Rat or Bat?

November 16, 2025

Lamphun to Mae Tha

Rat or a Bat?

We were pretty excited about our first real ride of the trip; the first ride in new territory anyway. I mean, I woke up at 4AM. Wide awake. But Andrea was sleeping so I didn't dare stir because I know she usually is awake in the middle of the night, wide awake, so I had to let her sleep as long as possible. It was too dark to be on the road anyway. We don't ride in the dark. Charlie don't surf and we don't ride in the dark.

About to head out from Lamphun on our first real day of riding into unknown territory.

One more look at the lanterns of Lamphun.

Lots of Thai towns have figures decorating their lamp posts. This is still in Lamphun.

We were headed to a point where we wouldn't be able to ride the small roads anymore because they would take off up too steeply into the mountains. The alternative, the big fast and dangerous freeway we totally rejected. Even if we wanted or had to take that route I would have gotten a massive headache from the noise of the cars and trucks whizzing by. Nope. We've done those roads before and now we avoid them at all costs. Plus, there was a pretty big hill involved on that big highway as well. But, there was another alternative.... we were going to be heading to a little railway station called Tha Chomphu Station where we would take the train over and through Khun Tan mountain to Lampang. At least we thought we could put the bikes on that train.

It didn't take long out of Lamphun before the traffic was at a minimum. We were back where we love to be; riding our beautiful, silent, belt-driven bikes on a small road in rural Thailand. It had been 21 months since we last rode such roads and we were loving listening to the familiar birds (who were definitely greeting us), hearing the tinkling of temple bells, smelling sweet smelling flowers, feeling the soft cooling breeze, hearing the muffled clang of metal spatula against well used blackened woks and perking up at the sharp aroma of flash fried garlic. The garlic here is quite a bit more aromatic and tasty than the garlic I use at home. Passing through tiny villages we always enjoy that wok sound. Sometimes chilies are thrown in with the garlic and then our nostrils really perk up. I'm pretty sure every single person who met my eyes smiled. Sometimes they were too surprised to smile at first and were trying to register who exactly they were looking at but my smile always produced an immediate smile from them. In a lot of countries it's hard to get men to smile but here they all smiled. Sweet people here in rural Thailand. Simple joys for us as we rode!

Temples everywhere. In this area of Thailand the gates are massive and bulky. It is a Haripunchai style. Haripunchai was an important ruler of the entire region hundreds of years ago.

The Thais are busy beavers always constructing something and especially for temples because it is a way for the poor to gain merit by working and not giving money they don't have.

This village specialized in making cement spirit houses. Fewer and fewer are made from wood anymore. I love the wood ones quite a bit more.

We were just sitting on a bench near a temple and then noticed that there was a gorgeous orchid growing in a tree.

Well out in the country we stopped for some sips of water without dismounting. I asked Andrea how she was doing and of course she was loving it as much as I was. Then she asked if that smashed thing on the road nearer to me was a rat or a bat. I hadn't noticed and I looked it over and said, "No. Banana!" It was quite the interchange. We laughed and were off again.

A very large smashed scorpion on the road! Sorry, I didn't take a photo of the black banana.

Then I found a half satang. They are tiny coins so it was amazing I saw it at all. However it might inform you of how fast I was going. We are pretty loaded at the beginning of our trips so we go slowly. Of course I'm not going to speak of how fit we are and that might also figure into our slowness quotient. But it allowed me to spot a half satang, which is worth a bit less than 2 cents, so, well worth going slowly I say.

A little further on I saw a perfectly good straw hat lying in the middle of the road. I needed that for sun protection when we are not on our bikes. And after that I found more money, a five baht coin (about 15 cents). I told Andrea that she was going to be wanting to take the lead but I know that she always finds actual bills in the tall grass by the side of the road. I'm more focused on darting snakes so my gaze is more on the ground directly in front of me.

Speaking of winning money, lottery fever has taken over Thailand in recent years. We see guys walking around with lottery boards hanging from straps around their necks. The boards are just like the cigarette girls of my childhood at baseball games only they are not selling cigarettes but lottery tickets all lined up on their boards each with combinations of numbers. They are everywhere in Thailand now, even in the small rural towns where we were riding. The lottery fever rises considerably on Sundays because I think the numbers are drawn on either Sunday or Monday evenings. We have seen the lottery sellers massing in front of banks, of all places, on Monday mornings! But here, In the middle of one of the tiniest towns which I can hardly call a town, there were cars pulled halfway off to the side of the road, people jumping out of them, leaving them running while they scrutinized the number combinations on the boards of the sellers. A traffic jam in the middle of nowhere because of the lottery fever. But, the middle of nowhere is where hope resides more than anywhere; joy for us to be in the middle of nowhere, hope for them to be out of nowhere.

The mountains were slowly moving closer to us as we rode, we could see what they were up to. I saw some haze in them than I had in recent days and thought maybe it was because they were closer now but then I thought, 'No, it can't be smoke already can it?'. It's only the 16th of November!' Then I saw someone lighting a bunch of brush on fire. I've always said that the rains stop like clockwork on November 15th. It's the 16th! Let the burning commence I guess! It will take quite a while before the smoke drives us south but it will eventually do so. It's so awful for everyone's health. I don't understand why the people don't seem to get it. Just quit burning everything in sight already! They don't even wait until things dry out. It's like everyone becomes a pyromaniac every fall. It's like fire fever takes over alongside lottery fever. Maybe one drives the other in some strange tandem dance.

We passed alongside grove after grove of longan fruit trees. Thais call them lom yai and the best ones are supposedly grown in this region. This tree is loaded with next spring's crop.

We were moving ever closer to our destination which was unknown to us! It was basically a dead end we were heading for, we knew that, but we had no idea where we were going to stay. We had seen one guest house on the map but had no idea if they were fully booked or were even in existence anymore. There were fewer and fewer buildings and it seemed even more rural than I had expected. The population was petering out with every mile. We thought we had better eat at the next restaurant we might find and the Thais nowadays have swallowed hook, line and sinker the concept of closing their businesses on weekends. Affluence I tell you. It's affluence that has made them feel as though they need two days off per week! It's a dramatic difference from just a few years ago. Good for them, bad for us. But we totally lucked out when we found a nice looking noodle soup place with a wonderful welcoming woman making the soup. It was in fact an astoundingly delicious huge bowl of soup and we kind of knew that would be dinner as well as lunch.

Several delicious things were in this soup. That half circle thing is possibly a lotus root. It was super delicious. I'm sorry I didn't get a photo of the chef.

I have this strange, not really morbid, fascination with Thai crematories. Their tall skinny chimneys are easily spotted from a distance even if they are in deep forest. The chimneys are tall to get the odor of burning bodies as high as possible for the breezes to carry away. The grounds are almost always deserted and peaceful places for us to stop and take a little rest. We do that at temples too, which we had done earlier in the day. Sometimes the temples are also deserted but sometimes there are monks who are quite nice, have nothing much to do, want to practice their English and come over to talk with us. That's fine but we are usually quite hot and just needing to chill and the perfect place to chill is a crematory. They are dead places. We actually had stopped briefly at another one earlier and there was a guy sitting in his pickup at that one. That was strange and we didn't stay. He probably thought it was strange that we pulled in too. But this second one we stopped at was vacant and I am always more interested in the rare crematory that has both the old style burning pit as well as the building with the tall chimney. You just don't see the pits anymore. The further you go out into the hinterlands though, there are pits. In fact a pit at a crematory is a gauge as to how far out into the middle of nowhere you are. I hope ya'll are taking notes about all the important stuff I'm telling you.

The first crematory with someone sitting in their truck.

A crematory. Mourners can sit off to the left.

This has both the old pit and the newer version.

While sitting at the crematory and waiting for me to explore and take photos, Andrea got bit by a red ant. Red ants are the worst. They are aggressive and stand up tall, always ready for action. They are to be avoided at all cost but Andrea was unaware that she sat down next to a bunch of them that were feeding on a plastic bag of old food someone had left on the ground. They were all over that bag and defending it from would be competition which they thought Andrea looked to be. We got out of there.

We couldn't really reduce our speed any further.

Sometimes the road was as small as a bike path.

Water for passersby, an old tradition to help travelers in a hot country.

Then, we came to the guest house we had marked on our Google maps. I was skeptical that we had actually arrived. It was not exactly apparent because all the signs were in Thai and none of them were in the guest house font! Yes, fonts are big in Thailand. I can't read Thai but there are fonts for coffee places that are unmistakable as well as guest houses and other things. Restaurants that serve Japanese food exclusively, that's a font! And there was nothing visible because the driveway was so long and the vegetation so thick. We checked in with Mr. Google and sure enough, we were right in front of where we wanted to be, Baan Rai Mae Ta Resort Hotel. I don't know what we would do without Google Maps.

We turned in and sure enough it was an old wooden guest house with old wooden, beautiful bungalows. The two women spoke no English but we understood that the bungalows were almost double the price of a room. We love those type bungalows but we didn't need to spend nearly twice as much for one. We didn't previously know they had rooms and we sure couldn't see any. One woman jumped on her bike and we followed up a driveway quite far away to a nice two story building with lots of rooms. They were exactly what we needed and the deal was done. I gave her cash ($12) and she didn't even want to see our passports as most hoteliers do.

The beautiful bungalows that were nearly twice the price of our room.

Our room was on the ground floor to the right. Perfect room to pull the bikes inside for the night.

In front of our guest house was this tree in full beautiful bloom. We had never seen such a tree and have no idea what it is.

Butterflies loved these flowers on this tree right in front of our room.

This was on the wall of our room. I really wanted to steal it but a photo will have to suffice. I love the wording.

It's amazing the great places you can find in rural Thailand, accommodationally speaking. Usually there is food within arm's distance anywhere in Thailand but way out where we were there was nothing. There might have been if it were not a Sunday. But we were fine. Just after we got all of our stuff inside our room we noticed another couple of bike tourists arrive and move into a room two doors down. We never got a chance to talk with them but they looked like the type of people who would take that scary, dangerous, fast, noisy, awful, gross, big freeway. I say that because we saw them take off, presumably to seek dinner somewhere, and they were riding FAST. I think they were not our type and of course we would have had fun talking with them no matter but they probably wouldn't have cared for the way we do things. I mean, would they ponder a black smudge on the pavement and ask, 'bat? rat? and come to the conclusion it was a banana? I just bet not. For one thing they would be going too fast to consider it and they probably drink water while riding which we don't. And that's just fine with us. There is always room for every type of cyclist.

lovebruce

Today's ride: 29 miles (47 km)
Total: 135 miles (217 km)

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