Border Tour

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 when viewed from 30mph and 6mph. After climbing nearly an hour, passing into a serene low lying cloud layer, the road persisted as well maintained cement. "Not that I'm suspicious (attempting to ward off any negative karma I might draw to us), but it seems that maybe they've finished paving this all the way through," I commented to Brooke. Within thirty seconds, we turned steeply onto broken cement, disintegrating quickly to a rutted dirt jeep track. Nonetheless, the surrounding national park gave ample reason to continue forward, with exotic bird calls, irridescent beetles and magnificent butterflies making us wonder if wild tigers still roamed the hills separating Myanmar and Thailand.

With the deteriorating road conditions and our falling speed, we were happy to arrive in the tiny Karen village of Ban Muang Noi. Lunch consisted of peanuts, bananas, and soy milk eaten while watching a man refill the local gas station by hand-pumping fuel from a fifty gallon drum in the back of his truck. Only later did we find out that a mass grave containing thousands of Japanses soldiers had been found nearby - apparently killed by Karen hilltribesmen while retreating from the Burmese front in World War II.

Bridge through Ban Muang Noi

Unfortunately, conditions continued to become more difficult, with the afternoon sun making twenty degree dirt climbs less appearling. Afternoon clouds seemed to offer some respite, but within minutes we found ourselves in a New Orleans style deluge. The temperature remained in the 80s, but I cautioned Brooke that we should be even more careful on the slick clay descents. Ten minutes later, I found myself on my back having slid my rear wheel out while avoiding a rut at five miles an hour. With that, our karmic debt seemed to have been satisfied, and we arrived in the sleepy provincial capital Wiang Haeng tired and safe.

Fighting weight loss is a hard job, but Jove is up to the challenge

Unable to find food before the following morning's climb, we headed north to the Burmese border hoping the delay would give shops time to open. Unexpectedly, roads signs became bilingual with Chinese characters appearing before Thai. We had wandered back into territory populated by descendents of the KMT - the stranded anticommunist army Chinese army that had established Ban Rak Thai. Unlike Rak Thai, these small villages bore few signs of tourist infrastructure. No tea shops, and seemingly very little English, but subtle changes in architecture and temple ornamentation signaled the departure from mainstream Thai culture. Finally we came across a group of women eating breakfast at an outdoor table, and were able to order breakfast, although with absolutely no idea what it would be. Biscotti-like cookies with Nescafe came first, before breakfast took a turn away from the American. Fried pig skin (less crunchy than chicaronnes, with more of the "skin feel" retained) served with shrimp paste and oil dipping sauce followed the coffee, accompanied by deep fried eggs and sticky rice. Brooke shied away from the shrimp paste and pig skin, but all in all it was a reasonably hearty breakfast to drive us up the day's climb.

Breakfast

School bus

Before turning back from our fifteen kilometer breakfast detour, we rode to the Burmese border, which splits the grounds of a local temple, Wat Fa Wiang Inn. The Thai-Burmese border until the last two decades has been mostly occupied by a mix of opium dealing KMT warlords and opium dealing Burmese hilltribe warlords. This removed some of the urgency to sort out the exact border between the two states, since neither exerted consistent control over the area. In fact, it was one of the most lawless areas in the world and illicit drug production still plagues Myanmar. A byproduct of this history is a militarized, often poorly delineated, border. Wat Fa Wiang Inn seems to have been overlooked when the two governments settled on the border, with opposing bunkers, razor wire and sharpened bamboo fences placing several temple buildings on each side of the border.

The Burmese side of Wat Fa Wiang Inn, with the fence and bunkers in front.

Drying rice

Another day over rough roads concluded in the city of Arunothai, with excellent gyoza and wonton soup at Tayong Yunnanese Noodle Restaurant - run by the same family for forty years. Arunothai, a heavily KMT influenced city with a closed border crossing, seemed less hospitable, with glass studded walls as a harsh contrast to the pleasant open wooden houses and rice fields we had ridden through the last several days. Luckily, with all the biking nights tend to end early, and we quickly fell asleep under our ceiling fan following ice cream from the 7-11.

Morning on the lake in Arunothai