Just when the routine sets in, we then create more new experiences than we can keep up with, at least in the blog. There’s Chinese New Year, another week of Fahsong pre-dawn rides, repairing the Cannondale mountain bike I brought over, another Sunday adventure ride, wind-mill chime contest, and just yesterday, touring more caves – one with so shallow a roof line we worried our glasses frames would hang up.

It’s a good thing we’re taking photos of most things we see and experience because it’s getting harder to remember all the things we’ve done between blog entries. Not all the photos are worthy of showing but they are still good for jogging the memory even if they are blurry or have that ubiquitous finger in the corner. What’s even funnier is when we give the iPhone5S to a Thai to take our photo and they hold down the “shutter” button.  The new feature of iPhone5S is that it will take repetitive shots as long as the key is down.  Sometimes we get 48 frames of ourselves, like time lapse or a silent movie. However that feature does allow us to find the frame in which everyone is composed and smiling when it happens.

This was our third Chinese New Year in Trang and each one has been different. They even adjust the stage venue and midway set-up each year. However the lights in the main “square” are always over-the-top in color and quantity. We especially like seeing the pair of LED  “jak ka rans” (bicycles) featured in the center of the displays. We didn’t get to see much of the featured entertainment because we didn’t stay out past 8PM

thus only saw the warm-up acts on stage; Thai high school students singing in Chinese, local pop singer lip syncing to her video release, and junior varsity dancers. My 4:30 AM wake-up call for riding requires early bedtimes. It is fun to stroll (or should we say graze) the midway trying all the food stalls we dare. Our current favorite is the chicken on a stick braised in long thin Hibachis, with each vendor plying their own family BBQ sauce. A-Roi. Let’s just exaggerate and say there are maybe 250 stalls along the two-sided midway and 95% of these are selling food, drinks, snacks, muslim crepes, sushi, boots of beer, curries, tortes, hard-boiled birds’ eggs, fish, meats, ice cream and popsicles, soups and on and on and on. And this goes on for three nights.