Amazing Thailand

While yesterday was rainy and cool, today was sunny and hot. Another wonderful day of cycling, it seems we are enchanted every day again on our bicycles. It was also quite different from the first day on the road here. Okay, most cars were still pickups, the electricity wires were still zooming, buzzing and like "cracking" overhead, and unlike yesterday my friends the kingfishers were around today. But the main difference: yesterday I wrote that there were only small patches of plantation all the time, well, today it was rubber, rubber and rubber.

Beautiful (uphill) cycling in the cool, misty early morning (so early this picture is not even sharp)

Hilarious moment: we arrive at a police checkpoint, get invited for coffee (but politely decline), then get asked to pose for a picture together (and returning the favour). These guys were great, and absolutely friendly!

Rubber plantations are quite pretty, with the rows of trees which are near-symmetric, near-perfect spaced, yet not really what is actually what makes it so pretty. The lines in the trees because of rubber tapping also make a special view, and then of course the small pots in which the liquid rubber is caught, hanging from the trees. The area we travel through now is where the very first rubber trees ever entered Thailand. In fact, the city we are in currently, Kantang, still has that very first tree as a monument, still alive.

Ellen blending in very well with the laterite road in a rubber plantation

Panoramic view of the rubber plantation during our break (coffee break, of course!)

So, pretty cycling, nearly flat, still among the magnificent limestone cliffs, with a cool, misty morning to start with. Our roads were mostly sealed roads but we had a lot of small rural roads today, even some unsealed red laterite roads (and we ended up once having to turn back once as well, because our trail was dead-ended).