Cycle Tour - Day 2

Instead of waking up to scooters tooting their horns, or the sound of street market vendors selling their early morning wares, we awoke to the sound of silence, which after 2 months was slightly disconcerting.

When I finally got my bearings and stopped freaking out over what insects were making some weird sounds outside, it was time to meet our tour group for breakfast before hitting the road for another 60km day of riding back to Chiang Mai. Jamie's health has improved slightly from the previous day and I was probably now at about 90%. Still not ideal when we were about to ride in the 33 degree heat again.

After serious fluid ingestion, we departed the hotel around 9am, and rode about 10km before making our first stop at a happy Buddha and enormous Buddha. After the obligatory photo taking and a look inside the temple, we continued on until we came across a local village Crematorium. Wanna explained that when a Buddhist dies, depending on your wealth, there is a 1-3 day mourning period (# of days dependant on the family's wealth as you need to feed the visitors each day). During this time, the deceased is embalmed and placed in a house where people can pay their respects and the family provides the visitors food/drinks. After the 1-3 days, the deceased is taken to the crematorium, where family, friends and monks pray before the coffin is taken either to an outside pyre to be burnt or the oven crematorium. In the north, the choice is normally the pyre, but this method has been banned in the south, and there is pressure from the government on northern villages stop them using the old ways.

If the pyre is chosen, the coffin is placed on top of dry wood and old tyres, where the family will pay their final respects by offering food, cigarettes and money to the deceased (items which they believe the deceased can take with them on their journey into reincarnation to start their new life). When the final goodbyes are said, the family leaves and the caretakers light the dry wood and tyres and stay with the deceased until the burning is complete which often takes 2 days. Once complete, a small portion of the ashes are normally split into three, one portion is kept in an urn at the house, one is spread in a place like a river and the other is sent to the local temple. The remainder of bone and ashes is then swept into a mound of dirt adjacent to the outside burial pit. When we observed the pit, fragments of bone and ash were evident near the surface. While this method is more traditional, it does take a lot longer than if an oven cremation was selected (which takes about an hour).

After a slightly morbid stop, we continued on to the most impressive temple I have seen to date, which was used by the Princess of Chiang Mai before she married the Prince of Thailand, marking the joining of Northern and Southern Thailand. We learnt how to pray which differs if you are female or male and discovered that some senior monks don't necassarily follow the simple life teachings of Buddha with private jets, large houses and 5 star holidays being acquired. After some ice cream and some amazing rice cakes covered in a chocolate flavoured icing, we cycled another 15km or so to Huay Tung Tao lake, a small recreational lake where locals visit to eat lunch at lakeside restaurants, to do a spot of fishing, feed the crazed fish or have a quick dip. We did 2 of the 4 and feed the fish, which resulted in a fish frenzy and had a spot of lunch in a small hut by the lake.

After lunch, it was another hour of cycling before we reached Chiang Mai, where we had to negotiate peak hour traffic and small back streets. We fortunately got back to our hotel in one piece. We got an obligatory team photo, said our goodbyes and made our way to our room for a quick rest in the beautiful air conditioning.

We decided to make a quick trip to the night market, before we headed for dinner, however, it didnt take long for my headache to return, and it was time to get a quick banana shake sugar infusion before another bout of heat stroke took hold. Dinner was a quick affair, as sleep was now more important. It will be nice when we are both returned to full health.Read more