Over the Horizon

February 16, 2015

Ban Krut to Ban Boet

February 13 & 14, 2015

As I knew it would be, our rest day in Ban Krut was fun, full and interesting. First off we found the Thai part of town for real Thai food. The restaurants along the ocean, although nice and all serving great seafood, cater to tourists who have a lot more money than we. But at one end of town there was one short street going inland from the beach which was where the Thai shops were. We had an excellent breakfast of curries from large vats at a tiny Mom and Pop restaurant. The food was so delicious that I wasn't even finished eating when I was already anticipating returning the next morning just before we headed on down the coast. I don't really understand why anyone would want any other kind of food when in Thailand. It's the real thing.

Further down the street we bought a bag of peanuts and a large, ripe, fifteen-cent papaya. These two items have become staples for us on this trip along with muesli on some mornings.

Then tackled the steep hill, Tongchai, up to Wat Tang Sai. Even though our bikes were free of panniers we still had to push them to the top. Road grades in Thailand can be brutal for bicyclists. Even though it wasn't beastly hot yet we were dripping with sweat.

The building of Wat Tang Sai was started in 1996 to honor the King of Thailand with a monument to mark his 50th year on the throne. Therefore the design of the temple didn't really follow traditional Thai temple design but was more modern. I wasn't liking it much but one look at the murals which completely covered the interior walls and I was drawn in, mesmerized.

The painted scenes depicted every aspect of Thai life. Scenes were playful at the same time devotional/spiritual. They were in a modern style but timeless in content. They were so artistically painted I wanted to photograph every inch but that wasn't really possible. Both of us thoroughly enjoyed the murals. Then, on top of the temple, views of the beach were stunning. A very impressive temple indeed! I just wish the air hadn't been so smoky. It's definitely burning season.

To immerse myself in artwork such as the murals is a great joy to me. It doesn't matter what people, what country, what religion inspired them, I always come away marveling at how humans can create such beauty, in this case simply with paint and brush. People are so incredibly talented and I'm always inspired in some way after viewing such artwork. However, as soon as we were out of the temple my spell was quickly broken by a taxi driver.

In the temple parking area a taxi was arriving with an older monk next to him in the front seat. A foreigner (tourist) woman, also older, was having trouble with her bicycle in the middle of the street. Out of the blue the taxi driver laid on his horn. I mean he LAID on his horn for twenty seconds or more. The woman became flustered but was still having some sort of trouble with her pedal or something and couldn't move out of the street quickly. Compassion to the wind, he honked some more! Because he kept at it I walked over to the taxi and put my nose an inch from his window and just stared at the driver. I didn't say a word. I just looked him sternly in the eyes for nearly as long as his longest horn blast. He looked uncomfortable with my stare as I knew a Thai would be. Thais are all about avoiding confrontation and saving face. As unusual as his horn blasting was to me, so too was my reaction to him. I'm sure he had never had a tourist confront him as I was. I thought it was a pretty passive confrontation on my part. I just wanted to send a message to him, without using words, that what he was doing was not all right.

I know what the taxi driver was thinking. He thought (mistakenly) that a monk in his taxi gave him license to act important (and inappropriately). I actually disliked the monk more than the driver because the monk did nothing to stop him from acting in such a rude way and to a tourist no less. Just one reason I hate religion - followers somehow believe that since they are devoted to a religion they are then entitled to some hierarchical status. If the monk in the taxi had been truly a good person (and truly Buddhist) he would have stopped the taxi driver from honking and then lectured him. Usually Thais are very considerate to tourists especially if it's obvious they are having some sort of trouble. And, normally tourists don't get an inch from a Thai's car window to give them stink-eye. Hopefully both the driver and the monk thought about what they had done and why I reacted the way I did. I pondered it all briefly myself as I ate ice cream on a stick before it melted.

After that we flew down the hill to the beach and jumped in the warm ocean. We swam for quite some time while discussing the beautiful murals we'd just seen. As we swam we watched a line of cub scouts moving slowly up the beach removing every bit of trash. It was a great service they were providing the community since it was the most littered beach I've ever seen. It's unbelievable how much trash is pitched off ships now days.

As much as I enjoyed our quiet bungalow in the coconut groves I've come to really delight in packing everything in the panniers and easily hooking them onto the bike racks and then riding away, on to a new adventure. Every day of riding, a new and completely unknown adventure awaits us. I love the freedom of riding on whichever road we want to and to whichever town we desire. We can stop anywhere along the way at anytime. I've ridden on buses in Asia for years and often wanted to get out here or there but was not at all able to. This was pure freedom.

We did indeed return to the Mom and Pop restaurant with the pots of curries the next morning. The owner was just as excited to see us and our bikes as he was the day before. Throughout our trip we've occasionally told a local person what our route has been, listing cities they would know. We sense which people will be most interested and the owner of the little restaurant was definitely one of them. When we wheeled up fully loaded he stopped and watched everything we did as we dismounted. We ordered food and told him where we had been. As we've come further and further from our starting point people have had larger and larger amazed expressions on their faces. Most Thais can't imagine riding a bike farther than a few blocks , (although there is a growing number of bike racing type Thais in larger cities). This guy had a wonderful personality and was so interested in what we were doing on bikes. He was a lot of fun, so positive and happy - a great way to start the day for us and a great sendoff from Ban Krut.

As we turned onto one of the most beautiful beachside roads of all time I purchased three young coconuts and 16 fingerling bananas. I tied them onto the top of my panniers and we rode into yet another paradise. There were actually fancy resorts all along the road with immaculately cleaned and raked beach sand. Resorts were on one side of the road and the beach on the other. All the resorts seemed deserted. Maybe they fill up with Thais on the weekends which meant we were getting out of there just in the nick of time since it was Friday.

At one point we were on narrow cement roads that turned ninety degrees every block or two. The area was full of tall palm trees and grid-like streets. But to make things even more surreal we came upon lines of boy scouts and girl scouts marching on the streets all carrying long white poles. I looked around for the film crew because I was certain we were in a Wes Anderson film. Ninety degree turn after ninety degree turn, line after line of scouts saluting us, tall palm trees everywhere - the whole thing was just weird.

And then, one more turn and we were suddenly downtown Bang Saphan Yai which was a fairly large bustling downtown. We took advantage of an expat sort of German bakery restaurant for some coffee and snacks, a rare treat. Chicken puff pastries and fancy lattés! Shortly afterwards, on our way out of town, I braked for trays of Thai food even though I was already stuffed. But I've learned a couple of things on this bike trip and one was to eat whenever seeing 'tray food'. I was losing too much weight and I could afford to eat whenever and whatever I wanted.

We went on riding beautiful back roads to Bang Boet, a very small beach community of only about four or five overpriced resorts. Fortunately the owner of one of them told us to just pitch our tent in front of her place. She said, "Why not?" I couldn't argue. She even let us use one of her guest's room's bathroom since they had taken the ferry to an island for a few days. She , Boonyarat Limsuwan, was super nice to us, someone we will never forget. She seemed to understand that a lot of people traveling by bicycle have more adventurer in them than money. We very much appreciated her awareness, kindness and generosity. We felt safe on her cement seawall right next to the crashing ocean all night.

Before we went to bed we explored the beach area a little bit and found a couple of old women making green papaya salad (som tam) in a shack. It looked rather good so we ordered some along with two small baskets of sticky rice. They motioned for us to sit down by the beach in a thatched hut. They brought the food over to us but only had one serving of sticky rice saying they had just run out. We assured them it was fine but the look on their faces told us that it wasn't fine with them. For Thais to not have more rice than that was like a sin. Soon another helping of sticky rice in its own little basket appeared on our table. I'm certain that one of the women went home and took some of her own personal rice from her family's dinner table. They had a look about them that suggested they had never done that before. I understood a few words. They were saying that everything would be fine, that it was no big deal and everyone would have enough. In their minds we, the tourists, were most important. Again, such nice people. Everywhere we go we seem to be meeting the finest people on earth. These two women literally took food off of their table for us!

The som tam was some of the tastiest I've ever eaten. It included small, salty, whole dried fish. They mentioned something about the little fish which told me they were kind of a special addition they were proud of, maybe their som tam signature. The women were great chefs in my opinion and we enjoyed every bite.

The thatched hut on the beach, the two women watching our reactions as we ate their masterful cooking, the salty air, deserted beach, swaying palms, exhilaration of getting ourselves to this place under our own power, the great experiences of the day, all made that ugly run-in with the taxi-driver-who-honked fade into the darkness beyond the fishing boat lights, past the barely visible islands and even farther out than that - over the horizon. He and his monk passenger didn't matter to me anymore whereas the two generous women standing next to us did.

lovebruce

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