burn, baby, burn!
Tuesday, November 11th, 2008Racing Rob writes….
Sometimes it is just the simple things that bring pleasure – like being able to jump on a bike and ride into the train station to get tickets rather than having to walk or take a tuktuk. That is, apart from the fact that this one bike looks identical to one ridden by the French resistance 20 years ago when they filmed ‘Allo ‘Allo. It certainly has a long history looking at the many coats of paint flaking slowly off it, the old solid bike stand which hangs off the back looking like an aircraft arrestor-hook, and weighing about the same too! So it was with a strange sense of freedom that I biked off this morning, having chosen the only bike with more than about 10 psi in the tyres – just enough to keep me from riding on the rims. A perfect fusion of technologies, this 30+ year old bike with my trusty GPS strapped onto the handle bars!
I made it to the train station without any incident – 4.6km no less, although it felt much further on this single-speed relic! I even overtook one gentleman on his motorbike, which gave him rather a surprise, and slip-streamed another bike to average a respectable 24.2km for my short journey, considering the half-dozen food stalls I had to slow down to check out on the way. You see, a month on the road hasn’t dulled my finely tuned athleticism! Just as well I went to buy the tickets today (six weeks before we need them), as the Rapid train we wanted to travel on was already fully booked, so we had to get seats on another one.
My return journey was slightly longer – due to two stops that had to be made – one to buy a couple of large, ready-for-eating mangoes, and the second, to enquire about and purchase one of the large floating lanterns. You see, I have always had a fascination with hot air balloons, and attempted several times (with mixed success) to make them at home as a child. So, seeing one of these meter high “lanterns” ready to go, complete with kerosene soaked rag burner (this baby will burn!), I just had to stop and buy one. 40baht (NZ$2) sounded like a good deal, and they even provided me with a large plastic bag to stop wind damage as I rode home. The only problem was that the shop where I got the lantern was about 3km from home, which meant a long ride back on a rickety bike, single-handed AND carrying two mangoes and a large 60cm diameter lantern tucked under the other arm! Needless to say, I got several stares on the journey back, and to my indignation I saw similar lanterns on sale, much closer to home, and for 20baht. Oh well. Total journey, 9.5km, average speed 21.4 – which in my opinion is the same as doing a 40 km ride at 30km/hr at home! Pretty respectable really! 🙂 (the girls add: almost as good as our 10km on foot in one and a half hours yesterday….AND EVEN FURTHER THE DAY BEFORE!!!!)
The mangoes were superb – you just can NOT beat the flavour of a good fresh mango. PERIOD. No argument. And the “kids” will all have a blast firing up this beauty of lantern and setting it off into the night sky. No prayers to Buddha following this one, but some sincere prayers of thanks for the experiences around this whole time.
Postscript……by K9
We made boat-baskets (Krathong) out of banana palms. We folded the leaves like origami to make shapes to stick with pins onto a piece of palm trunk. Then we decorated them with flowers, papaya seeds, candles, sparklers and joss sticks. When it was dark we took them down to the river and set them alight. Standing on a bamboo platform, we reached down to the water and let the basket-boats float downstream. From a distance it looked like a row of lights in the river.
J12: “They looked like crowns floating down the river, glowing as they went.”
After setting the baskets in the river, we joined in another aspect of the Yee Peng Lantern Month…sending floating ones up into the sky. Ours almost caught on a stand of bamboo, before taking off towards the moon.
There are lots of lanterns around the city – every building has them hanging outside and you can see them floating up into the night sky as darkness falls. Loy Krathong is a beautiful time.
rayres