Greeting Old Friends

December 20, 2019

Chiang Khan to Pak Chom

Chiang Khan to Pak Chom

After our restless sleep we hit the trail, a bike trail of sorts for a few kilometers east of Chiang Khan. It seemed like someone’s good idea but no one used it. It was as if no one had ever used it so to make it feel better we tried. It was hopeless however because there were parts that were under a foot of sand and/or overgrown. There were also electric poles right in the middle of it. The wide shoulder of the road was far superior.

This was the best part of the bike path.

It got to the point where it was completely covered by sand and vegetation and we didn't even know it was there.

I was really looking forward to this day because this particular stretch of the Mekong is so interesting. It has lots of little islands of either boulders or grasses. There is a main channel, of course, and it switches from the Lao side to the Thai side here and there but mostly the river consists of greenery - quite unusual and beautiful.

This wonderful road sometimes hugs the river.

I remembered a spot we had stopped at on our first bike tour. How I remembered it I don’t know because a promenade had been built which changed the landscape. I’ve always been amazed at how quickly things change in S..E. Asia.

We took a photo of our bikes here in 2014 at about this exact spot. The promenade was not there then.

The Mekong is squashed in between that hill and that house.

A cute temple on the Lao side of the Mekong.

We spotted other rest places we remembered which made us feel at home. The old familiar places. We hadn’t planned on repeating a route and I had been wary of how that might feel if we in fact did, but once we were seeing things for the second time it felt good even if they had changed.

Andrea disappeared behind me at one point. I waited. I waited some more but no Andrea. It was at a curve which disallowed me to look very far behind. I thought something must be wrong so I turned back to find her. Then she came into sight smiling because she had found her favorite flower, a red one and a very wonderful shade of red it was.

There were more stupid promenades which are simply the way the corporations/government smoothed things over with the local people for stealing massive quantities of sand from the river banks replacing it with large jagged stones or riprap. “Oh, it will be great. You will have this promenade which will essentially be your walking street and then you will be making huge amounts of money just like the people in Chiang Khan.” Nothing is further from the truth, however.

I stopped several times to film the Mike Mulligan steam shovels at work. We have seen so many of these operations that I would conservatively estimate the number of these large backhoes along the Thai side of the Mekong at several thousand. No kidding.

Sand stealing and replacing the huge trench with rocks and then putting a promenade on top of it all.

Then we went through a short section of road where there was obviously lots of interesting stones in the Mekong which people had meticulously chosen and carried up to the road to sell. When I would stop to photograph them the sellers made no move to sell me any of them; one of the advantages of being on a bike. They didn’t even move from their chaise lounges. The stones were beautiful and I thought about how much work it had been to carry them up. I remembered doing the same thing with actually very similar stones on the north shore of Lake Superior when I was a kid and our family went to cabins on some weekends. We have home movies of family members struggling along the shore loaded down with stones and driftwood.

This is one of my all time favorite stretches of road along the Mekong River. The road is shaded most of the way by large hills to the south preserving the cool of the morning. It crosses lots of little bridges which below are small streams heading towards the Mekong. Small, quiet villages are scattered along the route and are so peaceful I inevitably think how fun it would be to have a house in one of them and be there every winter.

Peaceful was the word and feeling for the day, as opposed to all that sand stealing. Nice people were in the towns waving and smiling. I stopped to photograph a praying mantis sitting in the road. The smell of wood cook stoves, a papaya on a bamboo slat table near the road for sale, dogs sleeping in the road in the sun, birdsong; all these things I l recognize and love. I started to think that people in passing cars were envious of us to be riding on such a nice road on such a nice day along the amazing Mekong River. They must be, I thought. They are thinking that we have figured out how to live. They are going to go home and buy bikes and give up their jobs so they can ride their bikes like us.

Praying mantis praying it won't get hit on the road.

As the river recedes all winter the people plant little gardens on the fresh newly enriched banks. There are fewer nutrients now with less sediment because of the dams. I wondered how that will affect the produce.

The main channel is out there somewhere.

We rode into Pak Chom like we were greeting an old friend. Pak Chom is small and most travelers would not find it worth staying in but we love it. We have fond memories of being in a really cute wooden bungalow right next to the Mekong for a couple of nights over Christmas 2014. We had found good food, nice people and great views from our bungalow. It immediately felt good to be back.

We rode directly to the market area which is also on the banks of the Mekong, unusual for markets in these towns. It’s a small market but we noticed it had grown a bit and was much more active. Two old style Thai ice coffees was what we wanted and found right away. We were skeptical as to whether our cute bungalow even existed anymore because we knew from Google Satellite that a promenade had been made right in front of it.

When we approached that guest house we couldn’t believe how far out the promenade and riprap project had pushed the bank of the river. The bungalow was still there looking very sad because the new promenade was right in front of it. It allowed anyone to enter the property which the owners were obviously against so they erected a chain link fence a few feet in front of the bungalow. The bungalow looked shockingly unappealing and we went to the large decrepit resort next door which five years ago was out of our price range. It looked as though it was in deep decline and couldn’t be out of our price range anymore. We got a strange bungalow with slanting floors in an otherwise deserted complex of at least 40 bungalows! This has been the norm this trip but we are not complaining. It’s strange but peaceful.

This sad little bungalow looks so different from five years ago. The river was just a bit out from that chain link fence.

Our luxurious (decrepit) bungalow in Pak Chom. We loved it.

We found the backstreet restaurant we had loved before and had a great meal and good conversation with the owners. They remembered us. It’s odd to be so far from home but a great feeling to come back to some other home and actually feel like we are home even if the floor slants and every time we head to the bathroom around the bed we have to fight from falling into the front door. Maybe home is simply where you feel welcomed and thus, good.

lovebruce

Today's ride: 26 miles (42 km)
Total: 653 miles (1,051 km)

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Jen RahnWhat a great feeling to be remembered by the restaurant owners 3 years later!

Kindness is pretty powerful.
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4 years ago

Scott AndersonThose envious onlookers are right. They should sell their homes as well, toss their collections of old toothbrushes and pet rocks, and hit the road.
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4 years ago

Bruce LellmanTo Scott AndersonWait a minute. Toss their collections of old toothbrushes? Now I think you're going a bit too far. My collection has grown since we've been on the road. Every guesthouse in Myanmar had several free toothbrushes. They work great at cleaning chains too.
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4 years ago