Day: The Eleventh

Last full day with April, and we decide to ride to the top of the mountain that the monsoon drove us off a few days earlier. Its a really great ride, all bends and uphill, good surface and side except for the last 10km when the road is strictly one lane and even bikes have to get right over to let another pass. April is riding really well, with growing confidence and getting much better at picking her line through the corners.

Last time we came up here it was a Buddhist holiday festival. The place was a seething mass of the faithful, buses cars, bikes everywhere. Today there is hardly anyone and most of the stalls near the temple are shuttered. We forgot to gas up before leaving the city, so we make a stop at the shops here where last time we saw a petrol seller. I ask at a shop where they say they can sell us fuel. The lady disappears for ages. In the meantime April finds the sand we saw the day before, bottles of petrol for B40. Eventually the lady comes back with two bottles she probably syphoned out of a car, and say B50. No, we say and move to type other stand. Its not until we gas up later that day and pay B42 at the pump that we realise that the bottles of fuel that the guy had for B40 were small.... Sorry lady!

We get to the point we reached last time, and ended up waiting in the rain for an hour. This time we carry on and sure enough just a couple of km further on the visitors centre and coffee appear. Still, the little hit we stopped in last time was a good place to watch a monsoonal rain storm from and we did meet a nice Thai couple there.

We spy a dirt track leading uphill from the car park, and decide to see if we can ride any higher. The dirt quickly turns to smooth clay and the grade gets steeper. April in front comes to a halt through lack of traction, and as I am too close and the surface is too slippery to stop I try to keep going. I get about 4m more and even though my back wheel is turning, we slither backwards. I pull the bike around to try to avoid running into April, and see she has stepped away from her bike as it had decided to have a wee "rest".  Lots of laughter and a photo opportunity. The smallest of grazes on Aprils shin. It turned out the track was to some Hill Tribe peoples settlement, so it probably was better that we didn't suddenly appear in the middle of their lunch time. We took some photos for Kiwi Rider magazine, and hope to get into their small regular feature entitled "They're  Reading Our Magazine Where?".

A fab ride back down and Google maps on a smart phone does a pretty good job of getting us and the bikes back to Tonys Big Bikes. Its in the Old City, do the streets are narrow. At one stage we are stopped by a man with a whistle. These guys are employed by hotels and big businesses to step out into the busy traffic to let vehicles get out. This time its for a huge tour bus that is trying to back out of an even smaller alley. The bus is so tall and the roads so narrow that they need someone on each corner giving directions. It even had the overhead power lines twanging. Eventually it makes forward progress, and April, exercising her newfound traffic filtering skills, manages to slip through a "wafer thin gap".

We are welcomed back at Tonys by a nice Englishman called Jeff who is Tonys partner. We lets us off a few hours late fee, mainly because we had brought the bikes back full of gas, when they had been a bit low when we picked them up. He very kindly overlooked the mud from our motocrossing. A tuktuk ride took took (sorry) us back to the markets. I bought Lee her main present from an antique shop run by some Karin people. April replace her Rayban glasses that she ran over yesterday and we go home to rest before going out for a final night celebration dinner.

We find a nice restaurant that has everything on their menu that we are looking for and order. April, as usual, shows them the card she carries explaining about her allergy to seafood. They nod and say they understand, but later that night the poor wee darling spends three hours "calling for Ralph" into her hand basin. It was no use calling for Dad, he was coma'ed out, and wouldn't wake up. Sorry, darling.

Day: The Tenth

Big ride day today. We did a lap of Doi Su Thep, a big mountain next to Chiang Mai. What a ride! It had everything, city madness as we left and returned, stunning scenery, corners and hills, some serious offload trial riding, even some road racing.... And a picnic! Onya April for the picnic idea. The corner store was asking huge money for your traditional kiwi picnic stuff (imported) so we cheated and bought a foot long at Subway. There are a line of roadside fruit stalls on the way out of town so I bought half kilo of rambutan, a bunch of small extra sweet ladies finger bananas (tree ripened fruit of any description is so much better then fruit picked green) and half kilo of dragon fruit which was three fruit. Rambutan look like hairy red ping pong balls and taste like lychee only better, dragon fruit are bizarre looking, pink and even more pink on the inside. They taste quite bland, a little like kiwifruit with a hint of earthy carrot. Wish I could put up a picture.

About half an hour in, we stopped for drinks, iced chocolate for April, coffee for me. The road around the mountain is made for bikes, great surface and s-bend combinations that go on for kilometres, up and down the ridges, with towering trees and graceful bamboo, small villages, farms, banana palms growing wild and not much traffic. We stopped often and took photos, and took videos while we were riding. Around lunch time I spotted a side road with potential. It was a one lane strip of concrete that ran off into the jungle for miles. Covered in moss and leaves, it was obvious that it was seldom used and in places the bikes struggled with the steep grade. There was a loud squawk from April when a small black animal almost ran into her front wheel (probably a squirrel). We ate our sandwich sitting on the ground with only the sounds of the jungle to be heard. By that I mean there were various animal noises, and I'm pretty sure one was a distant gibbon (and not one of Mums relatives!). On the animal note a bit farther on I stopped to wait for April, and there were two elephants in the trees looking at me!

There were a few other foreigners riding bikes as this is a well known loop that's a good days ride. Most were on scooters or scooter-style motorbikes like the ones we had but some had forked out the big Baht to hire bigger sports bikes. I  stopped a few times to video April riding the bends and at one point a couple of other tourists on big Kawasaki motard-style bikes came past. For those outside the biking circles, these are big bore trailbikes with road wheels, tyres and brakes, and perfect for this style of road. They passed me at the start of an uphill section and I thrashed the little Honda trying to keep up. I made up lots of ground on the numerous hairpin bends but they had heaps of power over my little 125cc Honda Steppie. By the time I got to the top of the ridge, the bike was a bit lighter, having worn away some of the ends of the footpegs! They were about 50m in front and had been looking back at me for most of the way up. On the way up we had also passed April, with one of them carving her up going into a corner and then almost turning into her. They were trying by this stage, so I took great delight in taking both of them about a third of the way down and getting to the bottom in time to get my camera out before they got there. As they went past, they didn't even smile or wave... It was then that I saw the elephants.

A bit farther on we a sign by a bridge pointing up a walking track to a waterfall. The track looked like perfect trail riding so I convinced April we should ride it. It forked a few times and we ended up in a farm compound at one point (probably some of the hill tribe people that are fairly common around here still), but after a bit of doubling back we found the waterfalls. There was three young boys swimming in the river who were a bit surprised to see two foreigners, also swimming, but in their own sweat. April was not too keen on trail riding, even before she bounced her new "Raybans"out of the front basket and ran over them.... However she replaced them with two new pairs for about $12.

We got back, and found our hotel quite easily. We were starting to learn the street layout finally. We both declared it a fine days riding, even if Aprils bike started to fart about a bit once you got it on to the main jet. My bike was named Mona on account of the hideous noises from the back brake that startled other road users off the road, thinking a truck had sneaked up on them. Aprils was christened "Chuck", in tribute to her hero Chuck Norris.

Day: The Ninth

I think I've said already, but one of the main motivations for me to travel is food. I love Thai food. When Lee says "shall we buy something for dinner?" my usual first thought is "is there a Thai place close by?" It wasn't too hard a decision to make to go to a Thai cooking class. In fact it was one of the main reasons why I wanted to skip upping anchor and heading off after two days here. We went to a cooking school that is on a farm outside Chiang Mai, that lets you select five dishes from a list of fifteen and then gets all the ingredients ready for you to just whip a Thai culinary masterpiece up. And boy did we whip. April and I both said afterwards that what we ate was every bit the equal of anything we had ever bought. Bloody yummy. It's amazing what you can produce when someone puts down exactly the right ingredients, proportions, and talks you thru, step by step, exactly how to cook it..... Actually, no, come to think about it, its not really that amazing.... Anyway, part of the course cost included a book with the "how to" but in it. Highlight of the day was NOT having to do the class with the bunch of young, loud, arrogant american backpackers we travelled out to the farm with. Was it just a coincidence that all the Americans ended up in the same kitchen? One of them kindly took time out from his yapping about the cheap hotels in Laos that he had stayed in (much better and cheaper than Chiang Mai apparently) to impart unto april that her camera was crap compared to his. Oh god, I'm sure I just offended someone there.

So anyway, expect some top notch Thai kai when I get home.

Speaking of food, April wanted to relax and read in her room that night so I went to the Belgian Beer Bar (well you do, when you are in Thailand, right?). While there a guy sitting at the next table recognised my accent. He was from the US but he had lived in chch for six months in 2001. Now he had a business taking gap year kids to countries where they worked on aid projects. On the way back to our hotel I stopped in at a bar almost next door that was playing some good music; ska and rocksteady with a bit of reggae a well. They even played a Katchafire song when they heard I was from NZ. A six piece with a brass section. Lots of music from my youth, Specials, Madness, Selector, UB40. I guess I stood out. There was only three of us there.

Home late...

Day: The Eighth

Today we decide that a ride to the highest mountain is in order, seeing as yesterday turned out to be a bit of an undomesticated water fowl pursuit. I was feeling fairly crap at breakfast, so we decided to delay leaving for an hour or two. I used the time to read a guidebook, which confirmed what the proprietor of the hotel had said: namely that even though it was only a 100km from here to the top, the last 40 km would take at least four hours return. April had taken the time to get her nails done at a massage/beauty parlor close by. I was persuaded to have a Thai massage (back/neck/shoulders, $12/hr). April paid for me, thank god, because at the end I was completely incapable of controlled movement.... I was so relaxed that they poured me into my boots. Later we went to a mall April had found out about (starting to see a theme here??). The latest Harry Potter movie in English with a thai subtitle was about to start. The only other time I have watched a Harry Potter movie was with April in Cairns, in 2003. Starting to see another theme?

The day seemed to disappear, food, a little shopping, and restarting blogging seemed to take care of the day quite nicely.

Day: TheDay: The Fourth To Seventh Part Fore

So the next morning April and I made an executive decision; one more night in Chiang Mai because we wanted to ride up the highest mountain in Thailand which is close by. We booked another night here at Vanilla Place (well why not? Its very close to everything that we want, walking distance to food, the old town (a Nigel aside:, in the centre of Chiang Mai, there is the remains of the wall of the old walled city. Its really big and must have taken a huge amount of time and effort. The old wall enclosed 1.8 sq kilometres and on two sides its over 1 km long. There were gates in the middle of each side and a stepped series of moats the whole way around. The steps were because, although it's a regular rectangle, there is a very noticeable slope down to one corner. This is helping my navigation because the corner closest to our hotel is the lowest corner. The wall was about four metres high, and at least that thick, made of solid laid brick, not earth and brick or stone and earth like many European castle walls. I have no idea how many bricks went into it, but it is at least hundreds of millions. There's no rock nearby so bricks it was. There's lots of ordinary businesses inside the old city but a lot of tourist-based businesses too.)

Anyhooo, we think a ride up a big mountain is the go for the day. We find our way around the moat to the diagonally opposite corner and up the slope we go heading for Doi Suteph. Its a gentle but obvious uphill that slowly becomes steeper. It goes from three lanes down to two (but bare in mind that lanes are a very nominal concept here) and starts to get very twisty. Great riding road, but masses of traffic heading up hill. We ride in a veritable swarm of bikes, pretty much all about the same as we are riding. There's about one car, truck or bus for about 20 bikes. The reason there's so goddamn many people on the road become apparent after we get about 2/3rd the way up and stop at a small settlement for coffee. There's an important buddhist temple here and this day (friday) is a religious holiday. We wander around the temple, two of thousands walking, photographing, eating, watching various school/religious groups performing, ringing religious bell assemblies, and praying. I must admit to doing very little, if any, praying.

We head on uphill, and immediately the road gets more narrow and the traffic disappears. Before too long, the road is only 1 1/4 lanes, with dead leaves on the edges and vines draping the road. It starts to rain as we get to what seems like the top. There's a hexagonal shelter so we run out of the monsoon rain and prepare to wait out the downpour. Soon two other bikes also stop and an interesting three way conversation grows between the young Thai couple of university students, April and I, and French guy who is unusually defensive. I didn't even mention the Rainbow Warrior! It was also a bit of a surprise to me to find out that this was not the tallest mountain in thailand... Oh well, it was a great ride and the 20 Baht

lunch was grand.

April had had enough as she was wet and, for the first time in weeks, cold. We headed down and the rain eased. Two throw-away plastic ponchos were purchased from a roadside shop, and home we went.

Getting home, we realise that there is plenty more that we want to see and do in Chiang Mai, so we cancel the next hotel we have booked and extend our stay at the Vanilla Place. Nothing is too much problem for the owners.

Day: The Fourth To The Seventh, Part Tree

In the morning we breakfast, and grab a tuktuk to the old city (a Nigel aside here, maybe two... A tuktuk is an ancient three wheeled auto-rickshaw that are all over Thailand, powered by a simple two cylinder Subaru two-smoke engine with a distinctive sound, hence the name, with one wheel at the front and two at the back. They are steered by handlebars, and have a car type gearshift and foot pedals but a motorbike style twist grip throttle. There is a low roof over top and a single seat in the back designed to two people but in practise can seat oh, about a dozen I'd guess...  They have not been made for years (decades?) But there are so many thousands of then in Thailand there is a complete industry dedicated to keeping them on the roads. No taxi meter means price is set by negotiation... The Thai are honest people which means if a tuktuk driver can get you to agree to an outrageous price, then its technically NOT ripping you off. Usually the driver hopes you will just jump in so they can set the price once you get there. If you ask how much to get somewhere, the usual response is "yes yes, get in". If you ask again, they realise you are at least a bit savvy and will give you a price that would make a locals eyes water. After that, you get down to some serious negotiation.)

We agreed on a price to get to Tony's Big Bikes  and by the big grin we know it's a lucky day for this guy, but when you have absolutely no idea of how far you have to go (250m? That's happened to me!) you just have to be happy with the outcome.

Tony's had two bikes waiting outside for us, and as we had them booked for give days, they were  B150  a day, $6. Two Honda Waves, one 125 and one 100cc. These are grown-up Honda C50s, step-thrus with auto clutch but four speed gear boxes, manual shift. April was not happy with the all-down-front-pedal-for-up-and-back-pedal-down-for-down gear shift (those of us who grew up on Honda CT 90 farm bikes will know what I mean). She's over it now... She was also not happy with the empty fuel tank... We went off to find some waterfalls and the butterfly farm. It was an instant lesson in Asian traffic. Lane marking is for sissies! Don't wait for gaps in the traffic, the traffic makes gaps for you! Roadsigns, what roadsigns? Speed limit? Helmet laws? As foreign a concept as we were! Needless to say, we immediately got lost and ended up about 30km past the turnoff we wanted. After back tracking, we started looking around. Found a very up-market coffee and at gallery, and had a truly great espresso (sorry upshot) and ice cream, then off up a side road into the hills. April had spotted a little sign saying waterfall, but I don't think many people do because the lady at the gate was really surprised to see us. It seems you pay to see natural attractions (or was it just this one?) So we forked out B120 each and walked off to see the falls. Nice, but smallish. However, the sight of April spotting a spider with a leg spread about the size of the palm of my hand was worth the price of admission alone!

There ride home thru rush hour traffic ended up like some mad computer game, but getting lost in the alleys and crazy one way system for nearly an hour was not so much fun. The one way system, put in to get traffic to flow through the old narrow streets does really strange stuff like dump you out into streets were you end up on the wrong side of the road, were the lanes are reversed and for a block you drive ala USA! Now that's freaky.

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Day: The Fourth To The Seventh, Part Too

Ok, so its now Wednesday morning. We catch the railcar to Chiang Mai from Bangkok Central and its only 15 minutes late which is apparently a small miracle. It's about half "farangs" and half locals, three cars and a driver at each end! The one at our end at the back does a lot of sleeping, so he should be right for the trip back... There's a lady assigned to each car as a hostess, and we even get lunch, plus three coffee and snack breaks. Its an 800km trip that takes 12 hours though the middle of Thailand north of Bangkok. Its got air con to die from (of hypothermia, shit but was it cold...April had to borrow my jumper and even the hostess was wearing a jacket). A twelve hour trip gets you through a lot of countryside, the first 2/3s was flat and almost all rice fields and villages, the last 1/3 we climbed into the hills. All this for $24 each....

Got out at the station and there's a guy holding a sign saying "Nigel Mark". That's a coincidence, I think. Some else arriving at Chiang Mai railway station at same time with almost the same name!

Out wasn't long before we were at the Vanilla Place guesthouse, with a very friendly older man showing us our rooms, and recommending all sorts of places to eat and visit. Right next door was a fairly classy restaurant, where we proceeded to lower the class by spilling drinks and taking mad photos of each other (you get just a little loopy after 12 hours in a train...).