It’s certainly different waking up to chirping birds and colorful butterflies, not to mention the 74° morning temps. Everything is still very green and verdant as the rainy season is hanging on.  Birds and butterfly continue thru the day, geckos and crickets fill the night air with sounds when it’s dark.

Fortunately we’ve only missed one day of cycling due to the rain, and I’ll admit it was welcome because my ass wasn’t yet ready for an all-day ride. [Two days missed as of this morning] But I’m getting in the mileage, just not like the dry season.

Our unit this year is one the right with the red sarong on the chair.  We already posted our back door photo with the before and after flood waters.

One thing we’d like to note: The only time we get chop sticks in Thailand is when we order Baa-Me-Nam, a yellow noodle soup with several versions of pork balls and meat slices. It’s surprisingly hearty and filling. Cost is $1.05 with Chinese tea.

At least once a week we eat at this Thai couple’s food cart for lunch and order their very popular BaaMeNam.  They are part of the Trang Cycling community and often go on the overnight cycling trips to the islands with us. Mr. Wat is a competitive mountain bike racer at well over 100 kilos.  We only speak in laughs and show each other photos on our mobile devices.

Thai people often eat soup for breakfast or they can get Khoa-Man-Guy, a steamed white rice with several slices of boiled chicken on top.  For breakfast we prefer the yogurt and German Muesli we purchase by the kilo at the supermarket.

On rainy days I can always spend more time studying Thai.  Right now I’m trying to catch up to last year, remembering the 44 consonants and practicing the 24 vowels (which are diagrammatic marks before, above and below the consonants). I’ve never gotten very far into the vowels as that involves tones (low, high, neutral, rising and falling).  I can just barely read a word (a short word), because they don’t put any spaces between words – sosentencesrunwithoutbreak (the articles and prepositions are implied). The New York Times called it cognitive overload in a recent article on learning a second language, because native speakers speak at 250 WPM and non-natives struggle at 100-150 WPM.

ดูเหมือนว่าฝนกำลังจะตก  – “It looks like it’s going to rain” is an example. Then you need to parse the sentence when they speak/write, “looks like think rain ing will fall”. The experts say the best way to learn to speak Thai is to read it first.  See Dick Run is yet to happen.