The First Koel

December 15, 2025

Nam Pat to Ban Bo Thong

Dear little friends,

Me: “We should get up.”

Bruce: “Can we take this bed with us?”

Our bed in this lovely resort was the most comfortable bed of the entire trip so far. We kept commenting on that comfy bed. It was a really nice room, lots of places to spread out our stuff, everything clean and new. But for such a new place, why was there only one outlet? I had to unplug the fridge to heat up water for coffee. This I did while Bruce prepared our papaya, a small one he spotted with his papaya eyes at the market.

I am more of a morning person than he is and I also knew we had sort of a longer day (for us) ahead. As we enter the foothills that will eventually lead into the huge central valley of Thailand, we are going to have more heat, and the unseasonable rainy spell is over.

As we age our riding days are getting shorter, and that’s not a problem at all to us, as long as we can find food and accommodation. We don’t need to impress anybody with our mileage, ain’t gonna happen.

So as we were packing up the bikes and he was trying to see where all the other guests were congregated near the front of the resort, there was speculation that they were serving coffee and jok up there. Since we had already eaten I was ready to git goin’. I regret that now because we could have used a few more calories.

Bruce stops a lot to take photos but he stopped once and gave me a look. I didn’t know what the deal was. A crab. The deal was a good sized black crab on the shoulder of the road. Was it alive? He didn’t know but was worried it was heading to the highway. Well, then, move it. No, YOU move it. Okay, move your bike so I can save the crab from crawling onto the highway.

I gave it a swift kick into the weeds and it disappeared immediately. Bruce was shocked. Did he think I was going to gently pick it up and carry it to safety? It’s a CRAB. I don’t know if it was a rice field crab native to the area or one that fell off of a seafood truck and I didn’t need to know that, just do what is needed and get outta here. Bruce was all set to video me pollyanna-ing the rescue but I didn’t have time for that.

The original route was pretty straightfoward but on closer examination we could see that there was a detour later on because of a washed out bridge. The detour wasn’t a big deal, it didn’t add a lot of km to our day, but it was onto a rural road with zero services. It was a gorgeous day, the scenery was lovely, but we were both running out of steam even though much of our day was a long sweet downhill.

Ten birds. They must have been watching the Thais with their down coats on and thought it must be really cold.. It's NOT cold!

A spirit house in the forest! No idea why. Maybe a house used to be there.

The teak leaves are really falling now. You hear each one when they hit the ground.

Newly planted tapioca sticks which will sprout leaves in a matter of days.

Tapioca root which is worth less than 20 cents a pound.

We've been noticing lots of fresh land slides in the hills from this year's monsoon season. We have never seen this before. Climate change for sure.

There was one lackluster village where evidence of flooding was painfully clear. There were mud marks up the sides of buildings, the road was janky around the edges, there was a house near the river (which had a complete wood and debris dam) that looked about to tumble in.

The Tron River, a rather small river, flooded three months ago and it must have been a massive flood.

The flood water obviously went over this bridge.

Sometimes very humble villages have over-the-top temple complexes, I’ll let the photos tell the story. That place had been flooded too, and not that long ago.

Sometimes there are head monks with crazy ideas and too much time and money on their hands.

We've seen monks carry out their crazy ideas before.

A cannon ball tree with its amazing flowers and cannon balls.

Cannon ball tree! And these cannon balls weigh 10-20 pounds each!

Sometimes temples have a statue like this, a forest monk with his umbrella. It means that if a forest monk is passing by he can see this statue and know that he is perfectly welcome to stay overnight in the temple. We actually don't know why he wouldn't be welcome in any temple but in these with the statues there is no question.

I had a noodle shop picked out where we could eat. “Just five more miles.” We stopped at a farmer’s rest to eat a Clif bar and pull out the extra water. When the five miles was up I stopped and there was nothing of the kind, no noodle shop, just fields and teak trees.

We stopped at this platform to rest. The teak boards are ancient and thick, probably from old growth trees. Bruce marveled at how beautiful teak weathers without rotting. There are about ten boards here and in the States Bruce said they would sell for a huge amount of money each. He wanted to take one but there was no way he could unless he dumped all the free coffee mix packets and that glass he stole in Laos among other things he's collected already.

These boards must have weighed a hundred pounds each.

Sorry Bill. Bruce said he was not about to try to turn it over. "Sometimes they are not dead."

It’s noteworthy that today was a day when Bruce was suffering more than I was, that is not the case ever unless he’s sick or something. But we realize that we aren’t getting enough food every day, and he is already thinner than I am. Gotta remedy that. Good thing we’re in Thailand.

Eventually we got to the town that is just 4 km from our intended guesthouse. We were hot, thirsty, and ravenous. The restaurant we stopped at was quiet but the two owners spoke English, whipped up some incredible food, and took good care of us. I kept going back to the water station and filling up with ice and water, we even filled our water bottles and that’s not something we usually do. Water is very often free in Thai restaurants, there will be a chest of ice and a drinking water dispenser and some sort of cups stacked nearby. I love that so much.

After we had pulled body and soul together again we were able to stumble out to My Home Guesthouse, where we stayed 6 years ago. We stay at lots and lots of completely unmemorable guesthouses and resorts but this one was special to us, we’d stayed there a few days, made friends with the owners and their daughter who runs the attached coffee shop, and their sweet kitty. We were eager to return.

On the way there we stopped and bought cha yens from a mobile stand, just to fortify ourselves for that last mile of a long day. It tasted like heaven in a plastic cup.

After we bought a couple of cha yens (Thai iced teas) from this woman she was worried about us crossing the busy highway so she came out to make sure we made it safely across. Thais are so nice!

Sometimes you kind of skid into home base and hope they will take you. And yes, they had a bungalow for us, we limped up onto the porch and dropped our panniers in the afternoon heat and, wait, there it was, the first one! For the first time this trip we heard the song of a koel. We’re in a different latitude, different elevation, different part of Thailand now. My Home, indeed.

Today's ride: 37 miles (60 km)
Total: 539 miles (867 km)

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Gregory GarceauI've been away for a few days, but I've caught up with the last seven pages of your journal. I resisted inundating you with dozens of comments along the way, thinking I'd remember everything I wanted to say and include it all in a single comment. Now that I'm here, all I can remember is that there was some fine writing and there were many great photos. I do remember the picture of the birds huddled all together on a wire and I remember how Scott already commented on that. I remember sympathizing with you riding those steep hills. Another thing I remember is the tender loving care that guy gave while loading your bikes onto the top of his van. Most of all, I remember the picture of a menu that featured a couple of unusual body parts of animals. Like my (and Boof's) fellow Minnesotan--the famous Chef Andrew Zimmern--I admire the "nose to tail" ethic of eating every part of an animal. I admire it, but, unlike Zimmern, I just can't eat hearts, intestines, livers, brains, tongues, testicles, etc. (Heck, I can't even handle lutefisk.) Native Americans used to do it. I think a lot of people in other parts of the world still practice it. Why can't I?
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1 month ago

Andrea BrownYou and me both, Gregory. Just yesterday I left the blood cube included in my chicken rice dish. So rude, but I can’t handle it. Lutefisk? Never. Bruce and his brother made a little film about a Lutheran lutefisk dinner. It’s a holiday special. https://youtu.be/xeMTCzKEPPM?si=O1VpdLA3y2duLaHs
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1 month ago

Bruce LellmanTo Gregory GarceauHi Gregory, We enjoy all of your comments whenever they arrive in our journal. I still have parts of your journals I haven't finished but I fully intend to and at that time I will comment and give you every 'like' I possibly can as I always have because I love your journals.

I stay away from organ meats too however at home I do eat the occasional chicken liver. The only time I have eaten lutefisk is at the lutefisk dinner in MN with my brother. That is rare though. There are worse things than eating lutefisk. It's kind of tasteless and it's more the weird gelatinous texture that is hard to handle. The smell is worse than the taste. But it's diluted by eating quantities of tasty lefse and drowned out by thick Minnesota accents.
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1 month ago

Gregory GarceauTo Andrea BrownAndrea, I've watched that Youtube classic a couple of times and enjoyed it immensely. Boof was the movie star but, as I recall, you provided the cinematography magic.
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1 month ago

Bruce LellmanTo Gregory GarceauOh, and I dutifully ate my blood cube. That's no big deal if you don't think about it.
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1 month ago