Rides on the left side

Happy belated Chinese New Year!
    It's not really a big holiday in Thailand, but I did get scared by a few rounds of fireworks during the day. Last year on Chinese New Year I was in this psychedelic Mardi gras riverboat cruise in the Pacific Ocean.  I was having an epic time dancing with my Eileen, but kept tripping on these popped balloon pieces. I was repeatedly looking at the floor trying to dance around them, I see a bill lying on the floor, I pick it up, I think it's a dollar, I move my thumb, it's a hundred!   I took it as an auspicious sign that it was going to be an extremely lucky year for me, and it was!  This year I was riding my bike, I rode it out past the police checkpoint. Beyond the fields of coconut palms and rice, swinging the curves of the road marveling at the sky, a wash  in the peace of the silent road leading out if the city. I just kept riding and riding, the air became cool and sweet and the forest rushed in to surround the road. Filtering soft late afternoon light through the layers of leaves. I rode so far that I ran into Cambodia, I like being able to inadvertently almost wind up in another country. I looped my bike back around and traced my path back to the city. When I arrived I stopped to buy a green tea, I've become addicted to these genmaicha green teas they sell here, I reach in the pocket of my goofy assed red white and blue golfer plaid shorts searching for my money..,,, and there's nothing to be found! Doh! So this year on CNY I lost a hundred baht note, the good news is that that's only about three dollars.  So I don't know what that's an auspicious sign of!  
       What I do know is that this morning I followed my intuition and started turning down random streets on my bike, I rode out past a small reservoir I followed a motorbike with mother driving and daughter sitting side saddle, off the paved road and onto the dirt. I'm off off off off the beaten path, people look at me the same way I'd look at Thai person riding their bike down Andrew county road 337. With a sense of funny wonder, they kinda smile and shake their head. There are cows in the road, chickens , ducks, and turkey's play seek and eat in the red dirt. I'm just enthralled, I decide to get lost in it and find my way back out eventually. I just turn and turn down these roads, now there are the most green rice paddies to date that are flanked on either side with the Martian red earth road twisting into the horizon.  More tapioca fields and motorbikes, there will always be motorbikes. Though mostly I'm alone in the farmland. At some point I glance behind me to see a man on a bicycle. The voice of mother clicks on in my head, something like " what are you doing out here in a foreign country all alone, and now some man is following you on a bike, anything could happen to you!" I pondered the odds of that being the likely case. I turned around and smiled at him, he rode right on by. I find a cozy spot in the shade and break out my uke and a mangosteen. I strum chords enjoying the stellar views the paddies offer me. I'm strumming and humming and thinking if just how lovely this day is, I glance at the ground, four leaf clover. They've been following me around this year, this makes number four. I don't look for them either, I just turn around and they're there! I always take it as a little wink from the divine.
       Folks stare at a farang playing a yellow uke in the middle if the rice paddies as they ride by doing there daily activities. I decide to ride on. I just keep going and going and I sort of think I know where I am, an it hits me! I have no idea where I am! Awesome panic! But I turn right and find I'm right where I need to be, back at the reservoir. Mmmmmhmmmmmm Thailand I love you! I am enjoying all the rural small town goodness as I know I will soon rush headlong into the tourist circuit of Cambodia and who knows where! Hey guess what? I got you in my pocket! Let's adventure! Lovins  to ya!
Gretchynfetchynling