Central Thailand – Page 6 – Simply cycling around

Ratchaburi, Pee Ta’s place, Adobe house project, first day

Here we are :-) Pita is showing us today how to build a wall with mud. These is not only mud of course. In that case, we don’t make bricks. To be able to build a thinner wall Pita made a bamboo frame that we are going to cover with a mixture of mud, water, straw and rice peel. Once the mixture (mixed by foot without the straw) has the right thickness, we shape by hand an handful of straw with that fresh mud. The shape looks like a long tube about 50cm long and 3 to 4cm wide. The next step is to apply the “mud pipes” on the bamboo frame by hooking them up on it and then press around to make the desired shape and flatness. This is harder to explain than to do actually :-)

Wat Doa Loi > Pee Ta’s place (14km)

Here we are, Pita’s place :-) We met 4 months ago in Singapore and now I’m visiting her :-) I expect to help on her mud house project. She does this by herself so it’s very long and not always possible to work alone. When I met Pita, I told her I would stay one week with her. Stephane will leave earlier but we will meet again in Bangkok. Today, I need a rest day. Kate, the other person I was cycling with from Singapore to Malacca gave Pita the magic recipe for me to eat every day until I get better: boiled rice and… boiled rice. That’s all?! That’s not going to be funny… Pita brought me to the local doctor too. What I’ve got is some energetic powder and some pills call “Norflox 400mg”. The funny thing is few days earlier, Sebastien talked about this medicine. He recommended us to buy some incase of food infection which can happen. Ah! I could not have choose a better time to get sick. Anyway, I will certainly feel better tomorrow and will start working on Pita’s Adobe house.

Wat Tanod Luang > Wat Doa Loi (76km)

After two days off, we are back on the road, good! Except I have a stomachache that doesn’t seem to disappear. The last few days has been very windy. This morning was fine but after 8am the headwind hit again. Eddie and Manon were right, we are now in Camargue haha. Well, it doesn’t look exactly like this from what I remember but it does not match the image I had of Thailand! There is hectares of salty water and hundreds of people working in the “fields”. Today we met two other cyclists, Ronan from France and another guy from England who is doing a 3 weeks trip with a folding bicycle. During we stopped to take some picture we saw 4 other cyclists on the road going the opposite way of us. Later, we were cycling on a secondary road and saw one more French guy cycling by himself. When he saw us, he just said “Salut”. He knew we were French but we did not even talk to him. That’s 7 people touring today!

Wat Tanod Luang, Second bloggy day off and temple visit

We feel good here and we don’t spend too much money. We meet the same people every day and try to communicate with body language. Even some monk came to us being interested on our camping gear. Over than that, not too much things are happening today. We just stick on our laptop. It’s very windy here. Lot’s of sand is flying around so I’ve found a good protection. A sarang :-) Very effective but very hot in here.

Wat Tanod Luang, visit, blog and unexpected show

We decided to stay one full day here. The place is good, the dogs are okay, we have electricity, water and free food offered by the community. The same woman we met yesterday came back this morning and guided us throught the temple. Unfortunately we did not understand a word of what she was saying about all we have seen. After that, she pointed again that same building where we ate yesterday night. Even a guy came along and told us “come come, eat”. “ok, ok, no problem”. After lunch, we spent the afternoon working on our blog. For dinner we walked outside the temple looking for a local restaurant. There was nothing than a tiny supermarket where we could buy noodles and others cookies. During we were cooking our dinner, we’ve noticed some activity nearby. The music was loud and it looked like they installed a kind of theatre. It’s the kind of theatre where they use shadowed characters to tell a story. I’ve never seen one in live before. Very interesting :-)

Wat Khao Lan Thom > Wat Tanod Luang (47km)

What happened today? This is going to be a difficult question because I did not take any picture a part this one, this morning. The road must have been a bit boring apparently. Like I said before, I’m very late on this blog and if I don’t take pictures, with everything else I’ve done until now, it makes very hard to remember everything. Anyway, I keep this post at least for the map below. Mainly that’s it :-) I keep going!

Wat Lang Khao Noi > Wat Khao Lan Thom (33km)

Yesterday, we stayed in the same area and worked on our blog. We’ve done nothing else special. We moved from the beach to a temple nearby the cafe where we have spent the day. Unfortunately this temple was full of dogs again and a simple movement made them bark. Today we met Sebastien again. He invited us to visit a mangrove which has been renovated and is now protected. Apparently, the King launched that project. Good on him.