Another week of Fahsong pre-dawn rides is still in the routine even though it curtails evening activities except for Saturday and Sunday nights. They don’t ride on Monday and I choose to ride with the “touring” division of the Trang Cycling Club on Sundays, which doesn’t leave until 8 AM.  Good thing because that is an all-day ride and leaving at 5 AM would make it 12 hours of touring and that’s a lot of food to take in.

Speaking of food, the clutter above left is the detritus after one of our Dim Sum breakfasts where at a minimum eight riders crowd a circular table and stuff down Thai treats.  My new nick-name is Kii Tham, which rhymes with Tom. I’ve learned that I can get any quantity of hard boiled eggs each morning and fill up on those before starting on many of the palm-oil-fried delicacies. Not that it’s all unhealthy, they go thru two or three plates of lettuce leaves and sliced cucumbers before the Thai donuts come out of the Wok. Fahsong (pre-dawn in Thai I’m told) bicycle group is a collection of Trang men who take

this early morning ride 5 days a week and they’ve obviously been doing it for many years. I’d label them as Durango’s B or B+ riders who take the hills on the Trang ring road seriously, providing an endless challenge for the Thai testosterone tigers. They don’t rotate the draft line like we might in the States, they just wait until the lead “bonks” and then zip past with not a care for him catching the tail of the peloton. I’ve thought about taking photos but in the pitch dark it would be stupid and at 20+ MPH it would be foolish. The sprint is only about 17 km (11 miles) but enough to leave everyone pumped and hungry for Dim Sum. It takes me 10km to get to the start and the ride home is another 28, so I’m getting in about 55 km (33 miles) by 7:30.

The Trang Cycling Club is a very diverse group, in that some members never seem to ride with others. However they all know each other and the network helped me get my Cannondale mountain bike repaired.
There are probably 5 or 6 bike shops in town, only one of which specializes in high-end bikes exclusively and another that carries a full range.  The other four deal mostly in kids and cruising style bikes that would compete with the Thai big-box stores called Tesco or BigC.  Many of the Club members are mechanics who handle only scooters and motorcycles, but one member does their high-end bicycle tuning and repair.  Even though it is basically “shade tree” looking, Mr. Piak is great at tuning and troubleshooting problems like I brought: a skipping chain when hitting the pedals with full torque.  We tested, switched-out, replaced, tightened and tuned everything in the drive train before settling on the solution that the middle chain ring is flexing and pulling the chain off the sprockets.  We probably spent 6 hours altogether running down spares to borrow, new parts to try, and tear-downs of clusters, cranks and chains.  They even figured out what year vintage the chain wheel was as we searched for a replacement.  No luck in Trang however, I’ll just not be able to stand on the pedals in middle front and middle back from now on.  BTW this bike is over 15 years old and has seen lots of miles, it’s the same one on which I did a 500-mile section of the Great Divide. It’s retirement is coming soon.

As headlined in the last Blog: We couldn’t buy some of the behind-the-travel-poster experiences we’re enjoying.  Last Sunday’s ride was another case in point. [Incidentally this was the same day 11% of Thailand was shutout from voting in the latest national referendum. Even in Thailand “all politics are local.” The opposition leader is from a neighboring province, & we were at last to learn our province (state) was one of the two largest provinces in the south to boycott the election. Once we realized there was no political division in Trang, we rested more comfortably.] 

Only ten riders started out and after the obligatory photo op, the first stop comes quick. Forgetting to take a photo of my new favorite breakfast, I’ll just have to tell you that rice porridge with pork balls and poached eggs with spices and cilantro was A-Roi !

Second stop was dual purpose:  food and culture. One of the regional communities was raising funds to expand their Wat (temple complex).  We rolled in like invited dignitaries, were directed to VIP parking (easy to put 10 bikes directly next to the food tents) and treated to the works: tours of their sacred cave and it’s holdings – Buddhas, a 25′ reclining Buddha, ancient relics, the grounds for monks and existing buildings, dance recitals from pre-teen girls dressed in beaded animal cloaks complete with tails and, yes, all the food you can eat. Pictured is just one of the food lines of 5 or 6 available, all featuring different specialties.  Favorite beverages, bottled waters, sweets and [Hooray!] ice cream cones filled out the fare.  Here’s a photo I asked permission to take, a contrast in traditional and new technology. I’d hoped it was an iPad but it was only a 7″ Samsung tablet that he was using to take photos of the event.

We spent the next hour, more slowly with filled stomachs, rolling thru rubber plantations and communities, then turned off to a totally isolated waterfall park where we stripped

down to bike shorts and swam in the pools below the falls. Two more hours on paved asphalt roads, where I swear we only saw one pickup and a lorry the whole time.  Marvelous riding in dappled light on curving roads with mild rollers, just enough to break up the daze.

Still another food stop before the grand finale of which I was totally unaware.  Thinking we are going home early because it’s only 4 PM, we come out of the back roads and head down a highway back to Trang.  Wrong again.  With only 12 km on the mile posts to Trang, we veer right on to still another vacant asphalt road, but this one has a dirt intersection with a climb to the top of

a rounded karst.  On top is 5 years’ worth of construction on a 12-level above the mountain-top temple.  We all dismounted for the first 100′ and most walked the remainder. What was so special about this visit was that besides a handful of workers changing scaffolding and two resident monks, we had the entire site to ourselves.  We climbed raw stairways to the main levels, viewing still crated and uncrated antiques and relics right out of the Raiders of the Lost Ark movies; lounged on the monks’ sleeping mats; and totally spontaneously decided to climb the inside scaffolding 8 stories up to the second-from-top level.

I asked about dinner, because last week I’d promised to bring Stanna to dinner, and was told that we’d stay until sundown.  However just before sundown, and after all the inner exploration, we scaled back down to ground level and the construction shacks where we were invited to finish off any and all of the monks’ food tributes. You should know that monks are supported by donations, either their mornings spent traipsing around cities with their begging bowls or for those monks in farther locales by Thai’s seeking “merit” by bringing food daily to them.  Monks only eat once a day about 11AM and the rest of the food is for whoever happens by the temple; in this day’s case it was only us.  It’s customary (we’ve partaken at least twice before) to rifle thru whatever is on the tables or benches, and the riders displayed not a timid gesture in pawing thru the bags and stacked Japanese lunch pails. I called Stanna and told her we were supping on the mount, she’d have to fend for herself.