Wiang Kaen to Baan Phaen Din Thong - Part 1 - To Begin Again

December 23, 2022

Wiang Kaen to Baan Phaen Din Thong - Part 1

Up, Up to Hmongland

Since the temperatures have changed drastically we don't feel the need to get going at the crack of dawn now. We wandered over to the huge eating area at the Lanna Thai Resort & Spa to have our free coffee. It's pretty standard that hotels, resorts, etc. have various types of coffee mix - packaged tubes. Some of it is good, some OK and some sucks, (Nescafe's version). The places always have a water heater thing, packaged creamer (yuk) and little tubes of sugar. Sometimes there is Ovaltine too and if there is I like to mix it with the coffee. This place had some excellent espresso coffee mix that I hadn't seen before. They also had cookies and Euro Cakes! Euro Cakes are pretty much like eating nothing. They are packaged and when they are packaged they are injected with air so they are very puffy packages. But you eat one and then feel nothing, as if you hadn't eaten anything! It's the oddest sensation- Euro Nothings. Although, I take some of that back immediately because these Euro Cakes had pandan filling which I love. It's a Thai flavor that you will have to Google.

A nice place to sit with your coffee and view the grounds of the Thai Lanna Resort and Spa.

A whole lot of nothing. Except it is pandan flavor! Also, I love the little fridges all the guest houses have now days, especially if they are this shade of green.

Almost all the places we stay now offer "free coffee" which is coffee mix and they provide a hot water heater. There might be other goodies to go with the coffee and some offer endless supplies of drinking water as well.

We sat with our coffees alone in an enormous room with a ceiling completely filled with upside down umbrellas, having eaten our Euro Cakes and feeling nothing, we looked around at all the very nice furnishings and agreed that someone had spent a whole lot of money on the place. And there was no one there! The grounds were immaculate and quite beautiful. The whole place seemed to be ready for wedding receptions or huge engagement parties. I just hope these things happen once in a while or the owners are going to go out of business. The town was tiny and insignificant so I wonder how it could be a destination sort of place because, like a Euro Cake there really wasn't much to Wiang Kaen. After our coffee and cookies and with a little bit of pandan taste still lingering in our mouths we left around 8AM in the cool 62F (17C) air.

Ready to roll after a nice night in this bungalow.

Cute beetle that wanted to go for a ride on Andrea's handlebars.

The road was smooth and fairly flat. The air was perfect. The sun was a bit shrouded by fog or clouds at first and the enormous hills on either side of us kept our heads turning right and left. We were going through beautiful little Thai villages, one after another, where the houses were old wooden and well maintained. There were a lot of oranges for sale piled pyramid style on wooden tables all along the road. The piles were labeled as to price which indicated their quality. They ranged from 20 to 50 Baht per Kilo. (There are 35 Baht to the $).We didn't buy any initially, due to the weight, but I found one orange lying by the side of the road and grabbed it because free doesn't weigh anything.

I had to take a photo of this house because gables are very rare on Thai houses.

Then a really old style wooden field truck passed us blaring classic old Thai music. In the back were several people and one man was dancing, ready to party. Shortly after passing us they stopped and we passed them. Then they passed us again and stopped at a pickup truck full of beautifully dressed women wearing traditional pha sinhs which are like sarongs. When I first came to Thailand all women wore pha sinhs all the time and I have always thought they are the most beautiful clothing in the world. Nowadays few women wear them except for very special occasions. You have to go to Myanmar to see the majority of women still wearing them but the Thai patterns and silk are more beautiful, I think.

The field truck and pickup truck were stopped across from a fairly new 7-Eleven store which sat all alone with no other buildings next to it. At that point I braked hard because if all those women wearing beautiful pha sinhs were to cross the road and gather in front of 7-Eleven I WANTED THAT PHOTO! But they didn't. Only the guy who was ready to party danced over to 7-Eleven and he wasn't wearing a beautiful pha sinh.

They were killing time, waiting for the main characters in this event - two middle-aged guys dressed in gauzy white from shaved head to toe. They were obviously about to become monks and there is always a small lively celebration at such a decision. All the men's friends and family members attend the celebration first in a procession through town ending at the temple.

All males in Thailand are expected to enter the temple as apprentice monks sometime in their lives. It can be as little as a week and as long as a lifetime. I read the average is little more than a week but interestingly, has not changed from the old days. I would automatically think that with modern life and more pressure from jobs that the time spent in the temple as a novice monk would have shrunk to almost nothing. But it has always been a rather short time. Maybe that is because in the old days most men were farmers and being a farmer is a lifetime devotion in itself.

As we rode on I made room in the file in my brain labeled, The Best Photos I Never Took - a bunch of Thai women wearing beautiful pha sinhs milling around in front of a new 7-Eleven store.

Right? It just doesn't look the same without about 15 Thai women dressed in the most beautiful pha sinhs standing in front.

Then there started to be some gently rolling hills and the towns were becoming a thing of the past. We were in orange, lomyai and mango grove country. Avocados are also becoming a big deal in Thailand. There were never avocados in Thailand even a few years ago. When we came to one more really tiny town we searched for a noodle soup place because having not eaten we thought we should, especially if the towns were running out and replaced by hills.

These farmers were planting something but I don't know what. Some were poking holes in the soil with the bamboo poles and others were dropping seeds into the holes. They were not in rows.

I think we found the last place to eat for miles; a wonderful wife and husband team in a tiny restaurant. We thought she could only make soup but as we sat waiting for ours Andrea sounded out the menu (I'm still so impressed that she taught herself to read Thai) and it turned out that the woman could make all sorts of good dishes. I joked that I'd have pad prik keng as soon as I was finished with soup. Not many people make pad prik keng. It is a dish with any kind of meat desired, rice, some veggies and the thing that makes it....loads of strips of ginger. I love ginger, especially in Thailand because the ginger is super fresh, high quality and possibly a slightly different variety. But I only had the soup. It was astoundingly cheap @ 20 Baht per bowl which means that for just over a dollar we both ate!

We ate lunch (noodle soup) on the left just before the steep hill. We needed the sustenance to tackle the hill.

This woman made the nicest noodle soup and she had the best array of home made chili sauces to add to the soup if desired. After we ate I told her how delicious the chili sauce in the large container was. She laughed and said that was only for khao man gai which is steamed chicken on top of rice. She wasn't horrified or anything, just laughed the way Thais always do. She probably thought, 'crazy farang.'

Out the door of the restaurant was the main road and a really steep hill. It was the first of many steep hills that we had to push up. Not far after our soup we saw a place called the Mountain Top Cafe, perched high above the road but not too far away. It looked like it would have a great view. I asked Andrea if she wanted coffee and she rarely says no to such a question. But this one was work to get to. The cement driveway to what looked like a bright new, modern cafe was what we calculated as at least a 23% grade. We could have left our bikes at the bottom but there was no shade down there and we kind of wanted them in shade. I pushed mine up all the way with great effort and before I could get it situated a woman from the cafe went running down to help Andrea push her bike up. Laughing the whole way the woman was so happy and nice.

What we saw from the road and on the left the steep steep driveway to Mountain Top Cafe.

Here the name of the place is Mountain View Cafe. There must have been some big-time discussions about naming the place and the loser at least got this sign. Everywhere else it was written Mountain Top Cafe.

I walked into the cafe first and the three girls working there were all-a-twitter. This happens quite a lot because they are flustered at the thought of dealing with a foreigner and they suddenly wish they had not goofed off in English class. But their, all-a-twitter seemed a little bit different from just being flustered at me, a foreigner. I wondered if the place was BRAND NEW and I was maybe their first customer. That's what it felt like. The three of them were all-a-giggle too, silly girls. Well, one of them was more mature and it turned out that she actually spoke quite a bit of English. She said she had worked in Bangkok under a Canadian and had picked up some English.

The inside of the brand new Mountain Top Cafe. The woman on the left spoke some English and I kick myself for not taking a proper photo of her and her beautiful smile.

We ordered iced lattes and since we had come all the way up there and it seemed like they had just opened the place and there were three of them working and we were the only customers we thought we should buy one of their silly little cakes as well, just to support them. We never buy that stuff ordinarily. Then a man came in and he looked very much like the guy who put up all the money to build such a nice place. He strode in with an air of superiority and the girls all tried to look busy. He wandered around with his arms behind his back for a few minutes, smiled at us and went out onto the vast deck with a view.

Another view from The Mountain Top Cafe.

I noticed that the girls were all speaking the Hmong language to each other. We were given our drinks and our cake and were enjoying it all immensely when the woman who spoke English told us with a big smile that it was Hmong New Year! What?! Today? What are the chances of being in the right place at the right time? We had no idea nor did we know that we were entering Hmong territory. I knew that the Hmong always made their homes high in the mountains but I didn't know much about the area. Then the woman asked us if we wanted a special food the Hmong eat at New Year's. Of course we did! She went dancing off to get the surprise, delighted that we wanted to partake. When on a trip in a foreign land one should always say yes to questions.

She brought us a banana leaf package and inside was purple sticky rice that had been grilled. It had a crunchy crust on the outside, which was our favorite part so much that we fought over it. She also brought us a little bowl of sweetened condensed milk to dip the pieces of sticky rice into. It was delicious. Then the man brought us two oranges and smiled some more. Then lots of young Hmong kids arrived and were buying all sorts of fruffy drinks. Everyone was in celebration mode. Everyone was super happy and lots of the people were sporting their new clothes. The Hmong all get brand new clothes on their New Year's Day so there were a lot of bright colors flashing about. It was so great to see the Mountain Top Cafe getting so much business and to see everyone so happy to be there. It was definitely the newest building around and they sold fruffy things to drink and eat so there was magic in the place. We felt it and were suddenly surrounded by all the excited kids and some young adults.

Iced lattes with extra sweetened condensed milk and some cake with strawberry goo.

A lot of strawberries are grown in northern Thailand so this strawberry goop was rather delicious.

The goings on on the outside deck area of The Mountain Top Cafe.

The little Hmong kids were so very excited for New Year's.

The leftovers after we had consumed the treats that were given us.

Stairway to heaven at The Mountain Top Cafe.

But, we had to get going because the only guest house we could see on the map seemed like a long way off and we didn't know what was between us and that guest house. The Hmong woman who spoke English thanked us profusely for stopping. She told us they had been open one month but I have the feeling that everyone involved in the cafe had been waiting for this very day for the real opening. Hmong New Year!! Hmong New Year is on a different date every year so who would have known!

The woman told us that just a little way down the road we would see a school soccer field on the right and that there would be activities there in celebration of the New Year. She said we should maybe stop to see them. I loved the way the woman smiled all the time. Whenever she told us anything she had a beautiful smile and was so gracious to us. We wanted to see what was going on just down the road but first we had to slowly walk our bikes DOWN Mountain Top Cafe's incredibly steep driveway, almost as difficult as going up!

continued..........

Today's ride: 25 miles (40 km)
Total: 714 miles (1,149 km)

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Rachael AndersonHow wonderful! Definitely worth pushing your bikes up the steep hill! I can’t wait to read the next part!
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1 year ago

Emily SharpI've been enjoying your trip whenever I've had the chance to catch some entries. What a nice diversion from America for awhile! I've always been interested in touring Thailand and Laos - since they are easy to get to and airfares not extravagant from Oz. But I've heard so many horror stories of people coming back with dengue and other mysterious, unidentified viruses that knock them down for years, that I am a bit hesitant, particularly after 4.5 years of 'post-viral fatigue syndrome'. I've been warned all of that can relapse if I get another serious virus or overdo things, etc. I'm keen for that NOT to happen. So how do you manage the vector-borne disease side of things? How do you stay safe from the mozzies, ticks, etc? What's the practical side of that part of touring in southeast Asia? Nothing else really worries me but that! Thanks!
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1 year ago

Andrea BrownTo Emily SharpHi Emily, it’s great to hear from you. I’m sorry to hear about your prognosis, it definitely should factor into travel decisions. Both Bruce and I live with chronic health conditions and know what you mean.

Ticks are not an issue here as far as I know. Bruce has had dengue so we don’t tolerate mosquitoes. That being said we have both gotten a few bites on the trip.

Deet spray, one of those lightweight mosquito ‘racquets’ to clear the room, avoiding early evening garden locations, but mostly just traveling here in the winter/dry season all really minimize the mosquito hazard.
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1 year ago