Day 92 - Towns beginning with "P"
We "Grabbed" our breakfast this morning and ate at the same nice table downstairs in the hotel which we'd had dinner at. It was more of the baguette sandwiches, one for the morning and two for the road...and they were really good!
We set off in our DRY lycra (usually hand washing it means it's damp in the morning but there was a machine with a good spin last night) after nearly 8 hours of sleep feeling good. We did a quick blast of tourism around the city before we left.
They've done that "make a centre and tourist attraction" thing, but actually very well, and we did a nice loop around the circular lake before heading off once again in the same direction as the wind! 😁😁😁
It's all based around this tower made to look like panpipes and notice how all of the lights and details in the park are also mini panpipes!
Komoot did an exceptional job at our route today and after a short stint on a bigger road to begin with, we were fast, empty B roads almost all day - although suppose we should thank Thailand mostly!
Okay, there was a little bit of sand!
Emma was complaining about not having had enough coffee stops recently, and it was once again very hot so we managed to fit in no fewer than three coffee/iced drink/bubble tea stops and the minumum distance AND somehow still arrive in the light! One of the stops we waited past the first options for a cold drink because it so often happens that something better comes up a few hundred metres later in town proper. We were rewarded by some shaded seating but slightly disappointing drinks selection. Just as we were about to leave we spotted people walking away from next door with bubble teas. Curious, we discovered a really nice looking cafe just next door! Typical 🙄 we even just said...don't worry though - we had fancy drinks very shortly afterwards.
From top left clockwise: Iced coffee, haul of cold drinks, real fruit juice slushie and two bubble teas!
We were told by the French family as we left Laos yesterday that Thailand has great, quiet side roads and coffee every 50m. Well, we can confirm it's true!
Just some fun things we saw today!
We enjoyed our early arrival and then were glad we were early, as all the restaurants seem to close at 8pm here. There was some wandering around the many very cool looking, but very, very meat-heavy menu restaurants in the town before we found the tofu pad thai Emma has been craving since we arrived in the country. She liked it, all I could taste was burning, but the pot of tea was very nice and banoffee pie was banging!
The waiter mentioned that there was a fair on in town, so we decided to wander back through it, and that turned into quite the evening of food stalls and entertainment! We started off with some deep fried tofu on a stick, wandered into a ice cream shop with the best ice cream we've had since Day 1, bought a kilo of dragonfruit to munch on and then sat down to support our local futsal team.
Sadly we lost on the final penalty so dejected, but pleased for our visiting rivals, we continued our wandering. The next stop that drew my attention was a stall selling fried crickets! Insects are really the future of feeding humanity as the lowest CO2 and highest density protein, so I decided I needed to try. And it was on the "bucketlist". My nerve nearly broke as the lady before me was served a great bag of the things. We got chatting after she did some basic translation - they're very friendly here - and I ended up with a small bag for 90 cents, quite a lot more than the 1 taster I was aiming for. I decided not to test it in front of the stall and stall customers in case I couldn't handle it.
In fact, it wasn't until after 3 more bites of weird and wonderful street food, one Chinese show and then sitting down to watch the live band that I finally had the courage to try my snack. But they were really good! Really tasty and not weird to eat once you had got the thing in your mouth! I was actually very glad I had a bag.
What a day! We'd somehow managed good distance, coffee stops, arriving in the light and still had time for a great evening. We had also finally arrived at the right time for an event for once rather than just after it had finished as per the rest of the trip. We both commented how the day would not have been possible in India...for so many reasons! We like this town - it has a Plovdiv vibe, which is to say very nice and with deep history. It's clearly something about towns with "P"...
Food spend today: 57.81
Tea consumption: 7