Mae Hong Son to Mae Sariang (160 Km / 2 days)
[ Tommy typing ]
I took it pretty mellow on the last few days in the mountains. The bike is still not 100% after the accident outside of Pai. My front wheel is out of true, although I did my best to true it on the fork using an 8-inch adjustable wrench (guess who forgot to pack a spoke wrench). The headset is also not staying in adjustment and I have had to pull over a couple of times in the last days to tighten the cups (guess who DID remember to pack a headset wrench). My front fork is definitely not back to original and I have been dealing with a pretty big toe overlap which is making the twisting climbs more difficult. The road into Mae Hong Son provided some of the most spectacular descents of the trip with my speed computer maxing out just over 65 K per hour. I would not try to push a fully loaded touring bicycle any faster than that.
After staying the night the in beautiful lakeside town of Mae Hong Son I made a damp 65 K ride to the tiny mountain village of Khao Yuam. This place is defininitely off the tourist circut and the only foreigners around here are speeding through in air conditioned busses on their way North. I satyed at a guest house where no one spoke any English, the place was however full with Thai truckers doing delivery loops around the North. I checked in at the same time as a dude who was driving a big Pepsi delivery truck. Everything in town shut down at sundown and I was lucky to find a small place open still serving dinner by seven thirty.
“Country roads
take me home,
to the place
where I belong…”
I had finaly run out of time and the next day would be my last day of riding, 95K to Mae Sariang. My flight was leaving Chiang Mai early Thursday morning, and I knew I could catch a long distance bus to Chiang Mai from Mae Sariang the next morning. The road out of Khao Yuam began with a big climb and by the time I reached the summit I was in the rainclouds. At the top I found a mountaintop shrine with a carving of a bearded diety. This was a Shan tribal diety (not Buddha, whose image adorns most other shrines in Thailand). I gave my respects to the mountain diety, and left the last two Oreo cookies from my snack stash on his altar as an offering for seeing me this far.
Across from the mountaintop shrine, a Shan tribeswoman (ethnically distinct fron the Thai townspeople) had set up a little vending stand at the highway summit. I decided to duck under the thatched roof to get out of the rain, and for a light lunch. The thatched roof huts up north here are very different fron the ones we saw in the south. Here the roofs are thatched with broadleaves from dipterocarp trees instrad of the coconut palm roofs we tend to see in the lowlands. The Shan lady had a pot of noodles and hot tea, welcome fare after the mountain drizzle. We made conversation as I ate, although niether spoke the other’s language. Through hand gestures and my limited Thai, I told her I was making the loop from Chiang Mai to Mae Sariang by bicycle. She made a sign for rain with her hands and we both laughed. Then she said something which I thought meant “It’ll stop soon.” I don’t know how I infered that actually, maybe from the inflection of her voice or the movenment of her hands when she said it, but about 10 minutes later the rain really did stop. She pointed at me at one point in the conversation and asked “Malaysia?” I shook my head and said, “meh-lee-guh,” which is how the Thais pronounce “America.”
As the rain eased up I folded up my poncho and bought a baggie of homemade dried fruit from the lady for road snacks. I have yet to identify exactly what the fruit was, but they were delicious. I said thank you in Thai, and continued down the mountain. the rest of the 95 K was rolling hills up-and-down into a deep river vallley through terraced rice fields and lush hillside rainforests. I have to say that Mae Hong Son province with it’s remote mountain jungles and tiny agricutural villages has been, in my opinion, the most beautiful part of Thailand. It was here that those Thai guys bought me into ther home and fed me after my crash. The people here lead slower simpler lives, and seem to be on-a-whole happier than my wealthier fellow countymen back home. Sure, people in this part of the world seek modern comforts: paved roads, air conditioning, ice cold Coca-Cola, but perhaps not with a veracity that equates these luxuries to personal happiness like the American Dream perscribes.
In the quiet river crossroads town of Mae Sariang, I find a cheap guesthouse and run into an Aussie couple touring the Mae Hong Son loop by rented motorbike. They tell me that they have seen me riding on the road the last couple days, and we have a few beers and a chat on the porch. I got up early the next morning to buy a ticket and wait at the town bus station for transport back to Chiang Mai where I plan to do some laundy in my guesthouse room, disassemble my bicycle to check on the airline and write this quick blog post.
7 months ago