Christmas Day

December 25, 2025

Kamphaeng Phet to Tha Mak Huea, Thailand

The reception area of Mai Yai Resort on Christmas Eve, the night before we left.

Christmas Day

At 7AM we were two of the first people in to eat the totally Thai buffet breakfast at Mai Yai Resort. It was our fourth breakfast there after our three day Christmas Break. And, it was our Christmas Breakfast. It's not the most outstanding buffet breakfast we have ever had in Thailand but it's totally Thai food, which we love, and since we ARE in Thailand it should be a totally Thai buffet. I've always been a stickler for keeping to a rule of eating only the foods of the country I am in. I have pretty much stuck to it for 50 years. It's not a hard rule to follow when in SE Asia. I don't impose this rule on anyone else.

But, back to this totally Thai buffet breakfast.... Each day the main course has been outstanding: Yellow curry with pork and Thai eggplant, pad krapow with chicken and green beans, green curry with chicken and pea eggplant and then today it was larb with chicken. Each one was outstanding. And there were other Thai dishes as well. The jok was consistently great each day. We were the only foreigners there for all four breakfasts. So strange how no tourists come to Kamphaeng Phet. I think it's just slightly too far off the main tourist route which would be to Sukhothai and on to Chiang Mai. We haven't seen a foreign tourist since Luang Prabang and I doubt we will see any until we get to Kanchanaburi 200 miles south of here.

When we were leaving that kitsch coffeehouse we were at four days ago the owners gave Andrea a little Christmas decoration for her hair. I wanted her to wear it for Christmas breakfast. She brought it along to breakfast but had secretly decided to give it to the first little girl she saw on Christmas Day. Halfway through our breakfast she suddenly disappeared while I was scooping up seconds or maybe it was thirds. I came back to our log table and she was gone. I looked all around the room filled with many large pieces of wood from the Big Tree but I didn't see her. She was outside giving the Christmas hair decoration to the mother of a little girl. When that family came in to eat, the festive hair piece was in the little girl's hair and she looked so cute. After they ate we asked if we could take a photo of her and her mother, of course, agreed.

We were on the road by 8:10 which isn't bad considering how much I ate and how much time that took. We are heading south now, south to eventually run into Kanchanaburi where we have never been. In fact the route we will be following will be nearly all new. We will go just west of where our trip titled, To Begin Again, three years ago, took us.

We started off the day by riding on road 1084 because we like following rivers. It was on the east side of the Ping River. The Ping is the river that flows through Chiang Mai and is the most major river in Thailand. It flows down the central valley and at Nakhon Sawan, not far from us, the Nan River flows into it, the river obviously gets much larger and that's where the Thais decided that the Chaoi Phraya begins. I guess it couldn't continue to be called either the Ping or Nan. The Chao Phraya is the river that flows through Bangkok and empties into the Gulf of Thailand.

But, from road 1084 we never saw the Ping River. Mostly we saw enormously large, noisy trucks hauling harvested sugar cane. Apparently the sugar cane harvest in these parts is in full swing. Instead of dodging clay clods on the shoulder in rice growing areas we were dodging sugar cane canes that had fallen from trucks. They were harder to dodge because some were pretty long but even if we couldn't dodge them and had to ride over them it was no big deal because most of them had already been crushed by tires. Therefore sugar cane canes were not as hazardous as clay clods. To hit a big clay clod, that basically had adhered itself to the pavement, the bike could be thrown headlong into traffic (worst case scenario of course). Sugar cane, no problem, at least on this road with its wide shoulder.

We hadn't even seen much sugar cane growing previously but on either side of the road today the fields were mostly sugar cane. The big trucks hauling it didn't seem to care much about cyclists. They were not nearly as courteous as almost all Thai drivers of other vehicles. I was starting to get a headache from their noise. The most positive things about the route - beautifully smooth and wide shoulder and a nice tailwind - were slipping away after 15 miles of riding on 1084.

The former king's wife, the queen, who died just before our trip started. Thais will be in a mourning period for an undetermined amount of time. There are pictures of the queen everywhere, all in black and white out of respect.

We took a break at a temple that had glass doors! Never seen that before. We FaceTimed with the grandkids at their Christmas Eve dinner. Then I had to photograph the crematory on the grounds. While I was doing that Andrea came up with an alternative route. If we rode another couple of miles and crossed a bridge over the Ping we'd be on a much smaller rural road and right next to the Ping River.

At the glass door temple there was also a crematory building.

This one had a ramp to wheel the body up to the furnace.

This temple also welcomed traveling monks (forest monks) with this statue near the front gate.

We did just that and it was a world of difference. For one thing we could see the river nearly all the time which was quite full for this time of year. We could hear and see birds. We saw lots of various colored bee eaters, some of our favorite birds. The koels greeted us the entire way as did the dogs. When in rural Thailand there are extreme numbers of dogs that people keep. Very few are tied or fenced. They were not super aggressive or vicious but we had to fend them off. It was more like we had surprised them while they were sleeping in the sun. They were so startled when awakened to see aliens on bikes with huge bags and strange smells. They were embarrassed. They were supposed to be protecting the homefront but they were snoozing and now the invaders were upon them. What to do? Try to save face by BARKING, that's what. And, of course, dogs are always more aggressive if there are numbers of them. But Thai dogs are usually quite slight and small and I was never very afraid of them.

The road along the west side of the Ping River was a delight. It was hot and it afforded a lot more shade since it was such a small road. Small roads are simply closer to vegetation which shades. There was little traffic on the west side road too. We were having a nice time and we only had another ten miles to go to the guest house we had picked out. We had actually been on that road three years earlier, we remembered. But it looked as though the Ping River had come close to flooding over the road (maybe it had) and had caused a lot of erosion. There were sections of new concrete road but there were also lots of new riprap sections along the banks of the river topped with a promenade and stainless steel railing. We see this all along Thailand's rivers now.

When a river causes big time erosion the Thais get busy with their steam shovels and scoop out tons of beautiful sand that has been deposited along the river banks for hundreds or thousands of years. Then they dump in tons of granite rock to replace the banks and then they make a promenade on top. River bank fixed! The Thais have done hundreds of miles of this all over the country. I think it helps, for now, but the Thai government isn't necessarily doing the riverbank work to help people. It's more likely a tangled web of government contracts and collusion with Siam Cement (one of the biggest corporations in the world which the royals mostly own). There are ulterior motives which I won't get into at this point. Climate change fits snugly into the government's nefarious ways, unexpectedly seemingly validating the government's claim that they are doing something to help the situation.

A lot of birds on a sandbar in the Ping River. Sorry about the quality. They were very far away.

A new promenade in the middle of nowhere.

A new promenade on the banks of the Ping River.

Part of the Ping River and a new promenade.

You may think all crematories are the same but oh how wrong you would be. First of all this one is pink! But the chimney is not snug up against the rest of the building which is the first time I've seen that.

I think the guy who lived across the road was really into the Thai flag. We were not particularly into the sudden east wind.

We loved this road along the west side of the Ping River.

Where the pavement ended briefly amidst sugar cane.

Then there was another bridge and a small bunch of businesses at the base of it. When we saw a woman with a small stand selling icy drinks we were ready for Thai iced tea (cha yen). I could hear that she was playing Jingle Bells but as we approached her stand she turned off the music. I wonder if she even knew it was Christmas Day. I kind of doubt it. The Thais have appropriated Christmas only in terms of liking all the sparkly decorations. They might like some of the music too but as far as really knowing what it is all about I think they couldn't really care less. The fact of the matter is that there was a 1% chance she was a Christian. 92.5% of the population are Buddhist which means that Thailand has the largest population of Buddhists in the world. I, actually, was happy she turned Jingle Bells off. Christmas is so out of context for me in Thailand that it doesn't enter my mind much. I mean, it was 88 degrees! I'm from Minnesota where below zero (F) is where Jingle Bells belongs.

With our cha yens we crossed that bridge back to the east side of the Ping River and immediately found a nice guest house with bungalows. The bungalows in Thailand are just getting nicer and nicer. This one had such a large area in the rear that there was lots of space to bring our bikes in for the night. They are perfectly fine with one cable lock on them anywhere near the bungalow outside but we always feel better to bring them inside if we can. I've always felt that with that high percentage of Buddhists in Thailand it has to have something to do with so little theft. I've never had anything stolen in Thailand.

We rode our bikes into the town and found some excellent food for dinner. We looked at all the produce stands but found no papayas. It seems we are in a papayaless region. Not even in Kamphaeng Phet, a larger city, did we find any. It's odd because we see them growing everywhere.

It felt good to be back on the road even if the first half was on a busier highway than we wanted. It will take a few days to ride to Kanchanaburi and it looks like what we will be riding through will be pretty sparsely populated. But we like that. It's more of a challenge to find food and places to stay. But in Thailand those have never been great big problems.

lovebruce

The flower on the biggest cannon ball tree I've ever seen. No cannon balls however. I read that 1000 flowers can open in a single day on a cannon ball tree.

Today's ride: 34 miles (55 km)
Total: 724 miles (1,165 km)

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Steve Miller/GrampiesHow lovely. I woke up to your post. Thank you, Dodie
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