Grand adventures start early. Fairly often, they start too early. For those fond of late nights and fermented drink, it makes for cloudy beginnings. And on this auspicious day, the weather matched my mindset. Cloudy, with a chance of chaos.
As per usual, there was a delay. It involved children, fine silk dresses and a frenetic morning delivery. The details are hazy to me, even now. What it meant was starting one hour later than planned. I looked at my bed and sighed. It had practically begged me to sleep in and I foolishly arose anyway.
Once underway, it occurred to me that perhaps riding with a relaxed, some might say "unfocused", mind and normal pulse rate might be a bad idea. We were pushing north through the early morning roadway mayhem, fighting the city's working residents and overloaded delivery vehicles beginning their daily routes. As I cruised lazily in the left lane, a truck overloaded with Burmese laborers swooped into my lane just a few feet in front of me. Instantly, all I could see were brown, undersized people in dirty clothes all staring at me and the bike as if I were in storm trooper gear riding a bantha. Because I generally prefer seeing the forward space that I am hurdling into, I quickly swerved into right lane, only to discover the reason the other vehicle had quickly swerved into my lane… Somechai the farmer in his rusty old truck, stopped completely in a high speed lane, turn signal on to indicate a right turn, directly beside a large sign saying in both Thai and English "No U-turn". Time did that helpful slowing down thing, like in The Matrix. I touched brakes but realized quickly there was no way I'd ever stop in time. I threw the bike and myself back to the left as hard as I could. The very end of the handle bars and my knee took a hard thump, enough to actually jolt Somchai's pick'em up, but I survived the incident.
I was now very, very awake.
Breathing a sigh of relief, I looked up to see 20 sets of Burmese eyes, wide as saucers, then slowly they all broke into large grins. Under the helmet, I was not smiling. My pulse was now 260/120 and my system felt like someone had just dumped a bucket load of stimulant into me. I pulled over to check the bike… and my trousers.
My riding buddy, henceforth "RB", pulled up alongside and said "I saw that unfold from about 20 feet back. From my angle, I could see why they swooped over in front of ya. When you veered around them on the right I was thinking 'oh damn'… are you ok?"
Preferring not to make a big deal out of it, I said "Yeah, whacked my knee pretty good, but the bike seems to be OK. Let's get out of here." I decided to stay in the left lane until we were clear of the disorder of the morning commute.
Once we were clear and the road went down to 2 lanes that wandered to and fro, my pulse returned to normal. We pulled into a gas station. A quick break for water and a tire check, then it was up the 107 to Chaing Dao.
Once there, we turned off on the 1322 and had an amazing 90 minute mountain ride out to Wiang Haeng, even passing a slithering 6 foot brown cobra along the way. The road was perfectly twisty the surface was good. A few scenic places to stop for shots (and to pee in the woods) along the way...
There wasn't much to the town of Wiang Haeng, but they did have a 7-11 and a small gas station. As we ate our off-the-shelf chemical lunches and drank a soda, I noticed there were quite a lot of hilltribe people in traditional dress, mixing with the locals. And although I could understand some Thai words here and there, it seemed far more local dialect was being spoken than "real" Thai. Or perhaps it was full Burmese. I shrugged it off as unimportant, but later this observation would come into play.
Our plan was to loop around using the 1178, which our map showed as a 3, on a scale of 1-5. Usable road that might be bumpy from lots of patchwork, but easily ridden on a street bike. We found the turn off and headed toward the border, only to find that the road quickly stopped being a road and turned more a rocky patch of dirt that many people obviously traversed. This road had obviously not been a 3 for a very, very long time.
We doubled back towards town and asked some locals how long the dirt portion of the road lasted, thinking perhaps it was only a few kilometers of rough surface, but then we'd hit some magical patch of great tarmac and continue our journey. No dice though, as we couldn't make ourselves understood. Even some teeny girls who had been flirting with us proved useless. RB got a Thai speaker on the phone and explained that we needed to know how long the bad portion of the 1178 lasted. In the meantime, I had called over the teeny girl gang that had gathered to stare at the oversized white invaders, and they began to fumble through awkward English greetings. One, obviously the leader, batted her 14 year old eyes, struck a pose and said "herro, my name is [enter something Burmese and impronouncable here], what is your…"
"Here" RB thrust his phone in her face "talk to my wife."
The device was passed to all 4 girls, but each quickly gave up trying to understand the jabbering Thai coming through the phone. They shook their heads and dismissed the phone as obviously dysfunctional. Then they went back to smiling and preening and posturing for us in a near-comical way. I am sure that in the remote areas a 14 year old needs to start thinking seriously about finding a husband, but in the farang world we need you to be about a decade older, honey. Sorry.
We asked another group of ladies, this time much older ones. They smiled kindly and indicated via hand gestures that this was indeed the right road, but that it was all dirt.
We returned to the 7-11. Or, I should say, I returned to the 7-11. Somehow RB disappeared over the last 10 kilometers back to town. I waited. Eventually he appeared, saying he'd pulled over because he saw a restaurant with a lot of English signage, thinking perhaps there might be a farang owner. No one working there spoke English, but one gal excitedly asked him to wait while an English speaker was fetched. Sure enough, the gal quickly returned with a tall, unconvincing ladyboy. She assured him that the upper part of the 1178 was unpassable in parts to all but dirt bikes. His speedbike and my naked would do us no good.
I looked up, smiled and said wistfully "All part of the adventure, right?"
So we doubled back through the mountains, having now added hours of extra riding to our day, but enjoying a fair amount of adventure along the way. Th weather had cooperated too, only occasionally sprinkling and cooling things off. We got back to the main road, the 107, and took it north to Mae Ai. It was a quaint little town. I was surprised to see a few other groups of farangs around. Backpacker types. Still, we were pretty far off the beaten path.
It was now past 4pm… 7.5 hours of saddle time had gone by… my knee was starting a steady, dull ache that I knew would turn into an impressive bruise and limp within a day. RB said "Do we push on to Mae Chan or stay here? There's quite a few little guest houses around that little river area."
I squinted up at the sky. All clear. Probably 2.5 hours of day light left.
He continued "I feel fine, man. Plenty of daylight left. Only an hour or so to go if we want to stick to our original plan."
I nodded and we pushed on, turning towards Mae Chan on the 1089. I'm glad we did. It doesn't happen often in a man's life, but sometimes god puts his big arm around you, pulls you aside and proudly says "let me show ya what I made". As RB pushed ahead, I lagged further and further behind. I was literally dumbstruck at just how beautiful this area was. It was like some CGI scene out of a Peter Jackson film. I was so amazed at times, it felt like an actual weight on my chest. I silently repeated to myself "Don't forget this, you wandering fiend… some things are worth locking away in your memory banks forever."
Eventually RB came speeding towards me, as he'd doubled back, questioning what had happened. I hand signaled that I'd been taking pictures, he nodded and we rolled on. This time he let me set the pace and just cruised behind me. We lazily wandered, as I tried to soak in all that I could. Whatever I'd done to earn this hour of stunning wonder, I can't imagine it. But I'm deeply grateful.
I wasn't the only one who seemed to have noticed how remarkable that area is. Along that route, as we passed through various small villages and towns, I noticed churches, mosques and uncountable temples. It seemed everyone wanted to pay homage to the creator for making this their home. I wanted to stop and take more pictures, but I knew I'd held us up long enough already.
We eventually arrived in Mae Chan and began the search for a hotel. RB had once stayed here with an NGO outfit, saying the hotel (RimChan Resort) was nice and priced reasonably and less than a mile up the road. We found it easily and the price was just 700 baht for a bungalow, including breakfast. Although the fixtures are quite old, the grounds are very open and kept up nicely. Hell, there's even a decent pool! As we chatted on the porches of our respective bungalows, a trio of Thai gals in their 20's strolled by, with very direct looks thrown our way. Two of the girls had fair sized tattoos on their arms and backs. Hmmm… what be this? They smiled, but moved on. After over 8.5 hours of riding, I wasn't too dead to notice them, but I didn't have the energy to pursue.
We unpacked and headed out for food and room snacks. On the way out of the hotel, I noticed something I hadn't before… along the entry way to the hotel there were several small massage shops… the kind with private rooms upstairs and a few 20-something cuties working in each. Now I knew where the gals had come from. There was even a night club, where I assume all the gals would likely congregate to drink and dance after work. A target rich environment to be sure.
Mae Chan didn't seem to have any restaurants that interested us, so we opted for street food (fried chicken), supplemented by 7-11 supplies (beer, chips, and Tylenol for my knee). We ate in the rooms, made our requisite calls home, then crashed early. All-in-all, it was a good day, though the 1178 dirt fiasco had cost us some hours. For me, the last hour along the 1089 between Mae Ai & Mae Chan had made all the difference. I made a promise to myself to return and ride that stretch again soon. And possibly have a massage.
Until next time…
