Tour de Laab

We spent our last morning in Thailand looking for a decent Lao road map, which proved to be as elusive as the giant catfish museum that had sprouted up on our Thai map. Fortunately we found a nice restaurant with inexplicably good scones and banana smoothies, as well as a great view across the Mekong to the Lao city of Huay Xai. The crossing itself passed uneventfully, although it did have it's share of oddities. The Thai Lao friendship bridge has a large greeting structure, but traffic was minimal at noon when we arrived. The switch from the left side of the road (Thailand) to the right (Laos) is mostly hidden by an obligatory bus ride (about 60 cents a person, and 1.20$ for a bike) from the Thai exit station to the Lao intake station, a distance of about a quarter mile. When I crossed last year further down the river, a somewhat elaborate system of stop lights allowed traffic to switch sides of the road, so I felt cheated on Brooke's behalf that she missed it. We traded Ameri...

Although our enthusiasm for traveling had reached new highs after our trip into the hills yesterday, the same ride left us with legs less enthusiastic about continuing along the border. The owner of our hotel, a Thai man going by the name of John and famous among off the beaten path motorcyclists, told us the road heading north to Mae Sai would be open to foreigners. Running along the border, we had been eyeing this road for sometime, but the sawtooth profile, lackluster review of Mae Sai from fellow travelers, and more than anything the cliff like descent at the end of the day led us to head back into the valley towards Chiang Rai. A quick visit to the Shan temple overlooking the city delayed our departure, but definitely was worth the look. We definitely are not temple experts, but this one was unique from other temples in Thailand, with different nagas guarding the gate, softer colored interior paintings with some similarities to Hindi shrines we saw in Fiji, as well as Burmese lett...

After a second night relaxing in Tha Ton, we turned uphill yet again towards Mae Salong, another tea growing kmt town. With a massage and a rest day behind us, and two varieties of bananas for breakfast, we made the climb with relative ease. Mae Salong is a beautiful village running along a ridgeline with long views into Myanmar. Since we first deviated away from our original planned expeditious route to Laos, we had been eyeing Mae Salong as one of the famous KMT towns. With this background, both of us thought it a little odd that we essentially delegated the town to an extended lunch stop. I can certainly see the appeal of Mae Salong, with it's hilltop views of tea terraces and a strong Chinese feel to the culture that would be a draw to lowland Thai living in nearby (by car) Chiang Mai. However, for the last week we had been riding through higher mountains, through towns that grew tea but without the same exaggerated tourist atmosphere. We had even had a more subdued taste of a ...

Our trend of ridiculous climbing continued the next morning as we paralleled the border up a 5000 foot ascent to Doi Ang Khan, a mountain tourist destination predominantly for Thai people. Several decades ago, the late king of Thailand established a Royal Development Project in this area to supplant opium with alternative crops. Now, tea and non-opioid flowers are interspersed with secondary growth forest, and the drug trade has drifted into Myanmar. Brooke enjoyed wandering the grounds of the project, where exotic crops such as swiss chard, parsley, apricots, and artichokes complemented bonzai exhibits and pony rides. Palaung woman in Nor Lae market I foolishly got back on the saddle to see the neighboring Palaung hilltribe village Nor Lae. Here, garishly dressed Palaung women gather above a Thai border post to sell jewelry, clothing and other souvenirs. While the poverty and aggressive hawking from the merchants left no doubt that this was a tourist destination, the betel nut ...

Our unanticipated stay in Pai gave us time to research our next several days' route. Essentially, we had two choices - completing the "usual" Mae Hong Song loop heading southeast into the Ping river valley, or cutting through less traveled roads to the northeast. The latter would be a more direct route to Laos, but more enticingly would also take us into land only brought under Thai control in the 1980s. Notably, accounts of motocyclists passing through this region described terrible roads impassable in the wet season. Reading further back in time to the early 2000s, stories of opium growing illicitly in the hills were common, but these seemed to have faded over the last decade. Feeling refreshed from our relatively short day, we arose early and quickly left the pavement for the cement surfaces that signal secondary roads. Motorcyclists had led us to believe that the road would begin to decay immediately upon leaving Pai. However, immediate means different things wh...

Descending from Ban Rak Thai seemed nearly as harrowing as the ascent was slow, with nearly three thousand feet of beautiful, twisty, twenty degree hairpin turns to navigate on our loaded bikes. Once in the valley below, we turned eastward, climbing towards a guest house 35 miles away in Soppong. Brooke had found a trip report of a fellow cycle tourer describing a guesthouse whose owner guide guests through what she cooked for them. However, when we arrived several hours later, there was no sign of human life, so we continued up the road towards Cave Lodge as we had previously planned. On a whim, we decided to scout the village below Cave Lodge for other options that might keep our run of lesser known, more Thai guesthouses going. When I ran into Brooke fifteen minutes later, she was smiling and said she had found the spot - Pencave homestay. A Shan / Thai woman, Pen, has built several beautiful single room wooden houses in an enormous garden on land her family lived on for seventy yea...

We woke up in Ban Rak Thai to a view of tea fields and Chinese style rooftops across a misty lake. Between the lovely view and sore legs, I advocated for a rest day. We walked along the lake to have breakfast with the friendly lady who served us tea the day before - tea, Yunnanese steamed buns, as well as more Thai language lessons from our new friend.  After breakfast, we set off to walk to the Myanmar border - a whole kilometer away. On the walk there, we politely declined tea tasting from one shop, but stopped for coffee a few doors down. The coffee was served with a side of tea. To help the Chinese nationalist refugees move away from opium and jade smuggling, some governmental power (we heard both Thai and Taiwanese) stepped in to develop tea growing as a more lawful source of income. The program appears to have succeeded. Every tiny shop in town is filled with that family's packaged tea for sale. The tea is served in two cups: a tall thin cup full of tea is placed up...

Sorry we've been remiss in keep updated, but between biking and fumbling around in Thai we've kept quite busy. Mae Chaem ended up being a very pleasant town, I could definitely see it taking off as a road biking destination with easy access to Doi Inthanon, a laid back feel and several roads out of town. For us, it basically ended up being a launch point into the interior of the Mae Hong Song loop. Typically people take a relatively flat (this is still quite relative) road to the south into Mae Sariang then north to Mae Hong Song. However, we thought that deviating into the interior of the loop would help us stay on quieter roads and perhaps see some more unusual sights. With this in mind, we pushed our wake up time to 6am, ate a light breakfast purchased at the 7-11 the night before, and rolled northwards. A few local Thai folk had told us stories about other tourers who had been turned back by the difficulty of this northern route, and blogs from 2014 suggested the road condi...

Yesterday marked our departure from Chiang Mai. While we only made it 0.3 miles without stopping (for breakfast, laab for me, cereal for Brooke), the tour got off on an optimistic start with a brisk northerly breeze pushing us south towards Doi Inthanon. We tried to stick to the tiny side roads meandering through the rice fields, but frequently ended up on the highway, which was acceptable riding but otherwise unremarkable. As we turned off the highway, cars became less frequent and our pace slowed dramatically. We were both in our granny gears, frequently toying with 2mph on climbs up to 15%. Brooke marked the first walk of the tour, but felt ok about it because the motoscooter behind her had to dismount and walk as well. Our goal had been to get to the park border before stopping, but when we came across a very nice lady running a homestay in the tiny village of Ban Khun Wang, we decided to end the ride around 5pm. The PoPoPingPing, named after her two daughters, ended up being great...

We've ended up spending a little more time than we anticipated in Chiang Mai because we stumbled across one of the bigger festivals of the year, Loy Krathong. Originally we thought that we would just pick up our bikes from Mong's cycles and head out in an as yet undetermined direction. However, word that the airport would be shutting down Friday night because of fire balloons potentially threatening planes raised our interest in figuring out why. It turns out that releasing small, pilotless hot air balloons into the night sky is a major part of how people celebrate Loy Krathong. Since we had to organize our stuff, buy equipment like new bikes racks, and get Brooke over a small cold, we decided that staying two extra days wouldn't be a terrible idea. We got our feet wet enjoying the tastes of northern Thailand - pork sausage and chicken on the grill, various aromatic soups and stews in five gallon pots, and the occasional smell of fish sauce, lemongrass, galangal, basil, and...