Wat Suwan Thararam > Wat Don Sai (80km)

Good day today. We keep finding little roads away from the highway. The food is cheap and tasty except when we don’t get what we order… I thought I would be travelling in Thailand during the rainy season. Since then, this is the first time we get regular rain through the day. Fortunately, every time we made a break, the rain started :-) The luck is coming back!

Map.

We are following the railway and we might follow it for a while now. The part of Thailand where we are now is getting thinner every kilometres we do. Nice thick forest though.

We are back on a “main” road again but the traffic is still light.

The Chinese new year is coming.

This is a typical city road in Thailand. Lots of scooters, decorated trucks and big modern four wheels drive. The ecology is far, very far away…

Hop, the train line again :-)

Wow, nice little train station :-)

As I said previously, the weather today is grey with lots of showers. Rain is coming soon.

Looking through a fence, a nice and cute garden. Most of the house here have their own temple like the one on the right side.

And we keep going on small roads.

Spiky flowers.

Some other house are hidden behind big palm oil trees. They seem mysterious. Aaah you see, on the right hand side? This is the kind of trunk I attached my hammock to last night. I could not go around so I fixed it using only those old and short piece of branches. What a mistake…

Few! Only few minutes after we found this place where to eat, the rain started again.

We order a meal first but I was still hungry. I’ve asked for fried noodles which is a very common meal here. The phone translation must have been to straight because the woman prepared real fried noodle. It looks like chips now… An Australian cyclist I met when I was in Australia told me that “fat is the best friend of the cyclist”. This time, I cannot be wrong :-)

Few hours, after a big lunch, a nap and some internet surfing we are back on the road, well on a suspended bridge this time.

Very authentic Thailand here. I like it :-)

This is less authentic now ;-)

On the other side, a cow is having a nice peaceful time. We cannot see them now but there is always some kind of heron, those white birds that stay around cows or even on their back. They flew out when I approached.

We kept cycling for a little while again, looking for a nice temple where to camp tonight. First, we were looking for some food. We stopped close to a place we thought was a local restaurant. The guys there told us to keep going. One of the men told us to follow him until another person, a woman, arrived in our direction with her scooter. Everyone told her what we were looking for. She pointed her finger behind her and said: “you. follow”. Apparently we found a sort of guide :-). Few minutes later, we arrived here. This is actually the temple we were looking for. There is a kind a party tonight. Many people are here.

Very soon, they offered us to sit down and served us rice, food and drinks. Wow! Lucky us again :-)

So much food! I’m so full! The Thai guy on the right side joined us. Like the guys three days ago he is eating the same kind of leaves and naturally gave some to us… No please!

Hmmm, how is it? Very nice hey?

Like I said, that look like a normal leaf… Really hard to eat but we don’t want to disappointed them. Ok, be strong!

Later on, some more things happened. Some guy laid out on a table a kind of board game.

Then, on the other side, another guy prepared the same game. Something is going on here.

This looks very simple. The guy, the “manager” put three dice in the little plate, cover it with the bowl and shake once. People around the table bet which number is going to appear. Once everyone is fine, the guy lift the bowl and the money is distributed to the winners.

You don’t get what I mean? Here the result in video :-)

Later on, during I was observing the card game, some guys around a table called me. I got there first then they called Stephane too. Everything was fine. They offered us some rum mixed with water. One glass, two glass, three glass… The alcohol was diluted with a lot of water so it felt very light. The guys asked us some questions like where are you from, where are you going… All good. Few of them were quite drunk already and asked over and over the same question: “You. Sleep. Here?”. “Yes there”, pointing the emplacement someone recommended to us. A minute later… “You. sleep. here?”. “yes, still. We are going to sleep there.” We must be patient sometimes… A guy seated on my right hand side stated to be a bit too tactile. He put his hand on my leg, like if I was his girlfriend, almost. Heuuu, I don’t like this… He might be very friendly but this was going too far. I put myself in a different position to avoid him.

Then another guy, completely upside down, came to us and talked about something all in Thai. He kept coming back every 5 minutes. Every words he said was following by a serie of “Kap”. In Thailand, Women use “Kaaa” at the end of certain words when men use “Kraaap”. This drunk guy, obviously flying far away on another planet, thought we got everything he was saying. Even the group of guys we were seating with tryed to avoid him and sent him somewhere else haha.

Suddenly, the same guy who put his hand on my leg took Stephane’s hat. He asked me if he could keep it. I said: “I don’t know it’s not mine”. The man went to see Stephane who had left for a moment and was watching the card game again. He did not want to give it to him because he is using it everyday and bought it a month ago. The guy must be a bit upset because few minutes later, he asked us to pay for the alcohol they offered at the beginning. This is not turning out very well. First you offer, then you ask for money? That’s not really fare… We listen to him like we did not understand what he was asking for. One of the guy, the oldest, stopped them. Few!

Several times during this night, people asked us where we were going to stay tonight. We repeated again and again the same thing until they asked again… This must be what they are waiting for. They want us to sleep. As the atmosphere became a bit weird we took the opportunity and left the place to go to sleep 50 metres away. As soon as we got there and started to set up our campsite mister Kap came back… “Sawadi Kap, Kap, Kap. Fmkmsd fdsj Kap, Kaaap, fdsmjn Kap, Kaaap, Kaaaap, Kap.” What is he talking about?! The guy left and came back, left again and came back again with a soup. The spot where we decided to sleep was on a platform. There is few stairs to access to the top but even so drunk, mister Kap could get here and bother us.

Then he left again. Ok, let’s be super quiet now! Turn off the lights and normally he should forget us! We did so but few minutes later, as we were trying to sleep, mister Kap came back to watch Stephane over his mosquito net… What a streesful time to sleep like this with a drunk man looking over your tent! Personally, I always sleep with a mask so I did not noticed him.

Oh, I’ve forgot to mentioned something. This was a special party tonight. People were here for a burial…

What a night!