We've spent the past month traveling Thailand from Phuket, in the south, all the way up to the northernmost point, Mae Sai, on the Burmese border. Here's a summary of what we've seen and done in between.
After Ramsey (better known as Ramrod to many of you) flew in to Bangkok, we spent a very quiet New Years chatting in Shanti Lodge, while sipping some of Thailand's finest brews. After catching up on life and filling Ramrod in on our travels, we went to bed early, got up early and took a plane (weird) down to Phuket. After the most comfortable 45 minutes of travel in my entire life, we landed in Phuket. Ramrod and I studied the tourist map and, decided on a random destination for a hotel on the island. We headed for Kata, and couldn't have picked a more touristy spot. It worked out in the end, after Kerri was able to explain the complex relationship that she had with the seemingly related blond boys and that it would be okay if we shared one bed between the three of us.
After one day in Kata, we decided to splurge on a four-day SCUBA trip to the Similan Islands of the west coast of Thailand. We headed off for our boat one evening, arriving just in time to eat some delicious Pad Thai before setting off for the islands at night.
All three of us had just finished our certification courses, and while we took our certification course in Cambodia, where the visibility was pretty bad (~6 meters), Ramrod learned to dive off the coast in California where he couldn't barely see his own hands in the water and had to wear two wetsuits to keep from getting hypothermia while practicing the mundane exercises underwater.
We awoke the next morning at sunrise (you have to start early to squeeze in four deep dives), stepped out of our rooms to a sparkling green/teal color that I can't even really describe. I looked over the edge of the boat and realized that I could see all the way to the coral and white sand beneath us. The forty meter visibility was breathtaking and we hadn't even dipped below the water.
We spent the next four days following our instructor, Darren, who was wearing a full-length spiderman wetsuit. This turned out to be a good thing, as some of the sites were very crowded with other divers and its easy to get disoriented under water. Darren would swim along slowly kicking his fins in a froglike motion, and every so often would stop, bang his metal pointer on his tank to command our attention, and point at some unbelievable small, rare fish that was usually motionless and write its name on his chalkboard. Some of the highlights of the underwater life were sea turtles, leopard shark, sea horse, frog fish, octopus (who knew they could change color in and instant!? crazy), squid, clown fish, trigger fish, angel fish, and a ten foot MANTA RAY - awesome.
After we made it back to land, we were so broke from the dive trip, we told Ramrod that we were willing to do 20 straight hours on a bus to save fifty bucks on plane tickets to get to the north.
Twenty-four hours, and 2,000 kilometers later, we arrived sleepy-eyed and freezing cold (someone explain the deal the the air conditioning in hot climates) in Chiang Mai, a beautiful walled city with a moat in northern Thailand. We spent a day exploring Chiang Mai and hunting down bikes for Kerri and Ramsey, since I was lucky enough to buy one used in Bangkok (thanks Andrew). Making large purchases at the end of a large trip is a difficult thing to do and it usually means that you (or maybe its just me) will spend hours to find the best price.
We visited four or five bike shops until we saw a french traveler on a bike that looked like it would be perfect for Kerri, so she went up and asked him if he wanted to sell it. He didn't, but it turned out he bought it from a Chinese shop in Chiang Mai and drew us a map and explained in french how to get there. We said "merci" as best we could and took off with our chicken scratch map to find the bike shop.
We got lost. One hour later, I saw a guy with the same bike and asked him where we could buy it. He wrote me a note in Thai, told me to go down a street and show it to people until I found the bike shop. It worked! Thai people are super nice and friendly, even if they don't speak any English, they are always willing to help.
After we got Kerri hooked up with none other than the LA Spectrum for a bike, we rented Ramsey a bike, and I hopped on the Asama Sabotage, and we took off for Chiang Dao, a town in the mountains about 70 kilometers north of Chiang Mai. We arrived around sunset and settled in to a cute little guest house called Chiang Dao Rainbow, with a breathtaking view of the mountain. We celebrated Ramrod's birthday that night with some delicious cake-like thing that we bought at 7-11 and had a smashing time. The guest house was so nice and because Ramrod was sick, we hung out there all day enjoying the view of the mountain and watching the corn grow.
We left Chiang Dao and took another two days to complete our trip back to Chiang Mai on some very remote, rural roads. Our first mini bike trip with Ramsey was success and Kerri and I were getting ready to head off on a longer one after a few more days getting miscellaneous odds and ends in order in Chiang Mai. Two days later, we headed southwest to do the popular motorcycle route known as the Mae Hong Son loop.
We couldn't acquire any real topo maps of Thailand, so we settled for a road map of the whole country on a 1:1,500,000 scale with some shaded relief which was useful for picking out mountains and ridges in a very cartoonish way. It turns out, when you shrink something down to one million five hundred thousand times, you leave out some details. We soon realized that the road we were on (route 108, for the curious google mappers) was too busy, so we turned towards the mountains about 20 kilometers out of the city.
We couldn't have chosen a more difficult route if we tried. Literally. After two more days of struggling up some hills that Lance Armstrong would have been walking his bike up (or at least my bike, with fifty extra pounds on the back), we found ourselves on the highest road in Thailand. Seriously, this was the highest road we could have gone on, we were up around 2,300 meters on Doi Inthanon, the highest mountain in Thailand.
At one of our toughest points physically and emotionally (I promised Kerri I would spare the details) a man stopped his car and walked towards us looking very intimidating in a full camo military outfit. I was sure we were in trouble somehow, but just before we made a break for it, he started smiling and asked where we were going. He quickly realized how lost we were, and after a half hour of talking to us, he drew us a map and told us where we could find tents and a hot shower. Just when we thought the Thai people couldn't get any nicer, he pulled out a new trick that we hadn't seen, popped open his trunk and proceeded to pull out a beautiful bunch of roses and hand them to us. We had been riding uphill all day at this point, and I was tired, dehydrated, and starting to question my sanity when I saw the friendly military man hand us the bouquet of flowers from his trunk. Ahh, Thailand.
The route we took to get there was so obscure, that we managed to sneak into the most prized national park in Thailand without paying. We learned this from a friendly English fellow in a restaurant and he also informed us that we were headed for more hilly trouble (and a possible national park fee) if we didn't head back to the main road. He didn't have to tell us twice, in fact, I don't think he even told Kerri once, she heard the word hill and immediately was overcome by some of the intense emotions that she experienced the previous two days and tuned him out. Actually she did a really good job, especially considering how tiny her legs are and how heavy the LA Spectrum really is.
We booked it out of the mountains, and managed to loose all of the elevation that we had gained through our blood, sweat, and Kerri's tears over the past two days in just 30 kilometers and it only took 45 minutes.
To speed it up a little, we got back on the Mae Hong Son loop, very confident that we were in for easy street compared to what we had been doing. It didn't take us long to find some more hills just outside of Mae Sariang, so we pushed it to there and took a rest day. Over the next three days, we rode from Mae Sariang to Mae Hong Son and then over to Pai, where, at Sam Grant's request, we visited his old friend Sandot at Tacome Pai and stayed two nights in a bamboo hut that was straight out of a fairy tale. We had an outdoor bathroom and the hut was entirely constructed out of bamboo or other types of wood from the area, even the sinks! It felt a little more like a tree house than a bungalow.
From Pai, we rode to the east and then turned north again and stayed another night in Chiang Dao, where we had stayed with Ramsey. After our experience on the Mae Hong Son loop, we realized why it is only popular with motorcyclists, but we were pleasantly surprised by how flat the hills felt back up to Chiang Dao. I would be cruising uphill at a good pace and sometimes I would hear Kerri's little bell ringing just before she would blow past me.
The bike trip has proven to be an amazingly positive part of our trip and we are discovering that it is a great way to travel. Local people are always so curious when you approach on bikes, you have an instant connection with them. You aren't the typical farang (as they say here) traveling by tourist bus that speeds through their town spewing diesel smoke. We have seen such amazing acts of kindness (i.e. flowers above), we average somewhere between one and two occasions a day where people go out of their way to give us free fruit and drinks and often ask us if we need help when we are just resting on the side of the road. We even had one guy pull over, jump out of his car and start running along side us so he wouldn't slow us down as he handed off ice-cold bottled water on a hot afternoon.
We made it all the way north to Tha Ton and we just passed the 1,000 kilometer mark. The legs are feeling great. We had to make a run to the Burmese border yesterday and we ended up spending a few minutes in Burma. We are having a little R&R here before getting back on those seats tomorrow and heading to Mae Salong and then farther to the northeast and eventually into Laos via Chiang Khong.
Check out the map, as well (bottom of page), the bike trip with Ramsey is shown in green and the other in red. I spent a lot of time clicking around the corners through the hilliest parts of the road.
Here are the pictures:
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