Damp Dankness

December 12, 2025 to December 13, 2025

Ban Khok to Fak Tha

Dear little friends,

We got up early and looked at the forecast. It was looking a little glum but there was no rain predicted so we packed up, pulled the bikes outside, got them loaded… and it started raining.

I don’t know where it came from, it sure wasn’t showing up on the radar on my weather apps. Neither of us have cell service yet so we could only predict the day when we were near WiFi. We were going to be riding blind, as it were. Fortunately there wasn’t any navigating needed, we’d be on 117 all day to Fak Tha, and there would be some climbing but more downhill than not, only 22 miles, easy peasy.

Neither one of us fancied staying in this odd guesthouse in an in-the-tules border-ish town. The rain slowed to a drizzle, much like we had been in the day before. So off we went and were glad we did. We passed the restaurant we had eaten at the night before, not really enthused about that so we kept going. This is Thailand! There’s food everywhere!

We already know that is not always true, we’ve been in the Thai outback before where people are too poor to eat from restaurants and dense forest means few villages. The forest was beautiful, by the way.

I didn’t take one photo that day. Not eating in the morning was a mistake. The weather was cloudy and cool, with occasional misting rain, but the rain wasn’t a bother, at first anyway.

The climbs we knew were coming were upon us and they were Thai-style hills, with ridiculous grades. There wasn’t a ton of traffic, but the shoulders could be narrow, and the downhills that were often slick with rain could be terrifying.

Sadly these former rice paddies have been transformed into corn fields. The growing of corn in Thailand has increased exponentially. It's fed to cows and the cows bring a good price in China. The problem is that they dry out the corn really quickly by spraying the entire plants with Round Up. After harvesting the corn they burn all those corn stalks.

We stopped a couple of times to shelter under trees but there simply weren’t any towns or buildings near the highway so mostly we just had to keep going. By the time we got to Fak Tha I was soaking wet. We pulled into a coffee place to warm up and get our bearings using their WiFi. I pulled my fleece jacket out of a pannier and traded it for my soggy shirt. We had a guesthouse dialed in just down the street, so we wheeled over to the restaurant immediately next to the coffee place to get some really good Thai food.

And it was really good Thai food from a clean kitchen.

The guesthouse we had chosen turned out to be yet another “boarding house”. This happens if a guesthouse doesn’t get enough business and just starts renting out the rooms by the month. The presence of hanging laundry and ten pairs of shoes outside of each door is a dead giveaway. But there was another one just up the lane and we scuttled in and got hot showers hung up the wet stuff to dry.

It was a wipeout day, not gonna lie. Our euphoria at being back in Thailand is real, but it was a hard one and we decided to stay another day and rest in Fak Tha before continuing on.

Right after going to bed it started pouring, just pounding on the roof. For some reason the air conditioner and the bathroom fan were doing absolutely nothing to dispel the damp dankness in our room. My clothes got dry but just barely after an entire day of hanging under the ac. So irritating. I have no idea how folks in SE Asia dry their clothes in the rainy season, nobody owns a dryer, I’ve only seen a few in big city laundromats.

Fak Tha has a lot of pleasant people, we were greeted by many and we had an awesome place to eat so we were doing fine. I was able to get my phone service restored and we spent a few hours at yet another coffee house all gussied up for Christmas. I mean, really decorated. It was pretty quiet in there, there was a garden and fishpond that would have been nice to hang out in but nothing was dry outside yet.

During the mid-morning hours here are the best time to FaceTime our grandkids, they’re usually in their post-bath jammies and winding down for bed. They got to see the Christmas stuff in the coffee house and tell us their latest adventures. We miss them a lot. Everybody is happy that we’re back in Thailand.

We ended the day at 7-Eleven to pick up potato chips to eat with that last heavy can of Beerlao Bruce bought at the Lao border. Both of us have been feeling a bit through the wringer, the difficulties with getting out of Laos had sort of done a number on us and we are feeling done with mountainous climbs no matter how pleasantly cool it’s been. My stomach is not at 100% which I blame on the hygiene in Laos, and I don’t have much appetite.

In a couple of days we will be at a sweet and friendly guesthouse we stayed at 6 years ago and we’re really going to stop and rest there and catch our breath. We’ll be out of the mountains soon, it’s going to be another big change in our trip as we head into Thailand’s big central valley. We still haven’t heard any koels yet, but when we do, we’ll know it’s a new chapter.

Today's ride: 22 miles (35 km)
Total: 474 miles (763 km)

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