January 10, 2015
Following The Tapioca Trail
Hat Salung, Thailand to Kong Chiam, Thailand - 52 Miles
Following The Tapioca Trail
Hat Salung, Thailand to Kong Chiam, Thailand - 52 Miles
January 12, 2015
We had been concerned about this day, the day we headed into seemingly uncharted territory. We couldn't find anyone's description of the route we wanted to take and that made us apprehensive and shaky, irritable; "No, you take the oranges, I have the peanuts and muesli." Hadn't anyone ridden a bicycle from Hat Salung directly to Kong Chiam?
However, there is no better encouragement to get an early start than staying at a really shady place, and I don't mean it lacked sunlight. The toothless, tramp-stamped manager, (owner!?), who seemed to be on something, was so strange and slimy acting and her "resort" so funky, falling apart, reeking of sewer gas and overpriced that we wanted to get out of there early. After a night of pickups coming and going and odd sliding sounds of things being loaded into them and after we got stiffed an additional 50% for our dinner I said to Andrea, "I gotta get out of this place."
The menu, too, was the strangest one I've ever seen. I've always written down oddly worded or spelled items on menus. They are obviously written by non-English speakers and we can usually figure out what they meant to say. But the menu at this place was so strange that I have no idea what is being referred to. Examples: "Egg savings light chain. U. shoot orange. Cu cee piss fish weakness. Orange fish curry shoot acid." What! Maybe it's a cry for help. They are off the chart (or menu) in terms of weirdness.
As funky and weird as the place was (no English name) the view of the Mekong was spectacular. In fact, it's one of the most impressive viewpoints of the Mekong I've ever seen.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
The evening before we had explored the smooth, flowing rock, (underwater in the rainy season), a quarter of a mile from shore out to the narrow gorge where the Mekong waters had retreated and were confined for the dry season. I've never seen a more narrow section of the Mekong. It's hard to say how narrow since when I thought I could throw a stone across it I failed miserably. It landed not a quarter of the way across and Andrea and I laughed so hard we almost fell in. I made the usual excuses, “I had to stand back from the edge too far.” “It was the wind." Maybe it's 100 feet wide at most which means it must be 300 feet deep to hold the entire Mekong. Just looking at the boiling water for a few seconds made us back far away from the edge in fear. It was breathtakingly scary, impressive, demanding respect.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
Downstream from the gorge the river opened into a section which resembled a lake but again, the upwellings suggested it was either very deep or full of Nagas. A veritable city of Nagas. A Naga stomping grounds. Home of the Grand Naga maybe. It was so scary to look at that I couldn't take my eyes from it. This was the view from the weird resort's funky, broken and termite riddled tables and benches - the dining area. Watch your step!!
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
It was the only place to stay in tiny Hat Salung and also had the only restaurant. We were trapped by a different kind of Naga; a toothless crazy woman who either stayed too long in Pattaya or was actually strung out on meth. We, white-skinned hapless tourists, hung in the balance somewhere between roiling waters and overpricing.
But for days we had been apprehensive about the route we were about to take. Fifty two miles we knew we could do but on Google Earth it looked like it might have some pretty steep hills and maybe that's why no one biked the route. We knew nothing, but sometimes knowing nothing is the best way to jump in.
After 10 miles we finally saw a kilometer marker and Andrea said something I never thought I'd ever hear her say enthusiastically, "Oh, it's only 42 more miles!" She was happy about that! No sarcasm at all. She must have thought it was a lot further whereas I always thought it was going to be a 52 mile day and, having the odometer on my bike, I knew we had come 10 miles already. At that point we hadn't come to any hills yet.
We'd left in such a hurry just after the sun rose that we hadn't eaten a thing. We were not going to give that woman anymore money. We were not going to let her overprice another thing. We were out of there but we needed to eat something and usually the only food available early morning is noodle soup. On this fairly deserted road it was going to be a challenge. Plus, it was Sunday and believe it or not the Thais close just about everything on Sundays now. They never used to.
Then we came across a modern little coffee stand in pretty much the middle of nowhere. One never knows what will happen but on a bike the options either fly by unnoticed or they multiply before your eyes. For us, recently, they have been to our advantage in multiples. The nice woman who owned the stand told us it would take a few minutes to make us what we wanted - real ground coffee, not Nescafe which the Thais seem to have taken a great liking to recently.
The woman seated us comfortably in a very cute thatched hut. She brought us a bowl of fresh tamarind with which we could get our fingers all sticky. Then came a bowl of chom poo fruit from one of her small chom poo trees. At first I thought she said "shampoo fruit” which got me thinking about the condition of my hair not having had a morning shower in that gross bathroom. I have had a lot of different fruits in Asia but never chom poo. They tasted a bit like apples but looked more like little plastic fake fruit, kind of bell shaped and waxy. There is always something new to experience.
The coffee stand woman was very friendly and tried out her English as we drank her great Thai coffee. She said she had a good friend who moved to Wisconsin and it seemed like motivation for her to learn English. I think she has plans. But after all her conversational English was exhausted we asked if she knew of a place that sold some noodle soup and she excitedly directed us down the road a bit. Before we took off she stuffed another full bag of tamarind into my pannier.
We found the noodle soup shop which turned out to be right next to a small noodle factory. How convenient! The noodles could just worm their way over. The noodle soup woman was also very nice to us and made us a most delicious soup this time with chicken and lots of fresh basil. Then the coffee woman arrived just to make sure we had found the soup place! People here are so nice.
The people in N.E. Thailand have exceeded all my expectations of friendliness. In recent years I’ve been getting quite sad about how jaded the Thais have become toward tourists and sometimes they’re downright mean. I can't really blame them, however, because seeing millions of tourists for forty years would make anyone’s interest wane. What's worse is that a higher percentage of tourists to Thailand have been seedy looking men looking for young Thai women and/or drugs. But over here in Isan where there are few tourists we’ve been treated like gold which has resulted in a renewal of my faith in the people in the "Land of Smiles".
After our more than hour-long soup and coffee break we rode off to discover what Rt. 2112 was all about. We immediately saw drying tapioca roots everywhere so I renamed the road, The Tapioca Trail. I had no idea the world needed so much tapioca! Every farmer seemed to be growing it and it was most definitely harvest time. It's the gnarly roots that do the tapioca thing. The eight foot tall stick-like plants were being plowed up, the roots whacked off and thrown into tuologgis. They haul them to whomever owns a machine that slices them up a bit otherwise the roots are chopped by hand with cleavers. It all seems incredibly labor intensive for little money. There were large factory-like centers where the farmers can haul their tapioca roots to sell for 5.80 baht per kilo. I'm assuming that's for undried, unchopped root since I saw the root being processed at the factories. That's about 8 cents per pound, presumably a bit more if already cut and dried. If the world seemingly needs so much tapioca one would think the price would be higher. We had seen even more tapioca being grown way up where we had crossed into Thailand from Laos. I automatically suspect that nearby China has made huge contracts at low low prices for years into the future but I know the Thais grind the root to make flour which they use in most of their sweets. Thais love their sweets which they call generically, khanom.
The chopped chunks of tapioca root were being dried on every available level space. They covered front yards, back yards, school yards, soccer fields!, open areas in the forest and even the shoulders of the road! It was a virtual tapioca take-over of the bike lane which was kind of irritating and I would have gotten downright mad if there had been any traffic at all. But the road was basically deserted which was a dream for us. Another dream was that most of the road had recently been paved beautifully, flawlessly, as smooth as any road I've ever been on. Another dream was that the hills were not extreme in grade nor were they very high. But they were high enough to allow for blissful downhill coasting, sometimes as much as a mile at a time.
And there was another dream; the natural forest and amazing landscape filled with stone. There were big rounded, obviously very old, rocks placed as if a Japanese garden master designer had carefully contemplated their placement and hand placed them. A huge variety of trees grew where they could among the rocks. Most were dropping leaves but some were flowering.
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
There were also huge areas of flat rock that looked as if it had been poured concrete about five million years ago, long enough to attain a high degree of character and blackness. I wanted to hike or bike on it but there didn't seem to be any trails. The best we were able to do was ride out onto one area where they were drying, you guessed it, tapioca roots. It had been spread all over the rock over a large area. I don't think such a thing would be allowed in U.S. National Parks but I'm still not sure if this area was truly a national park. It seemed to be preserved in some way. Maybe it was preserved for the drying of tapioca.
Butte - background
| Heart | 1 | Comment | 0 | Link |
It seems our fears about the road were for naught. Lying awake thinking about pushing the loaded bikes up 40 degree hills was a waste of valuable sleep. Thinking about camping in scary foreign forests filled with snakes who like to cuddle up with humans in sleeping bags at night, scorpions who like to crawl into shoes, red ants that can kill large animals if they are in their path, bamboo shoots that can come up underneath the tent and grow right through humans while they sleep, wild elephants with a penchant for trampling tents and bikes, and unknown animals. What about all the unknown animals! What about toothless women with tramp stamps possibly high on meth? What about them?
All these dire thoughts were a big waste of time. I wish I had spent my time on other things because the road was actually one of the most enjoyable of the entire trip so far. Seriously. It was a dream road for bicyclists. Fifty two miles of blissful riding. Well, there were a few sections of old pavement but even they weren't too bad. Why have bikers not gone this route? Or have they? Maybe they have and they aren't telling anyone. They let people's imaginations and fears go crazy, (not mine of course) thus preserving the route for when they come back to ride it again, say ten years on when it's still free of other cyclists.
It was just gorgeous everywhere we looked and because of the rather intense winds for days on end the smoky air had been completely cleared making sunlight illuminate everything sharply, clearly. There were vistas of butte-like hills which I've never seen anywhere else in Thailand. If we had had more time we could have done a dozen side routes to waterfalls, chimney rocks with table rocks on top, temples, rivers full of the same rock formations and more vistas. But there were no places to stay and we had some food but not a lot, some water but not a lot.
We're instead on an initial exploratory bike trip this time. We're enjoying all the towns along the Mekong. Next time. Next time we'll take more time to go down side roads and camp. Next time. Always next time. So, forget all my descriptions of a blissful biking road. Forget you read this because we want to come back in say, ten years, and have it all to ourselves once again. We'll follow the white dust left by the tapioca roots - The Tapioca Trail - fifty two miles of smiles.
Lovebruce
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 2 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 2 |
And for dessert? It's tapioca time!
Wow .. bamboo shoots that grow up through tent floors and right through unaware sleeping campers?
I think I might rather be trampled by the wild elephants. Definitely before I discover the snake in my sleeping bag.
5 years ago
5 years ago