saw a store where we bought Lactasoy and ate our muesli at a little table out front. Then back onto the road until I saw a coffee place in a truck stop but it was overpriced and bad. Then on to NK, arriving by 1, the last 7 or 8 miles were just hell, we are sick of the 212, the traffic is horrible and fast, it's a beautiful road otherwise. It's getting hot now. Took a while to find a hotel but we did find a couple of great places to eat and I finally got a khao ji pate! TC Apartments 690 baht, pretty fancy for us.
Part 2- Looking For Money
On Highway 212 in NE Thailand, often the trees stretch and meet overhead like a gorgeous green tunnel, the surface is great, the shoulder adequate for the most part. So why is this highway starting to feel like a living hell? Because there is just too much traffic on it. The long holiday weekend was wearing off, people needed to get back home to Bangkok or wherever, the long straight smooth stretches invite pedal-to-the-metal pacing, and shoot, that's just how they drive here.
And mostly, that works out fine, the pickup trucks (and 90% of private vehicles here are new Toyota Hilux pickups) give us a wide berth, for the most part. A few rude drivers still buzz us far too closely even when there is plenty of room in the other lane, people passing from the opposite direction come a bit too close, but I have to say that most of the thousands of drivers we encounter every day are great, if fast. The ones that aren't have me gripping my Ergon grips and congratulating myself on the nerves of steel surrounding me like a wire cage that will surely bounce off any several ton vehicle that comes too close.
Yeah. No.
So if the mental/metal cage doesn't actually deflect, how about distractions? I found the perfect one: Looking for money.
It started when I read Brian Shaw's account of having some Thai baht blowing around on the highway about ten days before we were on the same highway. Well, why should he get free money and I nothing, I ask you? Bruce found a satang (1/4 of a baht) worth about less than a penny apiece and picked it up out of nostalgia for the day when a satang would buy you something, which is a long, long time ago, trust me. He picks up pennies off sidewalks too but you probably already knew that. I wanted me some free money too.
We have been able to find a lot of wonderful back roads along the river but eventually Highway 212 and the river decide to visit with each other again, and there we are, back on that shoulder gripping and grumbling. Usually on an uphill, where the river has made it hard to make a road. So, uphill, my right elbow feeling vulnerable (they drive on the left here in Thailand), I start looking at the litter on my left in the yellowing grass.
Oh, there is a lot of litter. There are flip-flops and M-150 bottles and Lactasoy boxes and potato chip bags and hats and shampoo packets and sunglasses and these clear plastic cups that this weird jelly-like treat comes in and bubble tea straws. Baby socks, lots of those. Most people in this country are riding either on motorbikes or in open vehicles, such as the backs of pickups or tuk-tuks or buses with no air conditioning. Most of this litter is voluntarily contributed, but some of it stolen by the wind.
On a hot afternoon, near the end of the day, here we were, grinding up a slow uphill, trucks and buses whishing by and I was in my lowest gear, thinking how hot it was and how hungry I was and... a green 20 baht bill appeared, still folded as it was when it flew out of somebody's pocket. I stopped. "Money!" I screamed to Bruce. I picked up the bill and noticed two more nearby. 60 baht! Why that is nearly, nearly, um, two dollars! But I found it!
The next day Bruce stopped to take a photo of a dead scorpion. The ratio of Bruce stopping vs. Andrea stopping is about 100 to one, because he is a photographer and documents everything and I am a mindless lazy cycling dork who does not like losing one ounce of momentum. I would probably not stop for money on a downhill (even if I could see it) unless there was a hundred-dollar-bill tree and it was autumn. But I stop when Bruce stops, because that means I can drink more water and if I don't stop I will lose my mirror. The mirror called Bruce.
I lost my real mirror in the despicable Pakbeng, where it must have fallen onto the gross guest house floor. It was a small helmet mirror and not really replaceable with a handlebar mirror because of my Ergon grips so I ride behind Bruce and he has to do all the rear view mirror watching for me while I am busy looking for money. The Bruce mirror has saved our lives plenty already, some of these motorbikes and trucks are surprisingly quiet and come up behind with deadly stealth.
So he was photographing the dead scorpion and I was drinking water and I looked down and there was a little one-baht coin twinkling at me. Ha! Money! My day was made.
This whole money-looking thing is actually something else. I am looking for money because it keeps me calm and distracted from thinking about dangerous traffic. We need to take the highway sometimes. We can't always ride out in the fields and forest where one motorbike per half-hour passes us and the biggest danger is that a chicken will run out in front of our wheels or we are attacked by a friendly butterfly. I really never expect to see another bill or coin again, and just yesterday I thought I saw a 50 baht bill and didn't even stop for it, because of course, I had such nice momentum going at the time. 50 baht bills are blue, maybe it was a squashed Lactasoy box, is that worth stopping for? Of course not. What are the odds? What are the odds that I will see any money again, a larger bill, maybe a 1000 baht note like the ones that I get from the ATM that store clerks everywhere freak out about because I am trying to pay for a ten dollar item with a bill that is worth THIRTY whole dollars!!!! The look I got at the Tesco today was priceless, if I knew enough Thai I would have pointed out to the clerk that I was, indeed, giving her money, not just there for the sole purpose of stealing her pristine change.
Today we are holed up in Nakhom Phanom because we have been riding many days straight and we are in a mini heat wave so why not rest in a nice (for us) air-conditioned room overlooking the Mekong? It's awesome! I was thinking we were too dirty and sweaty to be given a room in such a nice hotel, all polished tile and mirrors, but then we noticed that the managers live behind the counter where a toddler jumps up and down on a mattress on the floor and yes, even though every room is 690 baht and nobody uses credit cards, it took three different people digging into their pants pockets and teapots to make change for that thousand baht bill we laid on them like Daddy Warbucks. This happens no matter what we are buying and how small the bill, they could have been selling pork-on-a-stick all day long and they still don't have change. It's not like they are trying to cheat you out of your change, they leave the grill and visit all their neighboring vendors and finally come back with the five baht they owe you. Where did all of the day's take go?
It had all been such a mystery up until now. It's kept me up nights, wondering and wondering but now it is crystal clear because I have finally been looking in all the right places for change. The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind, the answer is blowin' in the wind.
Today's ride: 190 miles (306 km)
Total: 874 miles (1,407 km)
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