The stars shine brighter

December 18, 2019

Dan Sai to Tha Li

Dear little friends,

It was good to take a rest day in Dan Sai. That hill we had to climb to get there almost took me out of commission, Bruce’s account doesn’t really say how much trouble I was having on that. I was too hot, it was too steep and long, and I was actually considering flagging down a truck. It was really bad.

And it’s not like I loved the downhill into Dan Sai that much either, it is too steep to ride safely without braking and too steep to ride continuously and not overheat your rims so we were stopping periodically. But downhill of course is always better than uphill, that’s just science. I’m proud I did it. I’ll avoid hills and days like that like the plague, brothers and sisters.

Time to plot the next route, and hopefully no more monster climbs. There were two roads straight north to the border with Laos and we just had to decide which one it would be, 2114 that goes directly out of Dan Sai, or go east on the highway a piece and catch a road with no number in the adjacent valley. Well, you would think the un-numbered road would be the more isolated and quiet but Google Street View didn’t really confirm that. I guess we’ll never know which one was the best road but I can tell you this, the road we took, 2114, was one of the best riding experiences we’ve ever had. And about time, right? We think so.

We left the SB Resort early (for us), by 7:30. It was 63 degrees out and sunny and the instant we left town we were happy. The road follows the Man River valley (Bruce would like us all to call it the LellManRiver but he’s not writing this) and at first we were in villages of wooden houses next to the road and folks and tired dogs warming up in the sun. Goodness, were we feeling a bit chilly? How novel!

After the initial villages started thinning out we seemed to keep passing various schools at the start of their school days, where the students stand out front and music plays and somebody talks at them and we pass by and guess at what they are being told. Be good, study hard, be patriotic, honor the king and your parents, keep your fingernails clean, be kind to each other and use good sportsmanship? Probably some or all of that. The day is beautiful and we’re glad we’re not in school but happy that these healthy well-fed kids in their clean uniforms are.

It didn’t take us long to realize that this was going to go down in the Brown/Lellman record books as an extraordinarily beautiful and enjoyable ride. It was just delightful. The sun was behind us, illuminating the scene vividly, the road was smooth and quiet, with just a few undulations and curves to make the scenes unfolding before us interesting. Rice in all stages of growth and harvest spread its colors like quilt blocks, temples glimmered near lush hillsides, people called hello from their homes and doorways, dogs didn’t chase or bark. Maybe we were dead and didn’t know it. We didn’t deserve this version of heaven except for that hill outside Dan Sai so yes, I reckon maybe we did.

Ho hum, another gorgeous scene with rice, mountains, and a temple.

There are some unmettled roads in Thailand but we just like to admire them from afar.

The 18 miles on 2114 flew by and we highly recommend it. We kept thinking of our pals, the Grumbys, who have never ridden in Asia but are Thai-curious. If we could have beamed them down onto the road with us we would have. And then we would lie and tell them that all Thai roads are like this one.

There was a police checkpoint with lots of cops and border folks milling around. They were checking the trucks full of people but only asked us our destination, Bruce wisely answered “NongKhai” and they waved us on. If we had said Kenthao they would have stopped us to tell us we can’t cross into Sayaburi province of Laos by bicycle. This is a departure from five years ago and is unfortunate, but we had no plans to do that anyway. There is some serious kleptocratic resource extraction going on in Sayaburi and they don’t need any nosy independent travelers reporting on the heaps of teak logs and brand new logging roads leading out of national parks where tigers and other rare and endangered species live.

Another police stop, not the one I mention above. Taking photos of cops at checkpoints is not recommended.

The crossroads has a village with a nice-looking school and an even nicer-looking coffee place that is named after the adorable toddler running around. Our coffee was outstanding and a friendly teacher stopped by and got to practice his English with us. Incidentally we are so close to Laos that we were hearing Lao being spoken and most folks in these parts speak and understand both.

Cafe Bolan is made by putting the finely ground Thai coffee in a bag and immersing it in the aluminum/steel can filled with hot water over a fire or burner.

The coffee shop was also a small store with a respectable amount of artisanal chid.

The Hueang river is a nice little stream separating Laos from Thailand for quite a ways and is quite beautiful. We stopped at a rest area near a series of rapids and had a little snack. The road is very quiet, minutes pass between vehicles. Of course several miles later we saw the Thais messing up the banks of the Hueang like they do on the Mekong, piling up rocks and making stupid tiled promenades that go nowhere. I would love to know the rationale behind this disgraceful engineering but nobody is volunteering information or opinions on that.

Yes, it’s the dry season, but this dry season is definitely drier than average.

The Heuang River from our rest stop. Bruce went down to take a look.

I stayed above to guard our snacks. On the lower right is some local artisanal chid consisting of homemade peanut brittle, perfect cycling fuel.

Bruce had observed several days earlier that the bamboo in the forest was looking like it had flowered but I probably was too tired and hot to pay attention to what he was talking about. Now I was neither tired nor hot and, yes, the hills are checkered with tan patches of dead bamboo. Bamboo species each have a lifespan and at the end of that lifespan they and all their species brothers wherever they may be flower and then croak. We know this firsthand, our black bamboo plants at home flowered about four years ago and we have the dead canes to prove it. To see entire hillsides covered with dead bamboo was disconcerting though, and it’s a tinder-dry disaster if somebody throws a lit ciggie somewhere they shouldn’t. It’s possible that climate change or drought is the culprit, Thailand has been oppressively dry very early this year. But the flowering cycle (which can be nearly 100 years) is known to all in this region. It is often associated with human famine cycles, and here’s why: bamboo is a grass and the seeds produced are grain-like, and eaten by rats and small rodents. The rats suddenly have an enormous food supply of bamboo seeds so they have huge litters that descend on rice stores once the bamboo seeds run out. The bamboo flowering is no joke here.

On the far hillside you can see tan patches of dead bamboo.

The temple grounds are getting a new addition, quite an unusual building.

Green onions grown up out of chicken range.

We passed the fancy Thai border area near the friendship bridge and proceeded to hunt down a guest house that we know other cycle tourists have stayed at but it seemed abandoned except for a dog. I called the number anyway and in my best Thai asked if they had a room and she excitedly answered, “Mii, mii!” There followed a torrent of Thai and I had to sheepishly revert to English so she handed the phone to her husband. Yes they had a room. They would be there in twenty minutes. We waited and they arrived, gave us a little bungalow by the river (which had a new promenade being built, la-dee-da) and then disappeared.

This promenade is nearly finished. The locals may be told that it will attract tourists to walk on it and they can enjoy their river more but there are a lot of promenades in out-of-the-way places that have already been overtaken by vines and plants and don’t connect to anything or anywhere. I hope this one is a positive addition to their village.

Now, we are not picky, obviously. We stay in all kinds of places. But this was a first. We were the only people in a cluster of neglected-looking bungalows and the owners live somewhere else. So now I feel kind of strange about it all. There is a wifi password on the wall. There is no wifi. I call the owners again, she chirps, oh no, there is no wifi, mai mii. I guess that makes sense, they don’t get enough customers to keep paying for wifi but in that case maybe taking down the prominent “Free WiFi” signs might be a plan.

This is the bungalow we got. I thought it was fine, I mean, good enough and it had a porch for the bikes to hang out on.

We’re learning a lesson here. There is some serious entropy going on in Thailand and it becomes more apparent every day.

The resort we should have stayed at, the one we stayed at five years ago, has done some big updates and has a spiff new restaurant so we biked there and had some pretty good food that took forever to arrive. We realized that they too had few customers so had to send somebody to the market to buy ingredients for our meals. It’s an ominous sign and we feel bad for these entrepreneurs that obviously have poured money and time into tourist facilities. We know this, that there are fewer foreign tourists from Europe, North America, and Australia. We think there are fewer Thai tourists due to the economy. We are not seeing rafts of Chinese tour buses out here in the sticks. So it’s going to be a rough time ahead for these little mom-and-pop resorts and that’s a drag for people like us because having them so plentiful and judiciously placed makes cycle touring in these parts really easy and convenient.

There were two beds in this bungalow, one hard as a rock and one with this strange springy mattress that Bruce rejected immediately. Once you crawled over the prominent metal edge of the mattress it was fairly comfortable. There were mosquitoes so Bruce spent some time with his mosquito racquet, an accessory that he never fails to tell me was the best item he brought on this trip. My vote still goes to my Click Stand for the thing that, if I lose it or it breaks, I’m going home.

It was a relatively long riding day for us even though it was easy and beautiful, so I fell asleep immediately but within an hour I heard something weird in my sleep which must have been loud because the first part of the night I sleep like the dead. Was somebody stealing our bikes out on the porch? We had locked them but regardless, there was nobody around and surely the locals, who seemed of a roughewn stripe, know that. Of course I woke Bruce up and made him check on the bikes but didn’t return to sleep for a long time. This guesthouse’s time is over, I think. We get to leave in the morning, I thought, in those deep night thoughts. And that’s just what we did.

Today's ride: 43 miles (69 km)
Total: 595 miles (958 km)

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Rachael AndersonI’m glad to hear you finally found a great bicycling road and cooler weather. You definitely earned it!
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4 years ago

Jen RahnIntriguing day for the Thai-curious! Especially after the nasty hills and heat and the annoying motorcycle kids. Stars shining brightly after something (wonderful??) achieved.

I wish the beaming technology was more advanced, because that would be a pretty handy way to visit you on the 2114-like roads of your tour. And to be able to see the LellMan River in person and to sample artisanal chid!

Also, very interesting about the bamboo bloom and the increase in the rat population and then the danger to the rice supply.
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4 years ago