We’re back “home” and loving being in Trang. It’s been two years since we last visited Thailand and many things have changed, but not our friends.  Baan Wassana, the guesthouse we’ve really enjoyed, has added still another building (an office/community center), carports and landscaped everything that wasn’t before.  From Durango we requested an older unit on the ground floor, and we are back in style, one unit over from the last time we stayed.  These units are preferable for us since we have bikes, we can roll them in just like in Durango and they also have a front and rear porch where we can enjoy our meals out front and wash clothes out back. The little desk serves us well as does the frig.  We nest in the unit by purchasing a few dishes, utensils and left-over containers.  We can buy German Muesli and yogurt for breakfasts and pick up meals at the various markets or stands along the way home.  One of our favorite lunch spots is actually inside the Siriban mall at the Food Court where we can get a Green Papaya Salad (Som Tum – spicy with only one chili) and deep fried vegetable leaf batter with shrimp and side plate of lettuce, cabbage and cukes for $2.90 for two (prices have gone up in two years, it used to be 30 cents less). We hadn’t forgotten our friends and they didn’t forget us.  We’ve been so busy in the first 3 days “catching up” we’ve barely had time to blog.  Even the Som Tum lady in Tesco remembered us and insisted on pushing aside the new salad lady and making ours special.  One of our cycle club friends and his wife have a soup stand downtown and we stopped in to surprise him our first day back and enjoy their pork and wide noodle soup – A-Roi. They speak as little English as we speak Thai, but we always have a great lunch laughing and sharing photos of our exploits on our mobile devices.

The best reuniting was with my touring Trek road bike I’d left here two years ago.  It almost brought tears to my eyes to see it rolled out from Sunsern’s house.  This is the Craigslist bike I bought for our North Thailand tour two years ago.  I wasn’t really looking forward to riding with the Fassong (morning pre-dawn) group on my mountain bike, because they go really fast and don’t wait for anyone at the top of the hills.  Having the Trek for the go-fast group and the mountain bike for the weekend touring will be wonderful, because that weekend group goes off road much of the time and even though I did it last time on the Trek it just doesn’t feel right climbing mountains and dirt trails on a skinny-tired road bike.

Speak of the Fassong group we managed to get a photo this morning at their favor breakfast haunt.  This is the place where they bring out a tray of Dim Sum and you choose what and how much you want, or just order large soups, chicken or pork and rice plus your favorite beverage and everyone throws in 50 baht ($1.60) and the club keeps the change for a monthly party.  I’m not the oldest, one guy is 70, but he doesn’t ride the hills

 we do each morning: some guys take a short-cut but they end up in the same place.  There are probably 18 to 20 riders of which 8 to 12 show up each morning at 5:15AM.  Not all come to breakfast and only one can understand me when I try to talk.  But they always take good care of me, insuring I’m well fed.  By 6:30 they head to home and work and I usually ride the loop back to Baan Wassana

which is almost exactly an hour.  So my workout is almost exactly the same time frame as in Durango except that I still need to do yoga when I get home.  Routine at this age makes for happy old folks so after mid-morning snack, washing our exercise clothes, some web surfing, & studying a couple more Thai words it’s time for scootering into town (Baan Wassana is out in the country, just inside the

highway loop – 7km from center of town) for lunch and more visiting friends and shopping for our dinner.  Our favorite restaurant with Panang Curry and Cashew Chicken moved almost as far out of town in the other direction so we won’t be going there quite as often.  But we just learned of a new place we’ll try for lunch today and test their Panang.