A Giant Tree

December 29, 2025

Ban Huai Khot to Ban Rai

Dear little friends,

I know everybody wants to hear an update on my saddle sore. I still have it. I’m babying it and treating it and giving it space and sending it to therapy and taking the blame. My saddle sore is like having a 14-year-old. Before you know it it will be off to college.

This is what was on the ceiling of our guest house. Of course two of the three bulbs were burned out. It's rare we get a room with all the lights actually working.

Mornings have been lovely and cool and the scenery here is quite nice. The roads have much improved since the Terrible Day two days ago. We had a short day of riding through the countryside, lots of sugar cane, tapioca, the first pineapple field of the trip.

When the pineapples are forming they put these fronds over them to shade the fruit a little bit so that it doesn't get sunburned.

A crematory with the chimney in the middle (kind of rare) and a very fancy and intricate structure in front of the crematory building.

On these country roads live lots of dogs. Many of them can’t be bothered with us, many can. I used to give them positive feedback such as “You’re okay, good job guarding the homestead, honey.” Since I am almost always riding behind Bruce so I can keep track of him, the dogs see him first and start the chase but slink back in chagrin when suddenly another bicyclist is right on their tail yelling, “UH UH UH!”, like your mom when you tried to sneak into the cookie jar right before dinner.

I think sometimes I embarrass those dogs. They pretend they were just out for a nice little stroll. “I really was going over here to check out what those banana plants are doing, I didn’t really even see you there.”

So far, no dog bites or even anything one would call a dog attack.

Just another flower by the side of the road, this time growing on a small bridge.

A very large group of water buffalo. This photo is only about a third of the herd. Normally we don't see that many all together.

Thais are busy beavers always trying to tame nature, especially riverbanks.

Since we neglected to eat breakfast given that there seems to be a several province-wide shortage of mangoes or papayas when we got to Ban Rai we stopped to eat before heading to our guesthouse. We really only eat four or five different things in Thailand, things that contain vegetables, that they have to cook up on the spot, that are available all over Thailand and are cheap, that I can read the names of in Thai on the menus. We haven’t seen English on a menu since Luang Prabang.

While we were eating a kind of rough-looking guy came in and ate too, after a perfunctory look at our bikes out on the sidewalk. He didn’t look at us, he didn’t talk to us, we all just ate our food. Then he hopped back into his car and the restaurant owner came to our table to tell us that he had paid for our meal! That was completely unexpected!

It still seemed a little early to go to a guesthouse so we found a brand spankin’ new coffee shop that we could actually sit inside in the air conditioning and had a lovely conversation. The owners are newlyweds that speak English, their aunty and uncle we hanging out too and they would translate for them what we were talking about. It’s pretty fun when we get to do that. They had visited Atlanta and New York City last January and I think the NYC cold inspired the name of their coffee house, which is O° Celsius.

They gave us some merch tee-shirts when we left and then it was selfie time.

Coffeehouse owner in the middle and her husband. The other woman is an employee.

They said, “Small heart!”, which we fumbled around with but eventually got it.

Our guesthouse was a little overpriced, we thought. Even though it’s a Monday there are Thai tourists in this area and it actually filled up so we were kind of lucky to get it. Turns out they serve breakfast so we’ll call it a win. After showers and laundry and a bit of a lounge we took a ride to a local site with the intriguing name of The Giant Tree.

And sure enough, there was a giant tree and tons of Thai tourists. Big signs in Thai explained things about The Giant Tree and only one little two-word phrase was in English: Ficus Albipila. So that’s for you, Bill Shaneyfeldt. You’re off the hook.

It was interesting how most people spent a lot of time reading all about the Giant Tree. Thais want to know about all the interesting things in their country. For us, the only English words on anything were, "The Giant Tree."

It was hard to photograph the upper reaches of the Giant Tree so that they actually appeared to be really big. The upper branches had enormous circumferences.

Everybody loved The Giant Tree. Elders, babies, kids, parents. Tour groups with matching tee shirts. Bruce. I loved the tree too and gave it a hug on one of its supporting fin-like structures. I’m sure there’s a name for that but I don’t know what it is. Bruce took a million photos. I people-watched and admired them and their interaction with the tree.

The Giant Tree was surrounded by skinny betel palms.

The Giant Tree had its own spirit house.

Back at the same restaurant we had fried rice with the first squid of our trip. They had tanks of live prawns but I didn’t want to have them kill a prawn for me, even though that’s kind of ridiculous because I eat meat every day here and somewhere on the way to my plate it was unalived. You never see squid swimming around in a restaurant tank and that’s the way I like it. We paid for our own food this time.

Back at the guesthouse our next door neighbors seemed like a rowdy bunch. They had a bigger room with more beds and an unknown number of young men were occupying it and watching terrible Thai movies. Lots of screaming and mayhem. I don’t watch Thai movies, they all seem to be horror movies. Then something else came on, something with a soothing soundtrack that I fell asleep to. I woke up in the night to silence, and that’s the way I like that, too.

Today's ride: 27 miles (43 km)
Total: 846 miles (1,362 km)

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