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 ”model” tea town in Ban Rak Thai. These factors, combined with a day that was only getting hotter, and the alluring descriptions of the days final destination let us to quickly press on after a few jars of oolong.
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| Chinese freedom fighters monument, a very positive take on the KMT |
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| dancer in Shan New year festival |
After plummeting into Therd Thai on uncharacteristically graded roads, we booked the last room at a hotel widely recommended on the internet as a place to pick up local knowledge of the surrounding roads. The hotel itself was nice, but similar to places we had been staying in the past, apart from the condom but stuck in the cinder block shower. Brooke had sauntered to the counter just before several Europeans arrived, but both of us thought it strange that a hotel would fill up, since we often were the only guests in a given hotel. By happenstance, the dominant ethnic minority Shan (a regional majority) Celebrated their new year that Friday night. This would explain why scores of trucks filled with colorfully outfitted people had been pouring into what normally would be a fairly sleepy village. Even before nightfall, we were drawn into the festivities, when a casual walk around town brought us behind the staying area for the festival parade, with all the regional hill tribes assembling behind a marching band. Following the parade, the town shutter to an impromptu fairgrounds, where vendors in booths sold an assortment of meats, noodles and clothes, intermixed with stalls selling carnival games. Sleep again came easily, although a couple enormous fireworks exploding above the hotel woke us in the middle of the night.
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| She was trying to sneak a picture of us as well |
We thought we would leave early the next day for a regional hospital so I could get my rabies shot on schedule. Luckily, I saw sign posts for a hospital one kilometer up the road. Unsure if this were a public health post or truly a hospital, I left to investigate and found a surprisingly efficient small hospital where I got my shot with minimal delay. I saw zero foreigners with scooter related injuries and dispensed no medical advice. The upside of this minor delay is that Brooke had found it that New year's festivities actually continued with dancing and good in a massive sunflower field twenty miles up the road.
Soon we found ourselves slowly climbing up another twenty percent gradient, bring passed in both directions by trucks whose beds were literally stuffed to the brim with hill tribesmen dressed in traditional outfits. I had created a little bit of a delay leaving town after finding an alright Akha hilltribe headdress for sale in a shop, but eventually left without buying it for a variety of reasons – chief among them time, but also the feeling of being a cultural sell out for buying something like that without much connection to it. Because of the delay and the steepness, we both worried we would show up late. To make matters worse, Brooke started bonking in the last super steep climb into the village, and almost stopped for a full on lunch two hundred yards from the festival without realizing how close we had made it. Luckily, she rebounded admirably after a Coke (our first of the trip, but they can be a miracle good when running on fumes), and we shortly came across what I think we'll be one of the more memorable events of the trip.
In hundred foot wide circle cut into a slopping hillside covered with blooming yellow Mexican sunflowers danced tens of blue clad Lahu women, with Hmong, Akha and several other hilltribes watching from the sidelines as they waited their turn. An old woman shuffled in the middle of the circle, changing with the dancers in a slow call and response. It cracked me up to see her reading from a smart phone, presumably so she wouldn't forget the lyrics. It was all incredibly photogenic, but as the only two white people in the area, it also seemed very awkward to pull out my camera and start taking pictures of all the people like a zoo. Two events quickly alleviated this fear. First, two middle aged Asian men, clearly not a scheduled part of the dance, abruptly worked their way into the middle of the circle and started taking pictures feet away from the dancers faces. Around the same time, a group of teenaged hilltribe women came up to Brooke and I giggling, asking in decent English if they could take pictures with us! Having the fishbowl turned on us while an Asian tourist to over as the “ugly American” ease any tension I had about taking pictures. After overstaying our planned departure time to watch as many of the different groups dance and play unusual instruments, we finally pried ourselves away, making it safely back to our hotel. We might not have moved cities, but it was an incredible day.
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