Every morning a new arrival

December 3, 2022

Dear little friends,

After 8 straight days of riding we landed in Lamphun and it’s time to catch our breaths and catch up on the journal. But I have to admit something: Bruce works on the journal every day and I do nothing on the journal every day.

But first, a poem:

The Guesthouse

This being human is a guest house.

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness,

some momentary awareness comes

as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they’re a crowd of sorrows,

who violently sweep your house

empty of its furniture,

still, treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out

for some new delight.

The dark thought, the shame, the malice,

meet them at the door laughing,

and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes,

because each has been sent

as a guide from beyond.

Rumi

The luminous butterfly pea flower, with the bluest blue in the world.

Every morning we wake at 5, get up and eat our muesli and papaya/bananas/mangoes with soymilk, maybe heat up some water for coffee mix, maybe not. Pack up our things into panniers, hit the road. Every morning when we step out of the air conditioning we are slammed with a wall of humidity suffocation, but every morning the temperature is oh so slightly less than it was the day before.

We ride our 20 or 30 miles to the guesthouse (“resort”) we scoped out a day or so ahead, peel into a shower, wash the sweat-sopped clothes because they are too wet to just put into a laundry bag for another day, try to find a place to dry them that won’t piss off the guesthouse owners or be terribly obvious to the more genteel clientele should there be any of those around, make water for the next day with the Sawyer Mini-filter, take a nap, hunt down some dinner. The nap is very important to me because as a habit I’m not a great night sleeper so a restorative siesta is extremely helpful.

Arriving at a delightfully flowery guesthouse right when the temperatures turn to sizzle is such a deep pleasure.

A note about water, and plastic. So far we have not bought a single bottle of drinking water, a big change from previous trips, relying on the two bottles supplied by guesthouses (sometimes pitifully small) and water I filter into our own bottles. Plastic pollution in Thailand is real, my friends, but there is some micro-progress being made on that front as major retailers like 7-Eleven and Lotus’s have stoped giving out plastic bags.

There is some evidence that I’m getting stronger. When we finally left the central plains and did a few mild climbs I moaned and groaned but powered through. I’m never going to love climbing, sorry. But I do love downhills and being on flats day after day is actually pretty tiresome.

There was a moment when we realized, “we’re in the north”. The air felt different, the mountains were around, there are subtle changes in plants, birds, crops, people, food. There’s another word for “twenty” in the northern dialect. And, there’s khao soi.

Another thing they only have in the north? These little kite-lantern things are everywhere.

Before I left I was gifted an envelope of cash labeled “Khao Soi Fund”. This was tongue-in-cheek but we had already decided to do some serious khao soi research in the north. In Tak, we skidded into our room, put dryish clothes on over sticky unshowered skin, and peeled off to find the local khao soi joint. This is not glam cuisine, khao soi places are humble lunch spots for the most part, this one closed at 2 which is why we scurried to find it. And there it was, lovely bowls of khao soi with all the proper accoutrements, the shallots, the pickled choi, the lime, the crispy noodles on top. It’s warmly spicy but below Andrea’s hiccup inducing ultra spicy intolerance level. I could eat it every day.

During our afternoon down times, Bruce dutifully notes things in his expense journal, documents our mileage, and often writes a daily post even if it doesn’t get posted that day. I lie around like an exhausted overheated person and read online. I’m super proud of Bruce but not terribly ashamed of my own sloth. I’ve been riding in conditions that are not pleasant for me and while I adore Thailand and it’s often easiest to bear the heat while moving at bicycle pace, it’s been wearing me the hell out.

The dry season starts today, December 3, 2022. From here on there are no more little rain clouds on our daily iPhone weather forecast. This is over two weeks late coming, mind you. The Thais are sick of the rain and it’s interfering with the rice harvest and the subsequent drying required. It rained last night and lightning flashed for ages and the power in our neighborhood was out for about an hour. This morning while at our coffee place on the moat, we lounged and watched the newly filled moat purge itself of water hyacinth and other plant and non-organic material. The rain runoff ginned up a current in the usually torpid moat and we entertained ourselves identifying bottles, flip-flops, coconuts, and the unknown as they floated on by. The coffee shop owner was singing along to Billy Joel and Neil Young covers so more bilge to note.

It wasn’t raining at the moment and the combines had just finished harvesting this field.

These vegan “Jai” restaurants are locally owned but bear the trademark Maggi adverts on the tables. These lovely plates were delicious and cost 20 baht (70 US cents) each.

The produce in the markets almost, ALMOST makes me miss cooking.

Better bells than bullets, I say. Each one has been purchased at the temple gift shop and then wishes/hopes are written on the little wind vanes.

For all intents and purposes, we are finished with the first part of our Thailand trip. We rode all the way from Ayutthaya (except for the short but dangerous hop over the mountain pass by truck) on all sorts of roadways, from leaf-sticky dirt river paths to six-lane divided highways. Tomorrow we’ll ride to Chiang Mai on the Great Kapok Road and hang there for a while as we figure out what’s next to come. Every day we’ve seen something new and/or baffling. I’ve talked down a thousand dogs that thought maybe they were supposed to tear us from limb to limb. There are a thousand flowers for Bill Shaneyfelt to identify for us so we’re going to have a flower show post coming up.

Pretty sure Bill identified this freakish bloom for us on our last trip. Cannonball flower? Something like that.

For now, in this moment, in this new guesthouse, I do the familiar thing. Sit on the bed, dipping into a bag of market peanuts, reading glasses perched on my nose, another WiFi password snagged, reading about the world and where our lunch khao soi is located and welcoming what comes next, whatever and wherever that will be.

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Rachael AndersonYou made it! Congratulations!
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2 years ago

Jen Rahn"This being human is a guest house."

What an idea .. to set out a lovely welcome mat and open the door to whichever visitors show up.

To sit down with them, smile, and say, "We all belong here."
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2 years ago