Post 13- Chumbawumba (Note: This is not a Thai phrase)

My site is entirely surrounded by flat land. Bike ten minutes in any direction, and you will find yourself amidst rice fields and spreading plains with lanky palm trees awkwardly dotting the horizon. On our daily bike sojourns, I have seen some incredible vistas, mostly of the “rice field and flat plain” persuasion. But everyday as we biked through the dusk, I stared at low blue shadows of mountains in the distance and mister John said one weekend we would take a day bike trip through them. This past Saturday was that day.
I ate dinner with mister John and Feem on Friday night, and they instructed me to return at 5 am the next morning. As I generally have no cause to be up that early, I never experienced Wat Bot before dawn. Thai people wake up between 4 and 5 am, and the market was filled with more people than I usually see during the day. After a quick cup of coffee with mister John, Krue Dtuu, and A (the other bikers), we departed into the sunrise. We biked through the awakening villages in the gray morning, and then turned left on a road that runs through acres and acres of flat, agricultural land. After about 15 kilometers, we turned left onto a red dirt road and the mountains were directly in front of us. As the mountains loomed closer, our path became less like a path and more like an ambiguous, narrow strip of run-down earth. Krue Dtuu was allegedly our navigator, but somehow we kept dead-ending in other people’s farm land, faced with barb wire and cassava rather than the head of a mountain trail. As it rained the day before, puddles abounded and we were all covered in mud splatters, although clearly I was the muddiest. Riding around with so much color and life growing wildly around me, I felt thrilled to be on this journey, in this country, and actually enjoyed being lost because it meant more exploration. A few wrong turns and requests for help later, we found the trail head.
The mountain is covered in forest, and our path became a rocky obstacle course. Still we charged on ahead, with Krue Dtuu chatting and singing mostly to himself, and mister John being the silent and intensely focused leader, as usual. Finally the trail became too steep to bike, and we had dismount and walk our bikes up the hill. This was strenuous work, as it was a steep incline, the path was uneven, and the bikes were heavy. My arms got tired quickly, and my legs were irritated from the constant scratching of branches, plants, and bike pedals. We stopped often for breathers, mainly at the instance of Krue Dtuu, who is a retired teacher and when he feels tired, or “nuai”, simply sits down on the ground. We climbed and climbed, and my earlier exhilaration about being on this bike trip began to fade. I was exhausted, sweaty, muddy, itchy, and it was not even 8 am. Krue Dtuu kept yelling “hiu kao, hiu kao” (which means ‘I’m hungry’) and mister John, who was racing up ahead like an iron man, ignored him. Finally, poor Krue Dtuu, corralled me and A into having our breakfast, with or without mister John. We sat down on rocks by the side of the trail and Krue Dtuu pulled little ‘kao niow’ (sticky rice) packages out of his backpack. Kao Niow is great picnic food because you eat it with your hands, so no cutlery necessary. We happily ate while mister John waited 100 feet or so up ahead. The mosquitoes were only attacking me, and by the time we reached the “summit”, I was ready to be at our destination, a house on a lake.
Once reaching the flat top and relatively un-dramatic “summit”, we clambered back onto our bikes and set off down the other side. Again, the path was rocky and uneven, with potholes and large branches encroaching onto the road from every direction. My bike was so clotted with dirt that the breaks were not working as sharply as I would have liked and my butt hurt from bouncing around so much over the mountainous terrain. I almost fell off my bike once or twice, but managed to regain fairly good control. Until we got to the sandpit that is. Sand is difficult to bike in because the tires don’t have the same traction, and at one point, I did not notice a little sand cliff in my way, and my bike softly lost its balance and we fell over. It did not hurt in the slightest, as I fell into sand, and thankfully no-one saw, but I did break a pedal. I showed mister John and he said that I would have to finish the trip with only one pedal (there was still a metal stub to rest my foot on). We ventured onwards. Not too much later, we came to a creek that had a few old wooden planks spanning it. Mister John cruised easily across, but (of course) I swerved off the “bridge”, and thus fell once again, this time hard. I essentially crashed down on the wooden planks with my bike falling on top of me. I knew if mister John thought I was hurt, he would freak out, so I tried really hard to be as stoic as possible, smiling and saying I wasn’t hurt, it was ok, let’s keep going. But it did hurt. My knee was throbbing and the wind was knocked out of me. After that, it was difficult to bike quickly because I was in a fair amount of pain, but I hid it the best I could and soldiered on. At that point, we were off the mountain, and the rest of the ride was even, paved (or red dirt roads) and breathtakingly gorgeous. It also allowed me to say that I was biking slowly because I wanted to take in the view, rather than because my knee was killing me. There were so many vibrant colors bursting out of nature and into my sightline that I was glad to go a leisurely pace.
At 10:45 am, 5 hours after we left Wat Bot, we finally arrived at the house, owned by mister John’s friend. We took a picture in front of the house and then sat down to lunch. It was delicious, as the food is when mister John cooks, and then they sent me inside to take a shower and a nap. I fell asleep immediately on a chaise-lounge type thing in the house, with the windows wide open and the wind coming in off the lake. It was a beautiful house, although contained some of the largest bugs I have seen in Thailand to date. Around 3 pm, we all awoke from our naps, drank coffee, and ate some mangos. The trek home began at 5.
I was dreading the trip back, because not only was I exhausted, but my knee had swelled and still hurt, despite my attempts at icing it and putting on the Thai natural equivalent of icy hot. Luckily, all the stretching I had done helped and I was able to bike fine, unless it was up a hill. Hills I had to walk up. The morning ride totaled at 50 kilometers, most of which was mountain, and the ride back was expected to be roughly the same. We took it slowly, and made it back around 7:30 pm, bringing the grand total to 93 kilometers. I was too exhausted to eat, and immediately fell into bed. The next day, I was definitely sore and black and blue bruises began to appear. My legs were covered in scratches and bug bites and my muscles ached. Still, despite the exhaustion and the low points, it was a fantastic trip, and I cannot wait until July when we will repeat it with a group of 15 people and camp overnight. I promised to teach everyone how to make s’mores, if I can find marshmallows and graham crackers that is…care package anyone?