Bike Love

I love my bike. Seriously, I love it. I feel like all I want to do is go out and ride it. I wake up in the morning and think about where I want to go on it that day. There is so much to see here, so many tiny nooks & crannies, and the town is so bike-friendly that I see it all at a nice relaxed pace. I'm getting fresh air, exercise, mental stimulation and entertainment all at the same time (and just maybe, in time, I'll get my pre-motherhood legs back too!). There are no screens to distract me. I grab one of the sweat rags handkerchiefs I bought in Ghana to mop my face, and off I go. It gives me an excuse to be alone, and if the girls want to come with me, I can only fit one at a time on the back, so they can't bicker. Sascha will ride on the back and mull over things out loud-- "What kind of tree is that?" "Why does their car look like that?"-- while Sophie will just sing and blabber on nonstop. I get them at their sweetest.

I just got back from about an hour and a half of riding in town. I found dozens of beautiful and fascinating side streets. Ducking down each one reminded me of when I was 11 and we first moved to England, how I'd spend hours exploring the area (this was long before helicopter parenting put the kibosh on those kind of unsupervised shenanigans), letting my mind wander along with the bike.  Poking through town without a plan makes me feel like that sweaty, flat-chested kid again. My little world was my oyster, and now over 30 years later, it is again.

Chiang Rai is cool. It's laid-back and accessible. I discovered the local version of Chatuchak Market! Much smaller, obviously, and more manageable, but what a find! I bought some fresh flowers from a smiley guy who taught me the proper way to say "beautiful" when I complimented his shop in Thai, and made me say it back a few times to practice. I bought a bag of rice from a woman with black teeth. I wanted to take pictures, but I couldn't decide where to shoot since I had 360 degrees of cool stuff on all sides of me. It's such a feast for the senses. I think I have a particularly sensitive sense of smell, because I ride through town like a dog with my nose in the air, taking deep breaths of smells that change every three seconds. Wood smoke, tea, incense, garbage, grilling meat, rain and wet greenery, fish sauce & lime juice, wood smoke again. Thailand, for the most part, smells fantastic.

Unrelated observations: The sun is pretty powerful here, even during the current rainy season when it's cloudy all day. I figured it would be, and I studied up on how best to care for my skin, but despite my 30 SPF efforts and frequent hats, my face skin feels kind of thick and rough. I do look tan, but that kind of stops being so great in your 40s when it brings dark blotches with it that don't fade with the tan. Urgh.

Before we came, I stocked up on some items I didn't know if we'd be able to get here. I've been pleasantly surprised to find that toothpaste and most cosmetics are widely available. The exception is deodorant, or rather the kind I like. It's roll-on and spray here, the end. And in the cosmetics department, skin-whitening products are wildly popular. This is oddly depressing to me. I've seen more than a few women who did a poor job of applying these products, and they have faint streaks of white on their faces.

Baking is not really a Thai thing, so in addition to most houses not having ovens (ours does, but it's tiny), it's hard to find baking pans. They're not big into dairy, either. Yesterday Nick and I went to the Thai version of Costco (oh yes!) and I was thrilled to find a wider selection of everything I hadn't found before.

I have no way to wrap up this particular post, I just wanted to gush about my great little bike. Until next time...