Thailand: Day 5: Hot Sun Fun

I am woken by strange sounds. I hear roosters crowing. I rise in the dark, Lucy still asleep, don my Thai linen garb, and exit the bungalo. The patio is cold on my bare feet, and I put on my slippers, shivering slightly in the cool, but enjoying it and refusing to get more clothing. It is still dark, and lighting a cigarette I momentarily blind myself.

A haze is in the valley from all the fires that are buring. The Thai villagers believe that burning the forest at the end of the dry season provide nutrients to the soil for the rainy season. Not a problem when the tribes are sparse, but there are so many people now doing it, that for a month or so out of the year the sky blotted out by the haze of smoke, ruining what I am sure would be the most spectacular views.

There is a cacophany of roosters across the valley all chantning back and forth, and in the lulls in between I only hear large palm leaves rustling in the breeze. An extoic animal joins the chorus. The stars are visible, but only just as the light from the town coupled with the smoke in the low atmosphere makes the faint light of the stars hard to see. I attempt to capture some long exposure photography, but am interupted by light from the main house upstairs, Paulo's wife is awake and preparing coffee. I leave the porch to go upstairs to use the computer, so that I can chronicle my journey thus far. Off in the distance I hear a large bell toll.

I chat with Paulo about what to do today, and he gives me a game plan for a local scooter excursion to visit local shrines along the ridge, and a loop tour to a cave for some hiking. Lucy and I eat breakfast, and then change for the day. We head out on Paulos scooter, a 125 cc CVT, and I notice that it is very hard to steer. The front tire is a bit low, and we are low on fuel.

We ride into town and grab some water before heading up the mountain. A short ride up the hill and along the ridge takes us past many interesting sites, and finally to a very large golden statue. A very nice Thai women sells Lucy a trinket, and helps her get some incense and matches for an offering to the Buddah. We wander around taking pictures and having fun and then move on. We go back into town for gas and a tire filling and then head back up the mountain to visit the other sites along the road. A giant temple awaits us, looking more Hindu than Buddist. We stop and have some cokes and then enter the temple. A friendly young Thai woman approaches us and informs us that she is a guide and will answer questions we have about the temple. She ends up following us / leading us around the temple, informing us of various interesting facts about the artifacts they have in the temple. They have many, many Buddahs and various other sculptures there. I take many pictures.

When we leave there the heat is starting to get to us. We stop at another enormous golden Buddah only long enough for a couple pictures, and then down the rest of the trail back into Tha Ton. We stop at the same place we ate last night and have a bite of lunch. We chat with a few old ex-pats that are also there for lunch and then head back to the bungalo for a dip in the pool. Turns out that may not have been the best thing to do, given that we were exessively hot, as niether of us felt particularly good upon getting out. I think we may have had some mild heat exhaustion. We just hung out by the pool on our porch and drank some soda and water and chatted.

We decided to head back out in the afternoon and hopped back on the scooter and went looking for the scenic loop. We drove down the road through Tha Ton a little ways and then found the white building marking our right hand turn. Before we could turn though, we had to watch a large brigade of children in school uniforms cruize by on their bycicles. It was very interesting. We made our way slowly up the hills, taking our time and enjoying the view and the fun of it all. There was no one on this back road, so everyone we passed stared at us intently as foreigners are probably not too common there. We came across a small rural village, which we decided to take a quick drive through. It was all thatch homes and a dirt path down the middle. There was a single building at the entrance that was the school, with oil drums welded to various bits of metal for slides and jungle gyms. We passed a pack of children, who smiled and looked at us with amazement. We said hello in Thai, and immediately their faces lit up and their hands came together near their faces in typical Thai prayer greeting style in a reactionary manner as they said hello. We saw pigs and chickens running around and then headed back to the road.

We continued on down the road, enjoying ourselves thoroughly. The further down this road we got the more rural it got. Many people would smile and bob thier heads if I did so first, others would just stare. One many lit up and shouted "Hell-o". And we smiled and said hello in English and Thai back. He was clearly proud of himself, and relished the opportunity to practice his greeting on a white person. We were bouncing around right on the boarder with Burma the entire time, and at one point the road turn at a check point on the boarder, where two boarder guards were in a sand bag hut, one of whom, shirtless, jumped out from behind the sandbags and shouted, "Hell-o". Again we returned the favor, grinning. Some man on the top of the hill just past this point on what appeared to be the Burmese side shouted something at us in Thai and we simply said hello to him too and continued on. Everyone was very friendly.

The clothing and attitude of people changed a little after that and Lucy said that these people may be Burmese refugese. It is true that the Burmese we had seen up to this point typically wore more loud, colorful clothing. This seemed to fit. We found a road marked with a waterfall sign, but seeing that, burried this high in the mountains, the sun would be setting prematurely soon, so we decided to continue on, not knowing how far we were from town still. The drive turned out to be quite far. I did not pay attention to the odometer when we left, but I would say it was easily a 40 mile journey we took. We finally made it back to the main road and turned toward Tha Ton.

We went looking for a river front hotel listed in the guide for dinner. We crossed the river and turned down some small road marked with a river side hotel sign, but not the one we wanted. We just continued to bounce our way down this road, making a wrong turn here or there and eventually turning around and trying again. Eventually we found the hotel we were looking for. It looked very nice from the road, but we were much happier with where we were staying than this commercial resort. We wander around the grounds a bit first, looking at the river and the view of the temple from there, and then took a seat for dinner. We had roasted chicken, and Thai noodles and rice. We drank beer and Thai whiskey, which may be brandy, and laughed and had a great dinner as the sun set and night came up. The fires still burning on the sides of the hills lighting them red. A friendly cat came buy and bothered us for chicken, but all we gave him was attention, so he jumped up on the table, sticking his paw right in Lucy's beer, ruining it, and we sent him away.

We hopped back on the scooter and headed back to our hotel, just up the road. We stopped at the local store and got batteries and water first. We returned to the hotel and chatted with Paulo for a while about our plans for the rest of our vacation, where to go, and what to do for the next few days while we were still here. We decided that tomorrow we would go for a beautiful boat tour of the river. Paulo was already taking a French couple staying here, and said that neither he nor they would mind if we tagged along. Having our plans set, we checked airline prices for planes down south, Lucy sent some email, and we showered and went to bed.