Motorcycles rock!

Chiang Mai and the North

As I had a four-day weekend due to some holiday I know nothing about, I decided to go to either Chiang Mai in the mountains 800km to the north. Once again it took me around 3 hours to get to Bangkok’s northern bus station and once again it was in a state of utter chaos. There were around a hundred of these and they were all fully booked save one. I got a bus on a 7:30 first-class bus (identical in every way to a second class bus except that the price is twice as high). It didn’t actually move anywhere til 10, then an obnoxious Thai movie was belted over the speakers as we hauled to Chiang Mai for a 7AM arrival.

Walking towards city center, I came across a few dozen tour stores – Chiang Mai is one of those tourist gateways where every 3 out of 4 shops are trying to sell you the same packages out of town. The popular items were 2-10 day treks to see hill tribes living on remote mountain-tops, cooking classes, trips to the golden triangle to see long-necked women and opium, and journeys into the jungle to trek, raft and ride elephants. One trip of the latter variety was leaving 10 minutes after I reached one shop so I threw down my 20 bucks and hopped on board.

I don’t know why I was expecting an air-conditioned minibus, but this is clearly not the norm in this part of the world – our tour piled the 8 of us into the back of a pickup truck where we could suck on exhaust and nearly bounce off with every pothole we hit for the 2-hour ride to the wilderness. After half an hour, I convinced the driver to let me ride up front where there was AC, music, and fascinating commentary on the people and animals we were running over. We came across a number of machete-wielding tribes harvesting tropical fruits – it was in our itinerary to stop and visit one of their villages, but our driver claimed it wasn’t worth it as they had been corrupted by their proximity to the city – judging from the satellite dishes alongside the bamboo huts, I’m inclined to believe him.

When we reached the major tourist outpost, the mahouts guided us onto our elephants – it was fairly difficult to understand these guys as they only seemed to know one monosyllabic grunt and used it to direct both us and the elephants; fortunately, they reserved the use of the steel mallets for the animals. They had me straddle the elephant’s neck which was much more interesting than riding on the platform as I was always falling off to one degree or another. The beasts were led down a series of steep embankments and tried their best to shake their pesky passengers. At one point, a little man in a bamboo tower sold us a bunch of bananas to feed to the elephant – this was a bit like loading artillery – the trunk would swing up, a banana would be dropped down each of the holes, it would swing back down, and a minute later it would be time to reload. After disembarking, a baby elephant rushed over and stepped on my foot, then proceeded to charge one of the other tourists – it’s unclear whether he was just being playful or legitimately wanted to kill us.

At lunch I met a man who might just have the most boring job in the world - he was in charge of monitoring the standard for the freezing and boiling points of water in Singapore. As far as I can tell, he just sits around and reports on any significant changes and confers with his counterparts around the globe. Hardly able to contain his excitement, he related: "This past month it changed by a millionth of a degree Celcius - you can imagine things were pretty crazy down at the lab then!"

Afterwards we set out on a brutal track up a steep, muddy slope with only bamboo walking sticks to keep us from sliding back down. Next we dropped down a narrow walkway to a massive waterfall and proceeded to hike back along the river. The trail zigzagged back and forth across the raging rapids a few dozen times; since I was the only one wearing shoes, the guide would give me alternative routes to get across which usually involved scaling trees or making meter-long bounds from rock to rock. In the end, we all got thoroughly soaked but were quite relieved to escape with our lives.

White-water rafting was next; they claimed that because of the rains, the normal class 3 and 4 rapids had been ramped up to 5 and 6. Now, if I remember correctly, 6 means impassible, but over here I can hardly see that as being a deterrent. There was no safety briefing beyond “if you fall in, swim really fast towards shore” (no throw ropes on this boat). The guide had only two commands – “go” and “ok”; he apparently didn’t know the word “stop” so he would use “ok” for that along with a half dozen other things (such as “keep going”).

We headed back to town and I spent the evening checking out the candle festival where hundreds of people walked in circles with candles. I found a guesthouse that gave me my own room with a hot shower for $2.50; a cockroach crawled onto my leg no more than half a second after I sat on the bed, but it otherwise seemed like a decent enough place.

In the morning I set about finding a motorbike to rent; at first I signed up for a 100cc manual, but when the owner saw me attempt to drive away and nearly cause an 8-car pileup, she stopped me and said “please just take your money back and never ride a bike again!” So I went down the street and got a fully automatic 115C for a buck more ($5/day total). A motorcycle has to be favorite mode of transport thus far – it goes from zero to ridiculously fast in no time at all, you can ignore any and all traffic rules and just do whatever is most convenient at any given time, and a full tank of gas costs right around 2 bucks.

The traffic out of Chiang Mai was a bit hairy, but I made it to Mae Rim without any spills and ran up the road to “Jungle Bungy.” I hadn’t really had any desire to bungee jump, but this was probably the cheapest I’d be able to find, so I decided to go ahead and get it out of the way. From the ground, 50m didn’t look very high at all, but with my toes at the edge of the platform, it was hard to imagine being any higher. With a 99.9% chance of survival (much better than taking a motorcycle through third world traffic), it’s purely a matter of overpowering instinct with statistics, but even with that in mind, I was fairly freaked out; still, when the command came, I plunged head first and jerked back after about 48 meters of freefall (I had wanted to be dunked, but given their limited English skills, I wasn’t sure how to ask for this without risking a deadly misunderstanding); they left me dangling and bobbing for the next few minutes before pulling me down. All-in-all it was one of the sillier ways I’ve found to spend $35 bucks.

Down the same road was a national park with 10 large waterfalls. The Thai admission price was 20 Baht, while for foreigners it was 10 times this, though no other park made any mention of this fee, so I’m inclined to think the booth operators here just drew up the sign in their spare time.

Another 50K down the road were the Chengdao caves. These had several miles of tunnels with elaborate formations throughout. When I attempted to enter the first of the dark passageways, a random guy showed up and said “100 Baht”; when I asked him why I needed to pay this, he responded “100 Baht”; a few meters beyond him was a sign explaining that you were required to hire a guide as you would otherwise get hopelessly lost, but I wasn’t about to pay $2.50 for someone whose entire English vocab consisted of a demand for his fee, so I picked up my trusty torch and set off into the darkness. I soon became completely lost, but luckily there were a few dozen other groups passing through and I was able to follow one to the exit.

From there, I went up through the mountains to Fang. Along the way, I ran into the first of a long series of torrential downpours – this would be one disadvantage to the whole motorbike approach – it’s hard to avoid getting completely soaked and each raindrop feels like a tiny dagger in your skin. Fang was just a city with little to offer so I headed on to Tha Thon; the onset of darkness added a degree of difficulty as the frequency and size of bugs hitting my face increased exponentially, and, at the same time, it got much harder to see anything with my sunglasses on. Tha Thon was a tiny town on the river with the sole purpose of starting tourists on the trip downstream to Chiang Rai; I grabbed a room for $2.50 and passed out.

I paid an exorbitant 50 cents for a hand-drawn map of the area which listed all the natural wonders and hilltribe villages but didn’t elaborate on how to identify turns and didn’t distinguish between paved and gravel roads. I never managed to find the infamous long-necked women, but at any rate, the whole scenario of marching in at 8 on a rainy Saturday morning and “visiting” the village seemed a bit awkward to me.

The scenery through the hills was nothing short of spectacular, with straw huts and rice fields backed up against verdant mountain sides and jagged black cliffs throughout. Villagers in wide-brimmed hats worked in the fields and herded buffalo down the road.

There were periodic glimpses of civilization, including the “tourist village” of Mae Salong. Here, dozens of shops sold preserved fruits and herbal teas, and women clothed in traditional dress tried repeatedly to sell me beaded necklaces; people don’t seem inclined to understand “not interested”, so I’ve adapted an approach where I turn the tables and try to sell them stuff from my pockets (usually a spoon or rubber band).

I went over a few more mountains to the border town of Mae Sai. Here there were loads of markets selling crap brought over from cheaper Myanmar. The rental place had held on to my passport, so I wasn’t allowed to scurry back and forth across the friendship bridge and add another country to the list.

Just down the road was the legendary Golden Triangle where the three nations met; the ultra-modern “Hall of Opium” museum cost a ludicrous 300 baht for foreigners, so I opted for the 20 Baht “House of Opium” which featured detailed instructions on how to grow your own, harvest it and smoke it, and had many cases full of pipes and other paraphernalia.

It was a quick 50K to the city of Chiang Mai. Here, zero-visibility rain and flooding mingled with rush-hour traffic to make for a terrifying ride into town. I desperately searched for a guesthouse where I could grab a few hours of shelter, but with no map or guidebook less than six years old, it wasn’t an easy quest. I stumbled upon the “Red Rose Hotel” which was surrounded by castle walls and a moat and, for each room, had a cartoon theme; I inquired into the Jetsons bubble, but at $20 a night, it wasn’t competitive with the $3 “Beer Garden” guesthouse down the road.

I took off at 6 on the scenic route to Chiang Mai; I could see the various weather systems converging from all sides, but each time it looked as if I would get drenched, the road would suddenly veer off in a new direction and I’d pass unhindered through a sunny valley. I’d overcome most of my fears of falling off my bike and dying, and so kept up a steady 80kph pace over all the windy mountain roads. At one point, I raced a Thai with the same model bike through one hairpin-turn after another.

After 180km I reached the city and one of the best rides of my life. The roads were dry and I was able to take full advantage of the lax traffic laws, cruising down the imaginary middle lane, dodging through swarms of bikes, and punching it up to 100 to cut across three lanes cars; it was like some incredible video game, where instead of losing a few thousand points when you screw up, you die. In the old city, I flew down one narrow alley after the next, avoiding pedestrians, food vendors, and animals; in one place, a ramp had been set up which I could use to hop over a wall to the next block, but sadly, my skills weren’t quite up to this level.

I spent the rest of the day exploring the city on foot; Chiang Mai has a higher wat density than anywhere else on the planet with over 300 in a few square kilometers. Besides these, there are plenty of markets and other diversions oriented towards grabbing up foreign currencies. The tourist bus that night gave us blankets so they could crank the AC up to “arctic”; there was no movie or reading lights, so we just sat there shivering til the 5am arrival in Bangkok. As usual it was impossible to find the right bus, but I got back just in time for my first class of the day.

One of a few hundred wats