One of the Trang Cycling Club members had a small 240-person wedding reception on the beach outside of Trang this last Thursday.  Thai people get married on auspicious days that the monks divine.

About 12 members cycled the 25 miles to the wedding and attended in full lycra garb.  We chose to drive the scooter over, like many, and stay less sweaty for the party.  The venue was idyllic and right out of the Thailand tourist resort brochures with pools, white sand beach location and all the amenities tourists clamor for.  If we hadn’t been recently to Myanmar this would have been the most “white” people we’d been around on our travels this year.  Total beach bikini scene right out of the movies. We couldn’t wait to get home and see what tariff was for nightly stays ($200 to $600).  Makes our $6 a night seem paltry.

This couple have been boyfriend and girlfriend for 21 years and finally decided to get married. He’s a distance cyclist who will be riding in the Audax 1200 Paris-Brest-Paris ride this September.  He’s completed his 200, 300, 400 and 600 km rides here in Thailand and now qualifies for the 1200 km.

Only family and very close friends attend the early morning wedding ceremony at their house (monk drops by to consecrate the union) and then they throw a big reception at a hall or resort.  This reception was a sit-down 11-course meal, served on a meter-wide lazy-susan placed in the center of 8′ circular banquet tables, that takes much of the afternoon. We had a great time with our rowdy cycling friends.

Needless to say, most dishes were outstanding, only the final rice platter lacked for flavor.

Interesting to note, you don’t bring a present. Every guest (couple) received an invitation and into that envelope you place your tithing to the couple who come around each table to receive the gift and thank you with a small present (in this case commemorative candles).

Fun to be a part of this event.

In researching the percentage of Chinese demographic in Thailand I learned that it’s over 9 million or 14% of the population and up to 40% of the population can claim some level of ancestral heritage.  No wonder Chinese New Year is such a big deal here in Thailand. It was most apparent when you notice how many businesses are shuttered during the days just before and for the 3 “travel days” after the new year.  Chinese travel to see their parents and relatives generally where they were raised.

Trang’s Chinese New Year is the reason we got waylaid here five years ago, as we didn’t want to be traveling during this very busy internal migration, with buses, trains and hotels packed with locals, coming and going much like the American Thanksgiving holiday period.  So we stayed another week in our Trang hotel and that’s when we got hooked by the Trang Cycling Club and all it’s activities, friendly members and the local community.

It’s such a big deal here in Trang that they cordon off several major streets and intersections for the week with several massive concert stages and  blocks and blocks of food concessions, not to mention of the decorations most visible after dark.

We only enjoyed the melee one night, since the best entertainment tends to be well after our bedtime. The people-watching is even better than seeing families at the shopping centers, if only because they often dress up their youngest children in festive costumes, and to see entire families parading along enjoying various foods and delicacies is wonderful as well.  This year they allocated a 500-meter stretch of matching art show tents to all the Trang hotels and restaurants so that they might feature their cuisines.

Among the displays of Chinese cultural traditions are the food sculptures and banner calligraphy.  They have a large pavilion with as many as 8 old men brushing large gold characters of ancient proverbs on vivid red banners on demand, entirely gratis for the backed-up crowds of souvenir collectors.

Having visited a number of SE Asian weaving sites and villages, this was one of the most remarkable in production and craftsmanship.  Not only did they have the most weavers demonstrating in a single shop, but the variety of materials (silk, cotton and lotus), patterns and techniques were fun to see.

We ended up taking more video than still photos, so we’ll be eager to show the various flying shuttle looms in action.  We have never gotten our flying shuttle on the loom at home to operate as smoothly and effortlessly as on these primitive looms.  (It is alway interesting to see how similar our Swedish Glimakra is to these timeless, rudimentary looms.)  We even took one slow motion video of a man using two alternating shuttles on a flying mechanism, rotating the shuttles with each pick of the weft, quite a feat with the flying shuttles.  He was so quick it was hard to see in real time.

When we entered this 2-story stilted workshop above the Inle Lake waterways, the first thing we were shown the process of extracting yarn from lotus stems.  At a low wooden table ladies were pulling 20″ strands from the stems and rolling with a flat-palm motion to combine the gossamer strands that don’t even show up in a photograph into visible yarn.  Later one lotus scarf jumped into our purchase pile and will be winging its way home to Durango with us, we couldn’t pass up such a unique fabric.

What was so fun was being able to stand over the various weavers’ shoulders on our self-guided tour thru their airy 2nd-floor workroom which had probably 15-20 looms.  Each of these looms was loaded with much longer warps than we usually attempt on our Glimakra; pictured here was one of the grand old ladies measuring a 24-strand multi-colored warp that could have been 40-meters long.  We saw ladies using spinning wheels to load bobbins for weaving the warp; we didn’t see any local spinning of yarn other than rolling the lotus.  The retail shelves were filled with locally handwoven textiles in Inle Lake traditional patterns, Shan district traditional patterns, and other decorative weaves.

In the same village we visited one of the purely tourist-y demonstrations: in the front of that stilted shop were 5 transplanted long-neck indigenous women wearing their coiled golden necklaces.  They had several 8″ and 9″ tall necklaces for demonstration purposes, weighing 8 kilos of coiled metal.  Three ladies were weaving on backstrap looms.  The two older women were clearly live mannequins sitting stoically, employed for photo opportunities for tourists. (See top photo)

Last stop was at the silversmiths  It was most fascinating to see the silver smiths working, one pounding out a 9″ flat disk to be later shaped into a mug-sized bowl, and the other operating his torch.  The fine gassed blowtorch was a foot-powered bellows vaporizing gasoline from a pint-sized antique cylinder.  This particular craftsman was working on very minute silver coils which he was shaping to later cut and form into links for a silver chain necklace or bracelet, or to coil around a piece of jade or other jewel.  In that second-story rickety workshop and sales area they had more silver jewelry inside of wobbly glass showcases than you might see in an American mall jewelry store.  Fun to see the intricate work and craftsmanship but we are more partial to our local silversmith and jeweler Carol Martin.

On a ride last Saturday I got ahead of my group and stumbled across a Southern Thailand traditional dance being performed at a hilltop shrine.  As is common on most “passes” (high points) on mountain roads the Thai people erect elaborate shrines to Buddha.  It’s mandatory to honk when passing and some people stop to leave “tribute” in the form of flower wreathes, soda pop with a straw, burn an incense stick or light a reel of firecrackers.

As I crested the hill I could hear drums and chanting at the shrine, so I dismounted and climbed up to see what was going on at the normally dormant site.  Evidently a family was celebrating or invoking merit by having a troupe perform and lavishing an entire roasted pig to the alter.  Here is just a short clip of this lengthy performance with many different characters.  (appears to take a minute or more to load the buffer).

I could only stay for 15 minutes but got served a cold beverage while I filmed from ringside.  Fascinating slice of life along the road.

We often visit the coast of the Andaman Sea but not very often get out in it. Snorkeling isn’t interesting this close to the mainland, there are no waves this time of year on the west side of the peninsula and mostly we’ve had “years” of beach time. So it was a very different kind of weekend bicycle camping trip for the Club this past Sunday.

We rode, paddled and soaked over the two days for a total change of pace.  Pak Meng which is only 25 miles from Trang has a wide variety of beach opportunities and this time we rented two-person sea kayaks and paddled out to the karst islands and poked our boats in and out of the limestone structures.

It should be pointed out that this was a catered camping trip, with one of the club members bringing all his restaurant pots and dishes, not to mention his cooking skills to provide snacks, meals and refreshment every step of the way.  As Mike Taylor often chides me for, we did eat early and often on this trip, just never set foot in any restaurant or kiosk.

Whether it was tailgate fruit bowls, beach front buffet, 5-course truck-bed entrees or the morning fried eggs, ham, sausage and toast with butter and marmalade, he never ceased to amaze us with the fare.

Our overnight stop was at the Kantang Hot Springs, and believe it or not we just rolled our bikes and gear thru the front gate and set up our tents on the lawn right next to the hot springs or in the pavilion.

These “wells” as the locals call them are all thru a 20-acre park and vary in temperature from one pool so hot that the sign says “Don’t boil eggs” to 105° temps we like for our hot tubs. They even have several private tubs with showers and “mix-your-own” temp faucets.

We took pre-tub soaks and private tub soaks before dinner, and after dinner soaks.  

And of course since ours was a leisurely breakfast buffet on the pavilion tiled floor we took before and after breakfast soaks.

It’s a good thing these rides are always over 100 km because we sure need to work off all the food we consume.

Life goes on between Sundays, which like most folks means a regular routine.  Ours amounts to daily morning rides (Fahsang 60 km starting at 4:30 am for me and Stanna’s “ring ride” at 6:30), catching up on news and communications, study and reading, lunch on the town, shopping for dinner and then a little more “down time” before dinner on the porch and early to bed.

Since the arrival of our Belgian friends we’ve added afternoon tech support lessons (Rik got his first iPad in Trang last year and his first iPhone just before his arrival here – he was a true PC guy before seeing what we do with our mobile devices and wants to learn more than I know) and a movie after dinner (if we eat early enough). Rik comes with about 50 movies loaded on his laptop so we get to see the pick of his litter.

Rik’s biggest tech discovery this week was learning that he could track his missing Apple device (Find My iPhone) from anywhere. Almost every question he asks causes me to dig deeper into iOS which pleases both of us: him for an answer and me for a solution and new feature or technique.

They’re also joining us for Panang Curry and Cashew Chicken at least once a week.  Their main interest, besides relaxing in warmer weather than Europe is combing the beaches for sea shells.  Louisa is quite a collector and even brings a field guide to shells of this region.  Rik has commissioned the restoration of one of the Trang Cycling Club’s road bikes so he can ride and train during his absence from the continent.  At 71 he’s a very strong rider and enjoys the longer rides (100+ km like they do in Belgium) rather than the pre-dawn rides I make 5 days a week.

This week Rik and Louisa visited their favorite “crab lady” on the coast and brought back 12 or more local Andaman Sea crabs.  These guys are really small and getting the meat out is only for the aficionados, however for those willing to make the effort the meat is really tasty.  It’s nice having friends come back to Wassana Guesthouse just like we do each year.

The weeks go zooming by, and we’re almost half-way done with our 4 month hiatus.

Lest you think it’s all reading, studying and eating lately, last week the Trang Cycling Club accepted a Sunday invitation to be guided thru the mountains 20+ miles to the north of Trang.  Thirty-six riders headed out for the adventure in Huai Yot but a mutiny forestalled 2/3rds from following the route.

But before discussing the crazy ill-fated ride, let me describe an interesting prologue to the actual ride.  Our gathering spot for all Sunday rides is the Dugong Fountain and as twelve or more riders gathered and primped each other’s rides, pumping tires and lashing down gear, a group of 4 20-something road bike riders with matching Mickey Mouse jerseys rounded the fountain.  Eyeing our bikes and jerseys, they came round once again and pulled up to the curb in front of the group shouting “come, come let’s take a photo” in English no less.  The Thais, always game for a photo op, lined up with the new riders and it was then that I realized these were Malaysian “boys” who’d come up from the South and were heading back home Sunday morning.

More and more of our group materialized, and now almost 20 strung out for the photo.  Then a black economy sedan pulled up and 4 young women with cameras, who obviously were the wives of the riders, jumped out to take photos or pose themselves.  What was way different for the image was that the four young women were all dressed in modish jeans, tennies and head scarves.  These were Muslim couples from Malaysia, where English is a local second language, training by riding to Trang for the weekend. Biking is an International language.

This year the Club has more older and probably less experienced riders showing up for the Sunday rides: at least 4 older women in their 60’s as well as a handful of men with their ample bellies I’d never believe would don a lycra jersey. So as briefed several weeks before, we don’t set a pace that would discourage anyone from participating. It was a highway shoulder ride to a break point at 20 km and the group gathered up once again before pushing up several rollers the last 10 km into Huai Yot.  There we met up with the local Cycling Club president and learned what was in store (or at least those who speak Thai learned).  Incidentally everyone but me was on a mountain bike, since I didn’t get the memo that this would be a trail ride.  

All was well until we got on a heavily washed-out rubble mountain bike trail where I got a flat.  I should have checked the pressure before leaving the house, normally my 25c Gatorskins at 100 PSI handle everything I hit.  Ended up we took a wrong turn onto this rotten section and returned over the same ground. And then into a never-biked rubber-tree plantation bumping up and over each tree’s roots along the rubber-tree tapper’s trail, where the local leader indicated he’s lost.  Back out to the road and then off again on another dirt track, this one beyond a hillside rubber plantation and into the steep jungle.  I heard “sam lo” and interpreted it to mean “only 3 kilometers”, which ended up pretty accurate.

Only problem was we had to carry our bikes most of that way, hiking up thru the jungle on footpaths only the Thai mountain people use.  Within 100 meters of this venture 2/3rds of the group mutinied and turned back down the slope and we didn’t see them again for 4 hours.

Not believing it could get any worse and that this short 30-minute slippery slog was only an aberration, twelve of us literally “carried on” (bikes over our heads – on a steep slope it’s not possible to hold a bike waist high because the wheels hit the ground in front of you before you can take a step).  Glad to have my road bike for this section.

At the top of the final uphill section I came across a 40′ high male Papaya tree and shortly thereafter found two 20′ female ones overloaded with ripening fruit.  Lashing two six foot sticks together was just long enough to reach 4 of the ripest 16″ papayas, one at a time. Since it was a couple hours past lunch the group enjoyed ravenously devouring the sweet red fruit.  Mr. Yao had to carry a number of the groups’ bikes up the last pitch just to pull the group back together.

Down the mountain was less strenuous but no less treacherous, until we came to another hillside rubber tree shack and it’s mountain-bikeable trail to the paved road.  I’m not quite sure what the point of this guided route was about, obviously they hadn’t checked it out or even thought it out ahead of time.  Nevertheless, if laughing and joking were a criteria for a good time, a good time was had by all.  One stop in town for a very late lunch at the night market being set up fueled us up for the 25-mile home run.

Mileage for the day wasn’t what we normally knock off but it took all day from 8am to 5pm.