Didn’t sleep too well. The chickens (directly below me) decided that 2am was karaoke time for some reason. I also chased a cat off my bed soon after, and the early morning noises of the other assorted animals kept me awake. I’m used to the soothing rattle and hum of Thai aircon units, not natural sounds like cats and dogs and cows and chickens !
We each had an omelette and some of yesterday’s pineapple for breakfast, and headed off soon after. The surrounding farmland in the hills was like a smorgasbord – coffee and durian trees were first along with large cornfields, wild ginger, large leaf tea, more pineapples and guava.
We stopped and ate a number of guava each – that’s something I’ve never eaten fresh off a tree. At the top of the next hill, it was sour berries.
The route like yesterday, varied between motorbike trails to single-track, stepping stones, paths between rice paddies, steep edges and open paths through bamboo forests. At times, I had no idea where the path led, but if there was a fork in the path, our route always went uphill.
Everybody thought it would be easy for the cyclist, but when I thought about it … On the bike, my feet are rotating in a circle with a diameter of around 350mm. That equates to very very small steps when trekking 😁. At least that explained why my knee hurt. So I shortened my steps uphill and everything got easier.
The highlight of today was the lunch. Sun and Abba (no relation to the band) got to work immediately. They made a lot of what they needed by cutting bamboo on the spot. That included skewers, a spatula, the rice steamer, a thing to hold the whole chicken while it cooked, a mortar and pestle …
Abba cut a piece of green bamboo which had two chambers, made a hole between them and filled the bottom chamber with water. He then covered the hole some banana leaf, poured a bag of sticky rice which was wet into the top chamber. He sealed it off with banana leaves and put the base in the fire. It was a rice steamer, so, the water boiled and steamed the rice in the top chamber to perfection. He served it by splitting the bamboo and putting a perfect cylinder of rice onto a banana leaf – genius !
In the bambooo mortar and pestle, we mixed barbecued eggplant, eschallots, garlic, coriander and chilli. The smoky flavour was superb, as was the chicken.
Dessert was a fresh banana or two. All of this was from a simple shelter overlooking the valley. Million dollar views and beautiful food.
It was downhill after lunch – literally and painfully so. Gee it it was steep. We crossed a few more creeks, went through some farms, past a place with elephants which used them for tourists (this has simply got to stop), crossed a few last rice paddies and met up with the Songthaew that had our gear.
On the way back, we stopped at a hot springs and sat in the hot pool for half an hour. This isn’t something that ever struck me as something to do in Thailand after walking for two days – but it was great.
Showered, it was a quick 30mins back to Chiang Rai where I was reunited with my green machine 😁Now, I have to get the mud out of my shoes and dry them before I head off again.