From Nat :o) 

Chiang Mai - Mae Hong Son - Chiang Mai

There are times in ones life when we listen to others… and there are times when dreams prevail. To some the idea of riding a motorbike in Thailand is complete lunacy (including Rick, the huge Q-Ride examiner whose words to Chris kept repeating in my head “you’re bloody mad! I’ve been there mate and there is NO WAY I’d ride there! Crazy!)…. But our adventure depended on it and nothing was going to stop us. We were in Chiang Mai, a city in the north of Thailand and we had a lot to see in the one free day before embarking on the ride of a different kind…. A home-stay at an elephant camp, that's another story in itself!

Immediately on arriving in this moated city we left our gear at a great little hotel we found (330 Baht a night, about au$10) and we were on the hunt for a bike. This proved to be a learning in itself. Mopeds galore! But bikes…. We finally came across “Tony’s Big Bikes”, a café that doubled as a bike hire agency run by an English guy. All seemed a bit odd, but odd is normal over there and trust is something that we had become accustomed to – so Chris handed over his passport and 4,000 Baht (about au$126), enough to hire a bike for a week. We had a couple of choices of bikes… old or older, all with varying degrees of bald tyres and reliability. Chris – my trusty chauffeur with all our bike knowledge, went for a walk down memory lane to his first bike in the 70's and had decided on a Honda 400 Four, two very bald tyres, no licence plate or rego sticker, but it was metallic gold, wooohoo! I am not sure what was worse – knowing all the crazy things he did as a kid on this ‘exact’ bike…. Or knowing I’ll be on the back of it! It was our first time on any thing bigger than a moped together – can he even ride? So on the bike we get, with the owners and on-lookers all looking to see how the ‘foreigners’ go in Thai traffic. Me, silently begging Chris to be ‘tame’ so they don’t come chasing us back! We launch ourselves into the traffic, it was a bit of an anti-climax, Chris and the bike behaved, we (I) relaxed. Other road users looked a lot less scary when you're in amongst them so we spent the afternoon tripping around Chiang Mai.

Above: Chiang Mai, traffic seemed less chaotic when you're in the middle of it!
Riding in Thailand as a pillion is entertaining to say the least. At stop lights you are so close you can rub legs! Traffic seems chaotic. Thanks to Chris’ keen sense of integration we found it all made sense, forget any western road rules, here, common sense prevails. It’s no point ramming someone if you have right of way, it’s highly likely there’ll be no insurance. The trick is that if you commit to cross an intersection or pull into traffic, do it, the locals make room and they expect the same from you, there’s no road rage, not even a raised eyebrow, but YOU WILL get run over if you hesitate. It must also be noted that nothing in English is spelt the same twice. So navigation can be interesting. 

Above: Don't hesitate, everyone seems to have a sixth sense with traffic, we missed her arm by an inch!

Next morning, 6am and we were up and prepared for the days journey. Decked out in cheese-clothe shirts, shorts and runners and the provided helmets – picture this, plastic salad bowls with straps, we were off.

Above: Complete with "salad bowl" helmets!

The concerned quizzical “is that all you’re wearing” from the doorman when we said where we were going was soon forgotten and the adventure began, anyhow, we were in Thailand, how cold could it get? It was a great ride going through many towns that I’m sure had not seen many ‘foreigners’ ride through. And in the small markets Chris, with his shaved head was delightful entertainment for the locals, “aaarrr…. Buddha” they kept saying with smiles all round! At about 10am we had left the major highway behind and were riding on a two lane road that changed from bitumen to concrete and back as it meandered it’s way up through a scenic hills on the way to Mae Hong Song. My calculations meant we had plenty of time to sightsee on our way. We took amazing detours on roads that trail bikers would be envious of (that were actually marked roads) to see beautiful waterfalls and caves.

Above: The scenery was spectacular, the Mo Paeng waterfall was near the "Bat Cave"!

Then we arrived at the mountains… and corners …. and more switch backs and curves … and did I mention corners? We were creeping up the range, getting cooler and cooler. We met a hill tribe market and Chris purchased this rather interesting (yes ugly), very bright jacket.

Above: Any colour you like, as long as it was bright!

A purchase I was amused over, if I had only known what was to come! We keep going…. and going…. up and down, around and around. This was where I realised, that in true Thai fashion, they make life easy and drew the very curvy road straight!

Above: We thought the ute driver was in trouble for overloading, until we realised the Police Ute chasing him had the rest of his gear in the back, on a straighter piece of road we encountered!
The ultimate goal was to reach Mae Hong Son to see the Karen tribe, otherwise known as “ladies with the long necks”. The women with brass rings around their necks, forearms and calves. With no common language we drew pictures of what we were after for the locals, eventually getting a mud-map directing us off the main road and into the hills. After riding through creeks and a narrow concrete track we arrived at the Karen village at 4pm…. 

Above: The Honda handled the creeks with ease!

It was here Chris advised me with a smirk that we were half way on our journey. Oh my … this was my bright idea, it looked so easy on the map, and it didn’t look that far to travel, damn, should have looked at the map scale! I was so excited to do it – what have I done?? Chris smiled and reminded me of the great adventure ahead, my enthusiasm had silenced any objections he may have had to this kamikaze journey, we could achieve anything we put our minds to!

Above: Comparing pony tails with a young girl from  the Karen Tribe, she'd just got home from school!

We had been riding for 10 hours and refuelled a couple of times, servos seemed to come up regularly, each refuel cost about 200 baht (approx $7au) but we had no idea how much fuel we were using, the bike was going great, the same couldn’t be said for me, I was starting to tire and my bottom was aching…. we were committed to the elephant training school the next day and had to push on.

Above: The views were amazing, that's Myanmar in the distance!

So push on we did. 
It became the race against sunlight. We rode like the wind. It was here Chris skills prevailed – ex-sprint car driver and he’d learnt to ride on the West Coast of Tasmania, roads like this were normal! For me it had become serious, corners, part made roads, bald tyres, it would have been a fantastic ride, if we had 3 days in daylight, but we had one day and the warmth and light was leaving us. Chris told me he was hoping for a truck or similar to come along so we could get a break from the cold, I thought he was humouring me to cheer me up, how could that help? As we started to descend from the mountains, along came the craziest truck driver I’ve ever seen, driving an 8 tonne pantec like it was a Ferrari. We sat close enough to warm up in the slip stream, who cares about fumes – they are warm! At first we thought this driver was drunk as he was driving so fast and erratically, careering down the mountain range, but we realised quickly he was braking early for corners and hazards, he wasn’t mad, just knew the road very well, we even got game enough to get closer. Sitting on speeds illegal in Australia, we realised this driver was looking out for us. He swerved to miss hanging branches that might have swept us off the bike, guided us onto the side of the road that wasn’t dirt, he was an angel in disguise. 100k on he pulled over at a truck stop and we all waved like old friends, his grin as friendly and mischievous as the Thai smiles we had become accustomed to from this fun loving race of people. 
We pressed on hoping to find another vehicle to follow and help us on our way! The gods were again smiling, out of a side road came an ambulance. So again we were in hot pursuit! I am not sure how long we were behind them when all but the ambulance driver (yes the patient included) had their noses pressed to the back window watching us! They were amazing, flashing lights, speeding through a valley, the road winding beside a river, which we glanced in our headlights as we rounded bends at breakneck speeds, though check points…. We weren’t going to loose the warmth on these empty roads so we followed them through, waving at the armed guards on the way, they seemed to be in the spirit of things and waved back, or were they half-hearted attempts to wave us to stop, we’ll never know? Fortunately for the patient and unfortunately for us the hospital arrived, but after 70k we couldn’t complain.

We continued alone, eventually we had to pull over to warm up. Poor Chris’s hands were so cold he couldn’t feel them and he was shivering uncontrollably. We were frozen into the mould of hunchback of Notre dame jumping up and down getting warm, what a sight. We were freezing…in Thailand????? Chris was wearing every map we had on his chest under his new coat to break the wind, a scarf the Karen tribe had made over his head…..Why didn’t I get a jacket instead of laughing at Chris’ bad taste?
The area is on the border of Thailand and Myanmar where there is a lot of unrest and military intervention, being westerners we seemed to be ignored! However, we made a pact – next check point, we stop as we had decided they may be ringing ahead and will shoot us if we don’t, the cold was making us paranoid! 

Again it was like all the Buddha’s were responding to our respectful bows at the temples we had seen days before. The full moon popped it’s head over the mountains and gave us the much needed extra light, the roads were getting larger and straighter and heading down from the mountains…. Around a bend and there…..oh my, party lights and a lit sign –must be food!!! Amen! We parked the bike and swaggered like a semi-frozen John Wayne into a timber hut decked out as a café. What a sight they were! Mum and dad, very tipsy and their two young sons, singing 60s Karaoke in Thai, having a ball. They looked at us as though we were mad as we tried desperately to explain we were cold and hungry. Us not knowing Thai, them not knowing English……Tea? Coffee? Soup? Rice? Hot? Pointing at pictures of anything warm on the menu and waving frantically over our mouth to show hot. “Ahhh” they kept saying and went off on their way. We sat down and out came the tea…. The delight of hot liquid…. Then the coffee. I wasn’t complaining. The soup – getting better; and finally the most divine rice meals I have ever eaten, seems they were cooking everything we’d pointed at! They all sat with us having a hilarious time ‘trying’ to communicate. They weren’t the first to indicate we were nuts, but were so caring, they wanted us to stay and rest in the room covered in Elvis posters, we did however have a couple of dances.

Above: Karaoke in the middle of no-where, what a fantastic couple, and THAT coat!

Sadly we had to push on. I’ll always remember the family lined up waving us off, the bright smiles this time dimmed by their looks of concern! 
The road had widened and now become a 4 lane highway, we had passed the hardest of the ride and was on the home straight (well kind of) at least it was getting toward sea level and was amazingly warm, well, we were more comfortable…. or were we numb? By now it was after 10pm and we were riding through built up areas, factories and shop fronts lined the road and all the hoons were out. Oh dear… Chris on his teenage bike… a man reliving his youth of 30 years past…. Yep we were dragging these guys at the lights. Whip them we did, a local ricer in a hot Honda Prelude, then a hotted up ute in our wake. I didn’t care, we were closing on Chiang Mai and we had set a goal to be home by midnight and if that means letting Chris revel in his youth –then put that foot to the floor!!!!!

We arrived back at the hotel on exactly mid-night, having travelled the windiest road I’ve ever seen, over 700k and 18 hours later. Without saying a word we flopped on the bed too exhausted to move, with the biggest grins plastered on our aching faces. Chris looked over and said “I’m sorry if I scared you going fast but I needed something to keep me awake”, I laughed, not caring about the speed –I replied, “The only time I was worried was when you first started sliding the back tyre around corners, but I got used to it”! He looked at me sheepishly, I laughed again, Chris is also my rock climbing partner, I trust him with my life often, what was once more!
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