Here One Minute - Gone the Next - Song of the Koel

December 19, 2025

Here One Minute - Gone the Next

Pichai to Si Samrong

Here One Minute - Gone the Next

Thousands of frogs were having quite a night of talking together as they swallowed tons of mosquitoes and other insects. All night they were partying right behind our bungalow. We loved hearing them but at 5AM they suddenly went silent. Five minutes later we heard the rumbling. It got louder and louder until we were certain a bulldozer was about to demolish our little bungalow. It was within a few feet of the back end of the bungalow when Andrea finally jumped up to look out the window. I was more lethargic at that hour and was not believing it was actually a bulldozer about to demolish our bungalow. I knew there were train tracks nearby and I was still thinking it must be a train. This is how Andrea will save my life. I will want to sleep some more and think that no, that huge low engine sound couldn't be a bulldozer three feet from our bungalow, but she will actually look out the window to find out.

She said, "I can't believe it. It's pitch dark but there's a farmer driving his tractor plowing a swamp right behind us. He has headlights." Me: "It's not a train?"

Plowing what looks like a swamp starting at 5AM.

Early morning plowing of a flooded field, as one does.

So, that's how the day started at 5AM. The farmer drove his very loud tractor back and forth as the sun rose. We did want to get an early start but not that way. It wasn't a swamp he was plowing but the last crop of rice, the tall stubble. He had flooded the paddy. He had not burned the tall rice stubble and a lot of it was still green so it did resemble a swamp and the frogs sure thought so too. I felt really bad for the frogs. They had been having such a wonderful party last night but then chaos, disaster, carnage. The white egrets will have a feast.

We did leave our bungalow early since we hadn't found a papaya along the road the day before. We didn't even make ourselves any coffee. We just packed up and left and were on the road at 7:10AM, the earliest yet. We can't really leave any earlier than 7 because the sun isn't up enough. It's light at 6:30 but we don't think it's all that safe and we don't want to bother putting on our lights.

The line of bungalows at our guest house at sunrise.

It was good getting such an early start because it was cool. I mean, cooler. Like 65 degrees. We rode a lot of great little back roads through a lot of rice paddies being plowed or planted. We were only going 27 miles so we really didn't need to eat until we got to the little town we were hoping to stay in or near. It was a good thing we didn't need to eat because there really weren't restaurants enroute. In one forested area a big teak leaf nearly took me out. Forget bulldozers taking down our bungalow while I was reluctant to get up, a teak leaf can cause just as much damage. I swerved and it just missed me. What if I swerved to miss a teak leaf and was hit by a vehicle! What a way to go. On my gravestone it might say, "This guy thought he had it made with a nice tailwind. But a leaf took him out. Granted, it was a teak leaf. We'll give him that."

The tallest chimney on a crematory I've ever seen.

Early morning temple roadside attraction.

We crossed the Nan River which seemed very full. We were in the town of Nan early in our trip as I'm sure you remember. Whenever we cross a river we have been following upstream earlier in our trips I always wonder if some of the water we saw then is now just swirling around here. OK, it's a stupid thought but when one is just riding along rice fields in various stages of rice and we are constantly dodging clay clods in the median and birds that were singing on the electric wires until just as we pass and then they stop and just stare down at us, I start thinking about a lot of things. I wonder what those birds are thinking when they stare at us. Is their first thought the same thought the Thais have? 'Hmm, Farang.' (Foreigners) Farang on bikes. Is that why they stop singing? They are a bit dumbfounded as they look down on the foreigners with all their panniers and funny looking bikes? These are just a few of the thoughts I have. So, you can imagine how an enormous brown teak leaf falling quickly, transported by what had been a really beneficial tailwind, was projected to smash me full on in the face and how that can suddenly end my normal thought processes. Cycling is serious business! There is a lot going on!

Even a structure like this must have a spirit house to make everything go well.

Lots of field machines on the roads with us.

Since we are now on the flat valley rice growing area the roads are very straight and long.

I suppose a spirit house in the rice fields makes things go better too.

The person who owns these most likely rents them for weddings and funerals or large festivals.

I don't know what this crop is but it sure is lush.

And speaking of a lot going on.... As we entered our destination town of Si Samrong there was a Friday Market happening in full swing. I love happening upon a Friday Market. To me a Friday Market has similar energy to a traveling carnival and I get as excited. There are food vendors everywhere, like lots of them lining streets all the way down. There are vendors set up selling lots and lots of clothes and there is a section where guys have hundreds of knives, axes, machetes, planting tools, you name it if it was handmade like a blacksmith might have, all spread on a blanket on the ground. There are things like seeds and odd plants. This one went well into town and it took over the grounds of a large temple as well. A Friday Market is just super interesting and is a throwback to another era. I remember them in the '70's in Thailand and they haven't really changed except some of those sold water buffalo in the nearby forest.

We had loaded bikes and had just arrived which meant we needed to find a guest house to dump our stuff before we could enter the market scene. But I spotted the first papayas I had seen in many days so I had Andrea hold my bike while I dashed across the road and bought not one but two papayas for less than a dollar total. That would be part of tomorrow's breakfast. It's the feeling of quickly catching a fish. You throw it in the bottom of the canoe and paddle on. It's just like that. We rode on but on the way to a possible guest house we came across a nice clean restaurant. It was a khao man gai restaurant meaning that all they sold was that tender, boiled chicken on a pile of rice. Maybe some cukes on the side. But the sauce full of ginger is the deal. You scoop that all over the chicken and rice and it sends you to heaven, (way better than a falling teak leaf might).

Chicken and rice and then you pour that sauce over it. Delicious. And a blood cube to boot! Also, a cup of broth that comes automatically with a lot of meals and is always good.

Since we now had two papayas we did need to stop at a 7-Eleven for a small box of soy milk to soak the muesli and papayas with, as in breakfast. There are 7-Elevens everywhere in Thailand and sure enough, on the way to our guest house we found one. It looked very new. They were even still painting lines in the parking lot. We parked our bikes as some workers on break snickered. It was a very uncharacteristic thing for Thais to do because it felt directed at us, the farang. Andrea stayed with the bikes and I went to the door of the store and to my surprise saw that it was VERY NEW. The shelving was in the store, but that was all! No wonder the workers were snickering. They knew a big surprise was about to befall us.

Back on our bikes we went to find a guest house but along the way stopped at a little store that did have soy milk. The bungalow we got was down the line of bungalows, maybe the third one down from the office area. The wifi was not working so we went to tell the two women working there. I'm sure they were sisters but they were not owners but probably the maids. There hadn't seemed to be an owner anywhere when we pulled in and secured a bungalow. The women were very nice but no English whatsoever. They were the type of Thais who just spoke Thai to you as if you could somehow instantly become a polyglot. But they were very nice too. They were concerned. They called the tech people to tell them the internet was not working.

It was so funny. In a flash a couple wearing the same company vests arrived, both on one motorbike - the tech team! The guy never left the motorbike and the woman came over and did something on my phone and suddenly the internet was working. They drove off as quickly as they had come. We just laughed.

But when we went back to our bungalow it still wasn't working back there. The two women got very concerned and I heard them repeatedly say the word for 'tonight'. They were worried that even if it started working in our bungalow it might not work later in the evening. They didn't want to deal with it so they offered to move us to a bungalow closer to the office area where it seemed to be working. We said sure. We had sort of unpacked and Andrea had even taken a shower but no problem. The two women quickly helped us move all of our open panniers and scattered items to the new bungalow. It all happened very quickly and when we were finally ensconced in our new bungalow we realized it was a major upgrade as well. It was a really beautiful and spotlessly clean bungalow. And the internet was working. Problem solved. Everyone was all smiles. So funny how things happen here. Those women were the best.

In our new upgrade bungalow where the internet worked.

Then we dashed back the mile or two to the Friday Market. I was all excited because I hadn't been to one yet this trip and some trips you never come across one at all. When we got to the area where it had been jam-packed with vendors and customers, like half the town, we couldn't believe our eyes. It was like it had never happened at all, like a figment of our imagination. There was no one. There were no vendors or their stuff. There was no litter. Nothing. We stopped our bikes and just could not believe it. We kept blinking our eyes. I know those markets are like traveling carnivals and they go as a huge group from town to town but I thought they would at least spend the night! It was crazy. There was not one bit of evidence that hundreds of people had been there two or three hours earlier. So much for looking at handmade knives!

We found a food truck on the way back to our guest house and the guy inside the truck made us each some great pad siew (wide noodles fried with gai lan and chicken) for a dollar apiece.

Almost every restaurant has free bottled water and ice.

I love that I never know what the day will bring. You can't make this stuff up except those birds on wires when they stop singing and stare down on us, they ARE thinking, 'Hmm, Farang.'

lovebruce

Today's ride: 27 miles (43 km)
Total: 606 miles (975 km)

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Comment on this entry	Comment	2

Jen RahnI'm thinking of you now as my polyglot friends, who, without speaking all of the necessary Thai words, were able to communicate clearly with your hosts, get the Internet service you needed, *and* a nice lodging upgrade.

Well done, Wise Travellers!
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1 month ago

Andrea BrownTo Jen RahnHa, we try. It can be very disconcerting to have a barrage of Thai sentences and stand there helplessly, but we try.
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1 month ago