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Published: November 12th 2009
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Day 14: Lamae to Surat Thani
I woke up at dawn to take some photos of sunrise on the beach, then fell back to sleep. Around 8, J brought me milk and cookies in bed, which I ate without sitting up, before falling back to sleep. At 10, I finally got up for real, and we were on the road by 10:30. After only about ten miles, J’s knee was killing him. And I was tired; we’d biked 67 miles the previous day, over the course of 8 ½ hours, creating a new high calorie burn of 1256 calories. No wonder we were eating so much! That’s about 120 times as many calories as I normally burn in one day!
We were doing our best, riding along on quiet back roads, when a pickup truck slowed to offer us a ride to Surat Thani. No kidding! I was all for it!
J, being a tough guy, said “No, we don’t need to take a ride, but it’s up to you.” I said, “Hell yeah!” and we hopped in the truck bed with our bikes. That truck flew! We went 65 kilometers, 40 miles, in less than an hour.
The muffin operation!
See the son in the background? That distance would have taken us 4 hours by bike! Damn! The driver was a really nice guy who spoke English, his friend was a young Burmese man with long hair, who bought us water when we stopped in one town. We’d asked them to drop us halfway to Surat, in a town called Chaya, so we didn’t feel like slouches, barely biking at all that day. But J’s knee was really hurting him, even just sitting in the truck bed, so we had them continue to Pun Phin, 20 km from Surat Thani. They dropped us happily, expecting nothing in return, just glad they could help. And boy did they drop us at the most amazing spot!
A family: mother, father and son, were running a muffin stand right by the side of the road, a few hundred feet from the highway off ramp. This was the cutest, most original operation I’ve ever seen. There were ten giant, standing steamers. The little boy, dressed in his school uniform, arranged little china cups inside these steamers, maybe sixty in each steamer. Then dad filled a pitcher from a vat of yellow batter, and poured a bit of that batter
in to each of the little cups.
Mom told us the yellow batter is actually made from a watermelon-sized purple fruit, one we had never seen before and never saw again! Dad would walk around, checking the many batches in different stages of steaming. When the muffins were ready, Mom would spoon the disc-like, coin-sized edibles out of the cups and in to bags. 10 muffins per bag at a cost of 20 baht per bag. They went fast; loads of people would stop by, in motorbike or car to buy a few bags. So the bags never piled up, and the muffins were always fresh. Oh, these treats were so, so good; warm, moist, spongy like crumpets, but sweet like muffins. And you dipped them in shredded coconut that Mama put in each little bag. We sat by the roadside and ate these muffins, marveling at their manufacturing. This family just came and set up this shop by the roadside! Probably everyday they brought out all the supplies, cooked for a few hours, then took all the supplies home! It was an outdoor, highway-side bakery! Why don’t we have these in America? And I must tell you, we
never tasted or saw anything like this again. This place was unique.
Ok, so now we actually started biking again, although we did stop five minutes later to buy fruit. Two hours later, and we reached Surat Thani, a big, industrial city. We biked around for about an hour, trying to find a hotel with hot water for J’s sore knee. Mid-search, we stopped for a late-lunch, (no, the muffins were a snack, not a meal) eating delectable fried chicken, fried shrimp, flat chive dumplings and oyster pancakes. (Our fourth oyster pancake in three days; I think J’s obsessed. They are actually more like a scrambled egg, with spring onions and sweet hot chili sauce.) We found a nice hotel with hot water, showered up, and headed out for a stroll along the river. The town was bustling and active.
We passed a “99 baht” Buffet Restaurant while strolling. It was a huge place, packed with people, live music and a video screen, and was right on the river. Each table boasted a grill, akin to the popular Korean BBQ in Laos, where raw meat and vegetables are grilled and cooked by customers at the table. But this
place was way better than any previous BBQ place, because it offered a massive buffet table, stocked with foods, all covered under the 99 baht cost per person. Ten types of raw meat, six types of raw seafood, vegetables, prepared foods like salads, Italian spaghetti, green pasta, papaya salad, pot-stickers, coconut ice cream, jelly desserts, fruit! We ate so much here and we didn’t even get full! Everybody loved this place! As much as we did!
When we finally finished eating, long after most people had already gone home, we realized we didn’t have enough cash on us to pay. So J went down the street to find an ATM, while I stayed at the table, munching on some fruit. Meanwhile, a guy at the table next to ours had overheard us, and told our waiter he’d pay the rest of our bill; we were 50 baht short, about $1.75! I couldn’t believe it! I tried to tell him we were getting the money, it was OK, but he insisted! He said, “Of course. No problem. My pleasure.” I replied, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”. I just couldn’t believe it; where does that happen!? Where your neighbors offer
to pay for your meal? And this man wanted nothing in return. Nothing! And we were supposed to be the rich foreigners!
After dinner, we went looking for an internet café. When we asked directions of a guy in a 7-11, he told us to hop on the back of his motorbike, and he’d just drive us to one. He took us two blocks up the street and dropped us right in front of an internet café. Unbelievable. What a day!
We witnessed this kindness to strangers time after time in Thailand, but each time still seemed just as incredible as the last. Thais are truly a wonderful, gracious and caring people.
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