Canals, the River Kwai, City of Angels, Ancient capitals, and rice paddy fields forever

The past few weeks have been filled with fun adventures, a few failures and mishaps, amazing food (duh), heartwarming hospitality, and eye opening experiences.

After our stop in the Amphawa floating market area, we cycled inland towards Kanchanaburi, home of the infamous bridge over the River Kwai (pronounced like it rhymes with “eye”). We met up with a fellow cycle tourist who has settled in Thailand for the time being while waiting to continue cycle touring through India. We exchanged tips for India for tips in Thailand and had a really fun time getting to know him and a friend of his.

Too many Sangsum (local rum) and Coke for us, and too many mocktails for Steve! This is a huge sugar cane producing area, so we saw huge fields of it and truckloads full carrying them off for processing, growing along the many canals that fill the area.

Monn introduced us to kuay tieow gai (chicken noodle soup) made fresh every morning right by his house by a little old woman, and it was amazing! Those chicken meat balls are to die for.

The bridge over the River Kwai.

A Chinese cemetery, where there are perfectly laid-out family burial mounds with beautiful patterns in front.

We are not in tourist areas anymore! This restaurant we stopped at was really busy but not a bit of English was spoken or written. I tried my best but finally just ordered chicken fried rice. I’m getting better at deciphering menus since this, but it’s still a challenge.

I think probably 90% of the cables in Thailand are dark but everyone is afraid to tear them down…

We ended up staying a few nights in the backpacker area of Kanchanaburi and working on our bikes, relaxing, and meeting other travelers. Our cheapest room in Thailand yet, at $11 with a river view. Great place to spend some time, cockroaches included! We met a couple who are living in Myanmar and came to Thailand to renew their visa… It used to be the other way around; you’d go to Myanmar to renew your Thai visa, but with tourism picking up in Myanmar, it seems that some foreigners are calling Burma home now.

I had a small accident a few days earlier slipping and falling in the rain, and it was nice to give my road rash a chance to breath and heal, so we did a whole lot of nothing, in addition to sewing up my torn clothes and bags from the fall.

The bridge.

There are still bullet holes from the war.

Bangkok, city of Angels

After leaving Kanchanaburi, we had big ambitions of making it to Bangkok in one day, ambitions that were quickly ruined by a tedious day cycling on highways through endless sugar cane plantations, followed by following quaint but slow-going canals with intersections every few hundred meters and lots of dogs to dodge just sleeping in the street, mostly just ignoring us, but a few who wanted a bite of our juicy legs. Finally we gave up the ghost and found a cheap guest house that turned out to be near a university of some kind so was full of foreign students. Good news for us, as Steve needed to get a haircut, and I needed some antibiotics for my road rash, which had started to grow a bit funky. Steve found a Thai hipster barber shop that did a reasonable men’s cut. Generic antibiotics are over the counter in Thailand, so with the help of my doctor back home, I found an appropriate one and started taking a course. All the funky stuff went away within a couple of days and it’s healing nicely now.

Across the street from our hotel was a food court full of international students, which can mean only one thing, cheap tasty food! We had an amazing curry and some noodles for a few dollars. The next morning breakfast was a simple but incredible chicken fried rice, but the owner specializes in duck, so he threw in some duck soup for free, which was dark, rich, and flavorful. Yum, have I said how much I love Thailand yet??

The ride into Bangkok was just horrible. I absolutely do not recommend cycling into Bangkok. You should take a train or bus or something. But we hate those things, so we grumpily managed carrying our (fortunately light, bike packing) bikes over three pedestrian bridges to cross highways, braved nonstop (but slow) traffic, and joined a crew of locals for a taxi boat ride across the Chao Phraya river. The fare for locals was written as 3.5฿ each. I’ve never seen anything smaller than a 1 Baht coin so was hoping to get a 0.5฿ coin, but it was not to be because apparently foreigners with bikes get charged 10฿ each. Altogether it was an experience I’m glad I can talk about, but I wouldn’t repeat it.

Life in Bangkok is vibrant, chaotic, and wonderful. Where else in the world are there (numerous!!) street vendors selling nothing but various kinds of brooms?? And half the taxi cabs are pink!

We didn’t make a reservation for a room because the quantity of hotels and guesthouses in Bangkok is totally overwhelming. We messaged one, and they said we had to keep the bikes outside during the day. In a city of 8 million? No thanks. So we showed up with a few places in mind and our first choice, At Smile Guesthouse had an indifferent guy working at the front desk who didn’t seem thrilled to let our bikes in (shoes aren’t allowed, according to a big sign), but also didn’t appear to show any other kinds of emotions as we carried them up the stairs. And for $25 for a double with a private bath, with an attached bar, 1 block from Khao San Road in the middle of season, it was a really good choice.

We walked to the Golden Mount one day to ring the various bells for good luck and admire the city views.

We really wanted to eat at the Michelin star street food stall of renowned Jay Fai, but the waiting list is over 2 weeks. Next time we come through, we will reserve in advance. If you haven’t heard of her, YouTube it! I caught a picture of her with her signature goggles and wood-fired stove.

Instead, next door is “the best pad Thai in Bangkok” at Thipsamai. It is definitely the best I’ve ever had, for 90 Baht ($3) and a 45 minute wait. Highly recommended!

More bells at Golden Mount (sorry these aren’t in order, the Android app for WordPress really sucks).

Temple close up.

On the road to Bangkok we stopped at an Amazon Coffee; it’s like Thailand’s version of Starbucks. Every Amazon Coffee we’ve been to that has parking also has bike racks. How cool is that?? Starbucks, take note!

After having a good khao tom (rice soup) for breakfast one morning, we passed this shop selling nothing but steamed buns. If you’ve had dim sum before, you’ll recognize the pork buns with the pink dot. They also had different flavors, but when I saw them, I said, “we have to come back here for breakfast tomorrow.” And we did, twice!

Say what you will about Khao San Road, notorious backpacker party hotspot and center for counterfeit goods of all kinds. But it is a must-see place and definitely entertaining. It is not Thailand; it has grown into something totally unique. And that’s why we spent a few nights here with friends who happened to be in Bangkok when we were (we were going to miss each other by a few days but we made it happen!). So that’s how Angela came to taste a scorpion! Photo below (again, WordPress yadda yadda).

Cocktail bars are a huge thing in Thailand, it seems, and this bar had some amazing ones. This delicacy of passion fruit and chiles was delicious and quite provocative… What does it look like to you?

Dragon vs… flamingo?

The inside of that pork bun, with a little nugget of egg yolk. I could eat this every day!

These, on the other hand, are gross. It sounded horrible (sweet bean and salted egg, really?), but I was hoping for a “lost in translation” moment because they looked so good. But no, it tastes exactly like beans and (a bit spoiled, quite dry) egg. Blech.

She said it was pretty good! I dunno, I tried crickets last time I was in Thailand and did not care for the legs that got stuck in my teeth.

Here’s that “best pad Thai in Bangkok” served wrapped in an egg. You have to try it!

Ringing the bells!

So my SD card died and I bought a new one. I had some suspicion that it could be fake, but do people actually waste time counterfeiting a $20 product? Yup!! Yes they do. Ran a test on it… Actually capacity, 1GB. Actual speed, unusable. Don’t buy electronics in Thailand, lesson learned.

Our bikes nice and cozy in our Bangkok hotel.

Ancient Capitals

Leaving Bangkok, we’ve been making our way north though the ancient Thai capitals towards the border crossing with Myanmar. One we got out of Bangkok, the cycling has become amazing, lots of quiet country roads through fields of rice paddies, sugar cane, and other crops. Random aggressive dogs too, but so far only one or two have nipped at our heels; 95% ignore us, 4% bark, and the 1% bark and chase.

We decided to stop and let this herd cross since we weren’t in a hurry. The cattle herder yelled “thank you” to us for stopping. We had intended to climb up those mountains towards Khao Yai national park, but after 20km on an 8-lane busy highway, we called it quits.

We love the night markets where you can get the most amazing Thai food for the best prices. But I think we end up spending just as much as at a restaurant because our eyes are bigger than our stomachs. The little bags of curries are the best because they are premade for the Thai pallet, so you know you are getting a really authentic meal, something that’s impossible for a foreigner to order in a restaurant (unless you speak really good Thai!). Unfortunately it also means it’s made with the parts of the animals that foreigners don’t usually eat. My bag of pork stir fry had an amazing flavor and tremendous spice but the pork had bits of indigestible tough skin still attached to it. This stall in the picture was making all kinds of egg pancakes; the grumpy woman didn’t like farangs with cameras; I don’t blame her.

Super fresh seafood everywhere.

For Valentine’s Day, we found a resort in the foothills of the mountains with a Chinese style cottage. The little floor cushions are surprisingly comfortable!

Lopburi is one of the ancient Thai capitals, and we stayed at the backpacker favorite, Noom’s Guesthouse. It was a perfect choice, cheap and right in the middle of the old city, where there was a festival happening for King Narai.

Our Valentine’s Day cottage.

Ayutthaya temple ruins, one of the ancient Thai capitals.

King Narai festival in the ancient palace in Lopburi. Locals dress up in traditional outfits.

Narai palace, Lopburi.

Palace ruins with an event setup; they hold light shows and traditional performance art events here during the festival, I believe. All the info online and on posters is in Thai so it’s hard to find out what’s happening when. If you ask a local, they’re likely to say it’s something that farangs wouldn’t be interested in.

Lots of people in very traditional dress with photographers following them around.

So cool to see these ancient ruins superimposed on a busy modern Asian city in the midst of a festival.

More locals in traditional dress with guards.

They had music, speeches, and fireworks in this plaza all night long. (And big blow-up minions!!)

We learned that it’s Chinese New Year’s and the biggest celebration in Thailand is in Nakhon Sawan. By slowing down a couple of days, we will be there for the big parades! So we’ve been meandering around the area, finding small boutique hotels set amidst small banana farms, and cycling along the many canals. Sunday we will arrive in Nakhon Sawan and see the parade and enjoy the festivities (and food!).

And yes, the year here is 2561, not 2018! That’s talking some getting used to… Even Google search shows 2561 as the date, so weird!!