We got up early after a wonderful cool night at the Narathiwat hotel. We ate some good cake and iced coffee for breakfast and got on the road before 8 a.m.

The wind died down overnight, as always, so the morning was still and fairly hazy. We took a back road that followed the coast closely. Often only 100 feet of grass-covered sand and palm trees separated us from the beach.

Navigating proved a little tricky. Some of the road signs have English transliterations but many don't, especially on the back roads. We tried to memorize the script for the large towns we planned to pass through. For instance, we might describe the symbols for a town as "backward-h-with-horn, squiggly-equals, T-with-hat, Devil-J." Fortunately Thailand uses highway numbers too (Malaysia and Indonesia rarely used route numbers) and they use the same number symbols we do.

We got lost a couple times and had to ask for directions. Many times. When we asked, we just pointed in a direction and said, "Pattani?" and whoever we asked would either agree or disagree and point in a different direction. (Joan: this asking method is risky because many people just want to agree with you, so we were afraid they wouldn't correct us when we were wrong. But they did).

We ran into a couple of dead ends, rode on some fun single-track for awhile, and crossed a rickety wooden footbridge. Somewhere in there we rode through what looked like people's backyards, and a huge bicycle graveyeard, with several hundred bike parts, mostly wheels, in a big pile. It was a lot of fun to be off the map. Everyone waved and yelled "hello" and I think some of the kids were trying to yell "I love you." (Joan: We heard this all over SE Asia but it sounded more like "Olive You" or "All of you.")

We saw an old man squatting in the grass holding a long rope that led up to the coconuts near the top of a tree. We had seen this many times as far back as Bali. The man didn't tug on the rope. He just sat there and watched. I followed his eyes and finally I figured out what was going on. He had a monkey on the other end of the rope, and he must have trained it to harvest the coconuts. (Joan: later in Thailand, we saw signs advertising to tourists "Monkey Work Coconut" shows).

We stopped at a very new looking food stall for some drinks. A man showed us the menu he had written in very nice Thai script (Joan: we couldn't actually read the script of course, but it looked nice). We had already told him we only wanted drinks. I think he just wanted to show us the menu because he was proud of it.

While we were drinking, he also brought out a big fish gun to show us. It looked a lot like the ones we saw on Borneo, but bigger. He enthusiastically posed for a photo. (Joan: he also taught us how to say "iced coffee" (sounds like cow-fay yin) and "one more." I forget the phrase for "one more." He understood us fine when we used it on him, but no one else did. Later we found out that the phrase he taught us actually meant, "Would you like one more?")

The road turned a lot and changed from pavement to gravel. We kept getting to unmarked intersections (Joan: basically, we didn't have to worry about reading road signs the first few days in Thailand, because there weren't many). When there was no one around to ask, we just guessed. Somehow we got to the next town, Sai Buri.

We got some iced coffee at a shop in busy Sai Buri. The shop looked old on the outside but had a 27-inch TV and a video CD player (for bootleg movies is my guess). Inside a gang of middle-aged men watched a Michael J. Fox movie (I didn't recognize it) dubbed into Thai. Outside men played checkers at concrete tables and benches, using bottle caps for checkers.

We should have eaten lunch instead of just drinking iced coffee. (Joan: it took us several days to realize that it was iced coffee, usually made with sweetened condensed milk, that was giving us the runs all day. At that coffee shop I got them bad and had to go to the bathroom and spent an eternity trying to look up the word for bathroom in our guidebook, and then cross-reference the word, which has a certain intonation, which the intonation guide on a previous page. The word is "hong swon" or something like that. I'm sure I didn't say it right, but it worked).

We pushed on to Panare. The road followed the coast again. It was so hot we stopped twice to swim in the ocean. We didn't bother changing, we just walked in with all our clothes. We took bets on how long it would take to dry. The front of my shirt dried after about 30 minutes of riding. My shorts and Joan's pants took about two hours. The back of my shirt never dried until I took it off for the day because of the continuous sweat. In this heat my body is like a burlap sack full of water--every pore drips water.

We hoped to have lunch in Panare. The first place we stopped at didn't have food except for some white bread with a coconut-honey spread. We passed a place where I could see people eating so we stopped there. As we tried to park our bikes against the wall, I noticed alot of rearranging of tables and chairs. Then most of the people who were eating left. I was afraid this was just someone's house and not a food stall after all. But they quite graciously showed us where to sit down, then a middle-aged man said something to us in Thai that we didn't understand at all.

So he motioned to me to come over to where he stood. He showed me four or six plastic containers of various foods. He pointed to the first one, which contained some triangular tofu-looking things. I nodded. He pointed to the next one, which contained translucent grapes. I nodded enthusiastically. The next one had a licorice-colored jello cubes. I nodded to that too and he seemed surprised. I was kind of worried.

He had a large device that looked like a drill press but is actually a machine for making shaved ice. He put all the stuff I noded to in a bowl then covered it with shaved ice, and poured a little sweetened condensed milk into the ice. The whole thing tasted great. Even the jello cubes. Too bad what we really wanted was a big bowl of noodles. (Joan: I had the same thing, and after my last condensed-milk attack, I was really worried this would make me sick. Also I was already on a sugar buzz and really really needed a meal. But it tasted great anyway).

As we ate we discovered that the man and woman were teachers who could read English fairly well, although they had difficulty speaking or understanding it. Their 14-year-old daughter goes to school 1,000km away near Bangkok but was home on school break. She had a better ear, though clearly her mother had a better vocabulary.

We quickly warmed to this family. They seemed quite happy to have us visit their shaved ice shop. We gave the girl and her little sister some Malaysian and Singaporan change. They insisted on exchanging gifts, and gave us some old, out-of-circulation Thai coins and a model boat from Bangkok. Then I played Scotland the Brave for them and they applauded loudly. It felt great to be in a country where people applaud. Few people clapped in Indonesia or Sarawak on Borneo, except to get your attention.

We stayed a long time and they kept putting more shaved ice in our water glasses. When we finally tried to leave it felt like we were saying good-bye to old friends. I love these kinds of afternoon stops.

The afternoon wind was in full swing out of the east. Fortunately the coast makes a western swing at Panare and we had a wonderful tail wind all the way to Pattani.

Next: Pattani to Songkhla

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