Things Are Heating Up

February 12, 2015

An ocean of salt, an ocean of sweat

Waranot Park to Bang Krut 30

Bang Krut to Bang Boet 40

Dear little friends,

The national forest campground had some familiar enough features to think that probably some Thai Forestry officials had spent a bit of time in the US Forest Service. There were the signs routed out of wood and the letters painted yellow. There were signs tacked onto trees and the only recycling bins we had seen anywhere, not that anybody bothered to separate the bottles from the paper from the plastic from the banana peels because the recycling bins did not specify exactly what kind of recycling they did. Unlike the US there were a lot more people working at this campground than actually camping, people sweeping, or trimming some topiary, or sitting around watching foreign tourists put up and take down their tent. Instead of the Smokey Bear uniform they wear camouflage outfits with tree patterns on them, vaguely ominous and militaristic-looking. But maybe Smokey Bear uniforms look militaristic to foreigners in US parks, who knows?

In any case we enjoyed camping in a real Thai campground. We checked out the attractive little cottages for rent but they were pretty expensive, designed for families and groups.

The next day we beach-hopped on back roads as best we could to Bang Krut. There were a few stints on the very busy Highway 4, some dry desolate villages where dogs gave chase, but otherwise it was a fun, but hot day of riding.

Thailand's eastern coast, as far as we saw, was mostly quiet, with some fishing villages and a handful of tourist areas.

Bruce takes a long ride on a short pier.

Most of the fleet staff are Burmese men, the ones watching on the pier are typical stylin' young Burmese guys on their day off.

A new pier was built at this village, leaving the old one for the old fishermen.

We crossed paths with this train track many times, it carries many small trains a day.

We had met a young French couple out on Highway 4 who had a three-year-old in a trailer, who started their trip around the same time we did but had covered twice the distance in Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam. We left the highway as soon as we could but they took it almost all the way to Bang Krut. I admired them but also wondered a lot about that child, sitting for hours every day in his little trailer as huge trucks and buses roar by inches away. Long ago when my kids were small occasionally we took long car trips with them, but they were there with us in the car, talking and interacting, napping and playing with toys or with each other, singing or squabbling or pointing out cows. I wondered how much this little guy would possibly get out of an eight month trip around Southeast Asia. Next they were heading south to Malaysia and Singapore in the hottest months of the year.

Bang Krut is big with foreign tourists, and we had been riding along deserted beaches and through fishing villages so it was a little bit much for us, all these farang in their expensive bungalows and resorts loafing on the sand. There is an impressive temple on the north end of the beach with a large Buddha, of course. We climbed the hill and danced across the hot-coal-temperatures of the marble entry and looked about. It's a new temple and there was a lot of money spent there, some on cool things and some on tackiness, like western-style stained glass that felt very out of place. But the painted wall murals were superb and lively, illustrating many facets of traditional Thai life and Buddhist practice.

Our guest house had a right lovely pond, with fish and water lilies.

There is a lively looking campground in Bang Krut, with all kinds of interesting decor.

Including a train pulling some very wise maxims.

This train could pull into any of our stations, right?

The big guy at Wat Tang Sai in Bang Krut.

Tourists at Wat Tang Sai doing what tourists do best.

The beautiful new temple paintings at Wat Tang Sai depict traditional Thai customs and life, such as this puppet show.

We always like to see a kid with a book.

Also at Wat Tang Sai, a traditional Thai Still Life of Randomness.

On one side of the street in Bang Krut, a 7-11.

And on the other, a Tesco Lotus. Multiply this by every mid-sized town in Thailand, add 4000 more for Bangkok and that's a lot of potato chips, Chang beer, and ice machines.

We met a couple of Americans (believe me, this is a rare thing) who turned us onto the small coconuts they grow in the area. I've never thought much of coconut juice but these were amazing, and we would break the emptied coconut on a sidewalk edge or rock and peel off the thin white inner meat and chomp it down. In the following hot days those coconuts would revive us from near-dehydration.

After two nights in Bang Krut we headed south to parts unknown. Both of our mapping apps are not that great at naming towns and villages, even those that get a lot of tourists. We could guess that perhaps that little clutch of houses was a particular place, but mostly we relied on road signs to head us in the right direction. Fortunately, as I said, we did not have a specific destination in mind, which in the right circumstances, is an airily freeing kind of experience.

Ho hum, just another seaside coconut road.

We are glad to carry on the proud SE Asian cycle tourist tradition of posting a photo of this baffling mural south of Bang Krut.

Hello, iPad Guided Bicycle System. Did I guess right about this turn? Why, yes, I did.

Following the ocean is like following the Mekong, sometimes you get a great frontage road, other times you go inland and wind around waterways and unbridged streams. There were a lot of lovely low traffic roads and we were sometimes on neighborhood right-angled roads that bordered property lines. It was really fun to be on smooth, flat, concrete roadways in coconut groves. Some kind of Girl/Boy Scout holiday was going on, we saw dozens of kids in uniform marching around (hiking?) with very long sticks. At Bang Krut Boy and Girl Scouts had been cleaning up the beach, which really needed it. It was funny to see them in their full uniforms, though, the girls in green dresses and hats and the boys in tan shirts and shorts. I hadn't seen Scout uniforms in many years in the states, but they cheered when I gave them the Scout hand signal greeting. I wasn't actually a Scout myself, I barely made it as a Brownie, the steep demands for accomplishment badges would have bankrupted my precious after-school reading time.

Scouts earning their beach cleanup merit badges in Bang Krut.

Bang Saphon Yai was a little confusing, there was a several mile stretch of small resorts along the beach road and also a surprisingly bustling town a couple of miles inland. We took advantage of it by stopping for iced coffee and some farang treats of curry samosas and other savory pastries. Who are all these foreigners in these obscure Thai towns, anyway? And why do they all look so morose? Oh. Maybe because it is hot.

It is at present no exaggeration to describe the weather as "eff-ing hot". When I was a child I would watch my industrious father work on all kinds of projects in all kinds of weather and marvel at his propensity for working up an honest sweat. Drops rolled out of his thinning hair and down his forehead leaving big splashes on the floor as he sawed or shoveled or stirred or mowed. It may seem like a dubious honor, to blame these salty streams running down my face and into my eyes and the corners of my mouth on my dad, but to me it is a connection to somebody that I miss terribly. The late afternoon sun and humidity washed away my sunscreen and I would stop and mop with my bandanna and glop on enough more that I looked like Marcel Marceau.

"Thanks a lot, Dad," I think, but this is just a tiny sarcasm because I am really glad to be anything like him, even in this unladylike capacity.

Our research on Bang Boet (alternative spellings abound once again, some signs call it Bang Burd) made it seem like a sleepy, affordable beach town, but affordable it wasn't. After an initial foray a very kind guest house owner offered her beachfront concrete patio for our tent, and allowed us to use a bathroom. Bang Boet is quite beautiful but the wind was blowing so hard we didn't even consider swimming, we just hung out in the dining area and drank some much needed liquids and used her wifi as the curtains billowed and the owner prowled around telling us the wind made her anxious and allergic. She was a very nice person and her resort has wonderful beach frontage. She cooked up a feast for her paying guests that looked amazing, but we had already eaten som tam over "in town". Thank you Boonyarat, we are happy to vouch for the hospitality at Bang Boet Bay Beach Resort!

The wind died down in the night and didn't blow our tent out to sea as we worried might happen, but the surf crashed like the biggest truck/tuk tuk collision ever all night long and we didn't sleep so good. At first light we packed up and were outta there before the wind had brushed its teeth, hoping it would never notice we were gone.

Accommodation in Bang Boet kindly provided by Boonyarat, owner of the Bang Boet Bay Beach Resort.

After a very windy night in our tent, we are greeted by our old friend, the silver lining.

Today's ride: 70 miles (113 km)
Total: 1,574 miles (2,533 km)

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