In preparation for the Bike ride to Loei, Martin and I cycled to Sawang Daen Din today using the red din roads. Once there we looked for the two farang bars that are supposed to be there to the south of highway 22 but failed to find them so ended up having Brunch in KFC in Tescos.We took a slightly different route back but again keeping to the quieter back roads and avoiding the main highways. The total distance was 98k in approx 5 hours..
Andrew
Flame Vine
The Flame Vine or orange trumpet vine ( Pyrostegia venusta), a South American native which puts on a display of orange flowers has started to come out in flower . It is perhaps one of the most spectacular flowering vines.
Project Mapping
Have restarted mapping the roads again after a lull of two years. Have give an Eddie a copy of my first map which covers the roads to all the surrounding Amphoers. I am currently working on the next release and hoping to add all the 140 villages within Amphoer Bandung. Unfortunately the only way of doing it is visiting every village and writing down their names – all the village names are in Thai so I am matching them against my list of all the village names to ensure I translate them correctly.
Drainage Project
Have started to drain the water in the boggy land behind the dam by cutting a small drainage ditch in the small secondary dam. It will take a few weeks for the water to drain and the land to dry out and then I can put a permanent drainage pipe in place . It should make another few rai of land available for planting some more trees
Excursion to Sangkom
Today was cool & overcast so went up to Sangkhom & then back via Ban Yuat to re-familiarise myself with the roads in that area.
http://www.bandunglife.net/maps/ban-dung-to-sang-khom/
Off road to Ban Muang
Went today to have another go at finding an Off road route to Ban Muang. This time I was more succesfull and only took two wrong turnings; one cost cost me about 6k as I had to double back. On the second attempt I took the wrong route again out of the same village – this time there was no need to double back but emerged 6k out of Ban Muang instead of the expected 3k.
I stopped for 5mins in the Local Temple for a drink before setting off back.
On the Return Leg I took a slightly different route before rejoining the outgoing route at NongKwang. It is probably possible to rejoin the route further on but after being out for over 4.5hrs I decided to take the safer option. If I had missed a turning I could have ened up miles out of may on the road to Sawaeng Daen Din.
The Total Route took me 6hrs 40mins . See http://www.bandunglife.net/maps/ban-dung-to-ban-muang/ for route details
Birds & Bees
Went to have a look around the lake today. Whilst I was there I noticed that a pair of Green Bee Eaters had returned and also a pair of Kingfishers
New Route to Sawaeng Daen Din
Explored a new route to Sawaeng Daen Din & only 2k longer than going by boring Road. On the way there I missed the turn offs as the villages had different names to those shown on Maps. I eventually emerged onto Highway 22 , 10 k out of SDD. The choice then was either to come back the safe way or try & find the tracks on the return leg. I opted for the latter option and successfully found the way back without any detours. I then took a longer road back to Dong Yen so I could fill in another couple of tracks I hadn't done before. Total journey time was 6hrs without any stops.