Leaving Laos for the comfort of Thailand but we're missing the lovely Lao folk already.
9th February 2006

A blessed return to easy riding
Pot smoking pillocks
We don't fit the backpacker profile once again
A rum bunch of bikers take on the twisties
OK, I have a long neck. But I have a name, too.
Coffee at Jeroens
A day riding solo. Well, two-up really

Tarland

There are two ways to cross the Mekong at Huay Xai; the usual marginally bigger than canoe speedboats and a vehicle ferry. For once we were not inundated with advice to take the speedboat, in fact no-one offered any advice at all. So we arrived at the ferry ramp, Luke came along with us although he could easily have loaded onto the biddy little boats. I can understand that he’d rather wheel it around rather than either take everything off and lift it into a boat or risk his panniers dropping off in he river while his bikke is in mid air. Anyway, we were soon parted. I had to go and do the carnet discharging thing and we assumed that the immigration office would be in the same direction. How foolish. The passport office is a kilometer down river at the mini-boat ramp and so when I’d done with the customs whallahs, I found the Luke had already set off to do the necessary. There was no sign of him down at the office when I got there and so I assumed that he’d been processed dead quickly and so nipped onto a fast boat. Later it transpired that he’d been directed to the police station and that we were in fact ahead of him.

With perfect timing I arrived back at the big boat ramp just as two petrol trucks were loading. We just followed on alongside and waited for someone to wander up and catch us for the fare. A chap mosied about putting chocks under the wheels of the trucks but entirely disregarded us. We discovered why when we descended the ramp onto the Thai shore. A shabby looking bloke poled over and asked us how much we were going to pay for the use of the ferry. We assumed couple of dollars like all the other crossings or even less as the trucks had obviously paid the bulk of the fare. He demanded 10 dollars off us for what had been a 3 minute boat ride. We rudely laughed in his face, handed him our remaining two dollars of Lao money and rode off. He was a bit flabberghasted that a farang could have been so confident of prices and relative values and made no effort at all at making us stop and cough up. What happens on this crossing, where there is no option and so no competition, the ferry owner is legendary for ripping off tourists who wish to cross. Fortunately we crossed from Lao to Thailand on whose shore he lies in wait. Travellers heading the other way are completely without option to cough up. In our case he could only bluster and I’m sure he was entertained that someone had at last got round the scam.

As we crossed the river, I left with regret. I had felt at peace, in Laos, and we were about to enter again the hectic commercial world of modern Thailand. It was only as we crossed back that it dawned on me that Laos had been mercifully free of 7/11 shops and Macdonalds.
The next stage of officialdom awaited us on the Thai side, finding the customs office. The immigration guy had been very helpful and told us to turn left by the wat (temple).

Sounds straight forward doesn’t it. But wats occur with the frequency akin to pubs in Ireland, or if you prefer short skirts in Newcastle on a Saturday night. A systematic approach was required, and eventually the customs office was found. And this has to be one of the most delightful customs offices in the world with a teak veranda on the waterside and orchids hanging catching the breeze.

We were on tar, oh joy of joys, to be able to enjoy the curves as the road followed the Mekong NW towards Myanmar. It was so easy to cover ground. For the past two days we were pleased if the speedo had edged over 25mph now without any effort we were twice that. Thailand will henceforth be Tarland. It was easy to spot those vehicles that had just arrived from Laos, not by the plates but by the caking of Laos dust, like a young girl’s first efforts at makeup, it clung unevenly and unsubtly to the contours of the carriages.

We still hold out a vague hope to be allowed through Myanmar, but we know likelihood is very low. So, in the the event of the negative the nearest we are going to get is the Golden Triangle, a 10 miles detour from our route to Chiang Rai in Northern Thailand.

The Golden Triangle was not - golden or really a triangle. It is more of a t-junction where a river meets the Mekong, and forms a confluence between three countries, Loas, Myanmar and Thailand. Why golden? I assumed it was something to do with the amount of money made from opium and gold trading in these parts.

It was hideous. There were coach loads of tourists, there were hilltribe children charging to have a photo taken with them. It is one of those places in the travellers tick off chart, along with Ushaia and Macchu Picchu, but without anything so inspiring to merit it’s fame.

We parked up a very dusty, travel weary Berthette next to a rumble of showroom squeaky clean new bikes with Malaysian plates. I couldn’t quite decide whether I was proud of Berthette’s appearance or ashamed. Did she look like she was made of more adventurous stuff than these smart whippersnappers, or did she just look shabby and unkempt?

We took the obligatatory photo, and got out of there as fast as possible.
We began to worry, if Luke was ahead of us, we should have passed him by now - he was cycling after all. Where was he? Was he OK? Even when we got to Chiang Rai, he was not there. We had arranged to stay at the same place. It was odd. Had he decided to enjoy the good road and was making good time so decided to head straight South and bypass Chiang Rai. I made a few rough calculations based on my knowledge of cycling performance and reckoned that there was no way he could have been ahead of us and so he was in for a late ride again.

Flakey folk

Our home for the night, was wonderful and grossly annoying at the same time. Our room, complete with the mod cons of a fridge and smart ensuite was a bargain at only £2.50. The room had the homey comforts of squigdy seating and rugs, to encourage a long stay. There was a lovely tended garden and nice shaded seating area outside.

But.......the place had attracted a choice selection of flakey resident dudes. There was the Finnish guy who claimed the reason for his random confused conversation was the drugs he was taking for his back pain, and had absolutely nothing to do with the huge spliffs that he chain smoked. He was in arrears with his room rent and seemed perplexed that the owner had finally decided to give him notice. Another guy, I believe Thai, was stupified and random by his addiction, but worse was the gutral spitting, as he forced glutinous phlegm cacophonously from his ailing lungs. The sound oozed onomatopoeic from the state of his insides (and the state of his brain?). Not since Adana in Turkey had we had such an unpleasant seranade throughout the night. Nice.....

It was such a shame, the place had such potential but we, like others no doubt, were put off staying longer by the hangers on.

We were relieved when Luke finally rolled in, not least because we now had someone to dilute the strange people. Ok granted we are strange too. He had not had a good day. A puncture and the squits meant that we probably passed him when he had nipped over a hedge or was bent over fixing his tyre in a driveway. It was all that food I reckon, and a day of rest the previous day - his body was all confused; used to metabolising more than his daily food input, it got all in a tiz when the source exceeded the energy expended. You could imagine his his body at first delighting in the excess of energy and then deciding it could not cope with the overload , and deciding to go with a purge.

I went on a mercy mission to find medicine, in the shape of as much peelable fruit as I could carry, yoghurt and anything else that looked safe and nutritious. We too were in need of a little safe eating, but had not had the disadvantage of having to cycle 150km feeling under the weather.

For those who are squeamish of toiletery issues, bypass the next paragragh. I will do a little digression at this point. Bowels. Travel does funny things to them. The good thing is that you bombard your body, with so many types of climate, food and bacteria, that your body becomes efficient at fighting off minor little food bugs, that would put a package holiday maker on the toilet for weeks will whizz through our systems in less than 36 hours. But there is a down side. They (the insides that is) become as irrational and unpredictable as British weather. And just as the British are laughed at for talking about the weather, long term travellers are preoccupied with the status of their intestines. The thing is; days of recognisable turd shaped motions, are all too few days of celebration. There’s the cow pat days, the liquid days, the constipation, the worm castes and the pebble dashing. Consistency is matched in diversity by color, dull beige meets burnt orange, mahogany meets khaki. Smell and windiness we will leave to your imagination. There is one thing that never ceases to amaze me, is on a partically anally expulsive kind of a day, just how much your intestines is capable of holding. It can go on and on, you would think there would be a limit. In a world with no Coronation Street or news of the latest in luxury family cars it becomes as enthralling as a soap opera. Will today be a stable kind of day? or not? There is no predicting what will have the worst effect, notoriously dodgy street food can lead to stabilising the system, and I lost count of the number of times my body has rebelled at food from flash restaurants.

For us the solution is always the same. Empty out then drink loads of water, eat fresh fruit and veg until you stabilise and take a rest day if possible. We are not keen on pharmacutical solutions and so far not had to resort to the medical kit. Just doesn’t seem natural to me. If you body is unhappy with the contents of the intestines it seems unwise to take something to hold it in. But then I’m an anally expulsive kind of a woman.

Luke despite his liquidity, was now on a mission. He had booked his flights from Bangkok to Australia and now had five days to do 800km and get there in time to package up bike for the flight. He left us wussies to chill for the day recuperate.
I hope he made it.

No berth at the inn

We parted company, heading to Chiang Mai, the tourist mecca of the North of Thailand. Promising old wats, a wall central city, beautiful surrounding countryside and treks to hill tribes. With a superabundance of tourist baht flowing in the alleys of the old city customer service is dispensed with. We arrived in the labyrinth of the walled city to find there was no room at the inns for a Berthette. Guest house after guest house, would not allow Berthette to be stowed off the street. They had room, but they had no need to accommodate themselves for some scruffy bikers and a muddy bike. This was high season, they could be as unhelpful as they liked and still fill the room with executive part time hippy travellers in designer thai fishing trousers. Sorry, I was in the mood to just ride straight back out of this city and head to anywhere really. Oh dear Laos, I miss your reasonable hospitality.

Pat was locked into conversation with an expat Hong Kong-born British descent biker, Jake, who effervesced with a mission to find us a safe house for Berthette.He took control perhaps a little too assertively, and whizzed off to find a selection of semi-affordable options. Meanwhile we sat and drank tea with his partner who apologised for Jake being so single-minded.

I know that he was being incredibly helpful to us, but I felt uncomfortable about being railroaded into checking into a hotel of his selection. He had found us a nice place with room for Berthette and at OK cost, and in the circumstances I had little choice. I don’t know why I could not warm to Jake, there was something about the way he treated his girlfriend that made me take a dislike to the guy, and I mentally reprimanded myself for not having found a suitable place without his ‘help’. Perhaps a little ungracious there, Hips. I mean you confess that you were on the verge of high-tailing it out of town and this guy helps us out with no thought of profiting from the situation. OK, so we weren’t destined to become soul-mates but never look a gifthorse....

Sjaak was in town and when we met he had a proposition for us. A ride out into the hills in a few days time with Jesse, a youngish American, and possibly Hans a Dutch biker who had been resident in Thailand over 10 years. Jessie suffered a little from being surrounded by Dutch and English who spent their whole time being non-literal. We just cannot help it, get a bunch of us together, the conversation naturally becomes more dry. Jessie’s admiration for Sjaak was tangible and he was willing to hire a bike, at a great expense on his backpacker budget to ride with Sjaak. Sjaak, being ‘well-known’ and crazy enough to do it on an R1, was a distinctly more ‘sexy’ kind of round the worlder than us doing it the ‘square way’. I absentmindedly wondered if we would ever, evoke that kind of awe, and whether I would welcome it if it came. The truth is I think I would feel a fraud. A few have called us brave and adventurous, the truth is that we are neither, round the world travel is easier than people think. Of course travel writers, write in depth about the more interesting bits of travel and gloss over the bits where everything ran smoothly, because it is essentially dull reading. This gives the illusion that travel is fraught with difficulties. Personally, I think it’s a plot by travellers, who like us, hate places packed with other tourists, to get the travel writers to make it sound hard.

Our ride to Chiang Mai had been somewhat spongy, the shock absorber has been leaking for a while, and the only dealer for the parts in a 4000 mile radius was in Bangkok. The manufacturers refused to send us spares direct, and insisting we apply through their dealers who were not responding to emails. Someone please explain to me why it is that companies have email accounts and then do not bother to answer their mail. It is such a less invasive media than the mobile phone that everyone is now obsessed by. Anyway, we wanted to know could they order a new seal, how much would it cost, and could they get it to Bangkok before our visa runs out, with time to fit it. After 5 emails Pat telephoned, he faxed, still no answers. They were waiting to calculate a cost, how long does that really take, eh?

Sod it, we decided to do some touristy stuff. A village near Chiang Mai is renowned for it’s umbrellas. Village is something of a misnoma, it was a touristy concrete sprawl. But thankfully the concrete was being progressively obscured by umbrellas, of silk, paper, nylon; some small some big, some painted some plain. The town was being decorated for a parade the following day, and we had the peace of being a day early to wander and watch the transformation take place. Everyone was part of the festivities, the local scooter shop had the entrance framed with umbrellas, the school was brightening up the wall with shashes and the like.

It is something that we in the have often lost in America and Northern Europe, that community thing where everyone gets involved in their own way, from the rich businessman to the job in gardener. Seems often people are too subsumed by work, to realise that it can feel good to be part of the community and not just resident in it. In the Croxton Kerrials (a lesser known stone built village in Lincolnshire) of this world there is still a remnant of community spirit driven out of Northern Europe, by careers and success. I look back on my own time back working in the UK and it was sadly, work orientated, although I knew and chatted with my neighbours, we did little else with or for the village.

Along with umbrella making came the auxiliary business of paper making. Ah, a new use for those mulberry leaves. Saa paper, made is completely ecologically sustainable, and presumably a by product of growing mulberies for those silk worms. What to do with the leaves that are a little old and no good for tea and caterpillars, make paper obviously. Being hand made the paper had that rough artsy texture, popular with card and book makers. The little paper factory, was doing enough business to be making paper to fill orders for outside companies and make their own hand bound note books and photo albums for sale to tourists. The prices were high in Thai terms, but I this is the kind of place I like to support, there were no middle men or women creaming in a profit and fleecing the person who toiled to make it. We took the opportunity to buy a little token to send to our friends Arian and Steve, as a poor substitute for missing their wedding in Argentina. It is a business that I think they would approve of.

The next day brought tensions - we had differing agendas. I wanted to return to the village to see the parade and Pat had seen enough umbrellas. I could see his point, but I was missing the festival culture so common in Latin America that you are constantly dropping in on them and this promise to show us a little of what the Thais could do to brighten up our photo log.

We went, in the end both reluctantly, I because I had no desire to be with someone in such a mood and Pat because he just didn’t want to go.

The parade due at 3.00 pm began at gone 5.00 pm which had Pat sighing, oh so tolerantly for 2 hours and that the light was now so low that it was hard to find a good spot for photos. What was a blessed relief was that the town was surprisingly devoid of tourists. Chiang Mai was only 9km away and thronging with tourists and this was a once a year parade was not advertised at all in the city.

The parade was an awful lot of umbrellas. Parasoled ladies on bicycles, umbrella guilds showing their wares, floats bedecked with more umbrellas. There was a few parts of the parade a did not understand, a small boy made up like a Chinese prince on a mule, and a brass band.

Riding the Chiang Mai hills

There is a mini road loop out to view points near Chiang Mai. It was a nice Sunday run, a bit like going up to Buxton but without as much traffic. We followed a convoy of locals in pickups seemingly in the process of moving a rather large buddhu. Apparently buddhu movement requires a certain entourage to accompany it, all very fitting of course, and there were drummers beating out song, women dressed up to the nines, all waving furiously as we passed them.

We were foiled at the attempt to see the Queen’s Palace gardens on the top of the hill overlooking Chiang Mai. The Queen was in, so the tourists were out. Nice spot, she has good taste.

This was a first on the trip, travelling on a trip with three other bikers. Try to picture this mottly crew of bikes if you will. A rather earthy, worn dull Berthette, Sjaak’s R1 tailored for RTW touring, Hans’ big V4 jap cruiser, and Jesse’s hired 200cc Harley styled custom bike, all shiny and sparkling. We were a sight to behold that was true. Pat kept saying it was the sublime to the ridiculous, but since none of us could work out which one was sublime (in theory I suppose Sjaak’s R1 should thave been but it was all a bit battered by now, after 4 year’s on the road), we settled with the concept of the eccentric to the ridiculous. Us all being rather eccentric and the little black and chrome number looking a tad crazy in such company.

The riding was fantastic and a pattern soon developed. Hans in the lead as he knew the routes, Hippy and I following, Sjaak nipping at our heels and poor Jesse trying to keep up on the uphills and matching us in the curves so long as he could keep a bit of speed up. On the twisties it all got a bit messy; Hans’ bike is not really a ‘scratcher’ and he had to pull up a bit on some of the corners, I would then have to slam on the anchors to avoid running up his backside but Sjaak had so much in reserve he colud just tighten up or drift out as required. Every now and again the Dutchman would have to go flying and leave us trailing in his wake. We’d come upon him reclining upon a bridge parapet or somesuch chewing on a piece of straw like Brer Fox on the fables. Talk about rubbing our noses in it.

The overall performances could be classified by; Out and out speed 1. Sjaak, 2. Hans, 3. Us, 4. Jesse, Cornering 1. Sjaak, 2. Jesse, 3= Hans and ourselves. Overall this put us pretty much at the back of the field. Sjaak comforted me by pointing out that he could see how much the rear suspension wasn’t working as we pogoed around the rougher corners. When out riding with your superiors always have a good excuse ready.

Still, it was not a race. We each got to ride at our own paces and hooked up at junctions or food stops. Funny to think the we and Sjaak felt that the days riding were quite long - we’re supposed to be these high mileage types. Maybe we’re all frauds.

The scenery was wonderful, not just the undulatariness. The vegetation was in flux, with some trees and shrubs in autumnal colours whilst others were spouting spring blooms. All very delightful. The altitude here allows for seasons of a sort, but isn’t quite North or high enough to produce a proper winter. Hey winter is just cold and white, autumn and spring are more colourful. Put them together with the evergreen plants and the effect is very special.

Having Hans with us turned out to be hugely advantageous. There is a national park through which this wonderful biking road passes. Under normal circumstances we’d have had to cough up 200 Bhat a piece for the privilege of passing though and no doubt we’d have moaned about it but eventually would have coughed up. Hans was aware of the charges as he takes tour groups in and up to the highest point in Thailand but he thought that he may be able to negotiate ‘temporary Thai residence’ for us on the strength of his identity card. It transpired that to transit the park costs nothing although one suspects that this is rarely pointed out to farangs. Given that we were fairly hooning along and guzzling rather more juice than usual, any savings that could be made were jolly good news. The fee, in fact only applies to the section of road up to the summit of whatever the mountain is so one can enjoy the waterfalls and other stuff in the park on the way through.

Lunch was the de rigueur noodle soup, for once in a bus station. We don’t often find ourselves in bus stations. The timetable advertised a total of four buses a day which ply the route to Chiang Mai. Bizarrely to use this pulsing transport hub, one has to pay platform tax. I guess the revenue may result in the construction of a platform one day. The cruisers had to go and fill up after lunch and so all buzzed off while Hippy and I mounted and performed pre-flight checks. Even Sjaak had disappeared by the time we emerged from the car park and we hadn’t noticed which way they were heading. We thought it best to continue towards Mae Hong Son at a gentle pace on the assumption that if they were ahead of us we would meet them while they were still in the petrol station and if they were behind us they’d equally quickly catch us up. We bimbled along and there was no sign of a gas station so Hans must have taken them back through town and they’d be catching us up, wouldn’t they? We stopped at a nice sweeping corner in good light were we could snap a nice riding picture of them when they arrived. After half an hour it was pretty clear that they weren’t coming. Hans had had an abberation and cocked up on where there was a gas station - we caught up with them at a little shack with a couple of barrels where they were busy filling up Jesse’s hire bike with oil. Sjaak was just about to set off back to come and find us and seemed dissapointed that he no longer had an excuse to blast up and down the road again.

The delay was not a problem as, for once, we didn’t have to worry about searching out somewhere to stay. I think that if finding a hotel was not an issue for us we’d be able to manage an extra 150 miles per day on reasonable roads.

Dinner was an education. We ate from an odd aluminium contraption which has a pierced, domed top with a ‘gutter’ around the outside that all sits over hot coals. apparently this arrangement is known variously as a Korean bbq, Mongolian bbq or something else from a similar neighbourhood. You slap your bits of meat on the top and your veggies in the boiling water around the rim. For a fee of a quid you could eat forever or at least until they chucked you out. Beer was provided in a 3 litre ‘pitcher’ which turned out to be a huge glass tower with a tube down the centre full of ice. A normal beer tap on the bottom gave ready access to a steady source of lager. Just what a days riding with ‘the lads’ called for.

Rubber necking the hill tribes

The main reason for our route (other than riding the 200 km road with over 1900 bends) was to visit a village of ‘long necked people’. It’s all a bit sad but wherever you go in tourist-Thailand there are advertisements to visit ‘long-neck villages’. These poor asylum seekers from Myanmar are never referred to as the Patong people or even slightly, but forgiveably, erroneously as Karen or Kayan people, just long necked. Some of you may know that I have a disproportionately long neck myself but I insist that I prefer to be called ‘northerner’ or ‘Boltonian’ than long-necked. These folk bring it upon themselves, I guess, by artificially extending their head-shoulder connection by the use of increasingly long brass coils. There is something of a dilemma when it comes to visiting them. Should they be left with their privacy or should they be free to turn themselves into a freak show and charge an admission fee. They have little choice, as it happens. Being refugees from Burma means that their movements from their village are strictly controlled and their only major source of income is from the viewing public. There are several villages one can visit and we were fortunate, having our own transport, to be able to visit one of the less frequented, Baan Na Soi. Luckily for them they are down about 5km of dirt road, which means that in the rainy season they get a respite from the tourists, as the road becomes impassable. Near the entrance to the village there was another entrance which was barred to tourists, which leads to refugee camps for 10,000+ Burmese. Whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of paying to see tribespeople it is certain that the conditions of those in the Patong (long-necked) village is better than their fellow nationals. It is hard to know how much of the fee for entering the village ends up benefiting the people there, but they undoubtedly have a source of income from selling refreshments and craftware to the farangs.

It was a bit surreal. I think the ladies with their delicately tapering, unpractically long, shiny necks found the little cluster of leather and goretex clad bikers as odd as we did they. We didn’t charge them for the privilege of gazing upon us though. The upside about being charged to enter a village such as this is that one doesn’t have any qualms about taking pictures. That is the theory at least, but I confess that even though I am more pushy then Hippy, I still found it difficult to be ‘in your face’. Sjaak, clearly, knows that the photos that he takes are bread and butter and is much more assertive. Maybe that is the secret, consider each photo opportunity as though your carreer or bank balance depend upon it and you will be more deliberate about your compositions. It was lucky for us that this was the least frequented Patong village, so the people have not as yet got sick of farangs. There was just one lady who turned from me as I tried to take a photo, I respected her privacy.

OK, so what of the folk themselves. Just as in the rest of the world with scant exceptions, only the women are dressed in traditional clothes. The one or two chaps we saw loitering were in the universal male uniform of slacks and t-shirts. The school was buzzing and it was so nice to see the young girls with their prototype neck coils going about the mundanity of rote-learning for a test. Tourists leaning through the classroom windows have obviously become so commonplace that it’s no longer any fun acting up for them. The kids just carried on doing what they were doing without being in the least interested. Cool. I had worried that the gear would only be worn by a few who posed to have photos taken, but here it was real, with children playing and revising there was an air of the normality about it all. Hans claimed that the other villages in the area traditions had been lost and the a sprinkling of Patong people wore the rings just to keep the tourist Bhat rolling in.

What struck me was not the length of their necks particularly, as I was expecting that, but how striking Patong women in other ways. They are incredibly beautiful, facialy, with fine features which take on a distinguished air as they mature. Generally fine boned and dainty, their hands and feet are naturally large, huge in fact. Maybe at some point in the distant past they decided that they needed to make their bodies a little more proportionate and began extending their neck to match their extremities.

Watching the women work, I could see how the rings were an encumberance to their work. Any of you who have cricked your neck at some point will understand the awkwardness of movement spawns from immobility of the neck. To turn you must turn your torso, they bent stiffly even just to sweep. Add the the obvious stiffness that the rings create the weight of the damn things. One lady proud of her 25 rings told us the brass weighed 5kg, and on each leg she carried 3kgs, having lifted a couple of rings she had for sale this is completely plausible.

I had naively hoped that the women carrying all this excess around the place, the men might take up some of the household work. But like all poor communities everywhere it is the women who bear the brunt of the hard work. I asked what the men do, I was met with a confused look. Not as you might think because the did not understand me, but because it was seemingly ridiculous for us to expect men to do anything, if they had no land to farm.

One thing that surprised me was that in this isolated village, the women’s knowledge of English was vastly superior to most Thais. OK, so their living relies on communication with farangs. But one girl in particualar, Freda, could speak not only fluent English, but Spanish, German and even Dutch, she understood dry wit, and joked with us about coming from Amsterdam, and went all coy when we refered to photo of her dutch ‘boyfriend’ on the wall. Despite or maybe because of their geographic limitations, the girl was certainly more worldly than the average American. Sorry that’s no real accomplishment, is it? Thank you Freda from Amsterdam for an entertaining time.

Chatting with another lady, who called herself, Mum. The name was quite apt, seeing photos of her six children and heavily pregnant with the seventh. All the children so far are girls, which considering the blokes seem to do little around the place means that her family may do better than others.

I left the village feeling that despite my reservations about making the Patong people into a human zoo, it seemed that in this village at least the people not not appear too harrassed or unhappy. The young looked taller and healthier than their parents, who no doubt bore the nutritional scars of malnutrion. Whatever was happening to these villages it was not all bad news for them.

Other non-Thai Thais

We’d had a brief stop in at a friend of Hans who spends half his year in Thailand and the other half driving trucks in Holland. He’s settled in a village of Lisu people whose origins are up in Tibet. It seems that Thailand is the destination of choice for all the wandering tribes of SE Asia. Here the settlers have recently been granted land and received title for their allocations. All is not so well though as there are other less fortunate folk who subsist higher up and further off the beaten track. Their farming is very much clear-cut and burn which has caused some rather nasty run off problems in the last rainy seasons. The detritus still littering the stream bed adjacent to Jeroens house is testament to the huge flood which washed away part of the village and drowned several people last year. Its a fragile kind of existence and one wonders whether the illegal cutting of teak (which incidentally is the material from which Jeroen’s impressively proportioned porch is built) is not part of the problem.

More rising and falling and twisting and turning to tune of about 1000 corners and we found ourselves in Pai for the evening. It’s worth mentioning here that one of the incessantly recommended roads in the States that we never actually bothered with is the ‘Dragontail’ which boasts a hundred or so corners. Sjaak didn’t bother with it either. Enough said. Pai has the reputation of being an old hippy hangout and I was seriously disappointed. Rather than the batik and handicraft stalls and stylishly strange eco-housing that one might have expected, the town seemed to be full of pizza and burger restaurants, guesthouses and internet providers. Maybe the hippies saw the tourists coming and bailed out to the surrounding hills. As a nice tourist counterpoint there are quite a few traditional moslem folk round and about and their women folk are shrouded in black. It all felt a little weird to me, moslem women cycling around in full purda and the farangs, in itsy-bitsy strappy tops and see through skirts. I wondered behind their shrouded faces how the moslem minority here felt about this insensitive invasion of farangs. Did they find it amusing that farangs showed so much flesh and were a mecca (come on Hippy, that must be the worst pun of all time) to mosquitoes, did they see it as confirmation of the fallen Western values, were they offended, or just incredulous that all these people thought their flesh was attractive. Having pizza was very nice, though, and made a refreshing change from noodles or rice. Odd that we might go out for a Thai meal as a special occasion in Britain as a change from pizza and pasta and here we are doing just the opposite. It was excellent pizza.

A child was wandering around in the internet cafe and had those cute but ofttimes annoying shoes that emit a squeak each time the sole is flexed. I was in the mood to be amused - must have been the beer with the pizza - and played a bit of a jumping up and down game with said small person. Regrettably the child did not have the maturity to sustain jumping up and down on the spot for long periods and promptly fell over backwards whacking its head ominously on the concrete. Pre-empting a huge wailing fit I immediately picked up the victim and offered succour. Pat and I exude non-parental pheromones that all children can detect at 50 paces. Often just the merest glance in our direction is enough to produce wailing from any infant. I’m not very good with these small people and although I managed not to drop him and cause even more stress, I didn’t really master the situation and the wriggly little critter managed to give me a full on head-butt right in the eye socket. He seemed totally unconcerned and like the pathetic big baby I am, I had to go to Hippy for comfort and loving. Score 1 to the weenies.

I think that the hippy tag has been appended to Pai based on the few flakey dudes who appear on the street as the sun sets to play their instruments fairly badly for the benefit of their hats. There was one rather satisfying moment where public pressure was brought to bear in the shape of a noodle seller crossing the road to ask a noisome yanky twanger to move on so that the busking local would stand more of chance of earning a crust. So nice that policing is carried out by public opinion.

Back on our own but only briefly

Jesse had left us the previous evening citing getting the best value out of his hired bike by racking up a bunch more km before the end of the day. We thought that maybe it was more likely he was tiring of being incessantly referred to as ‘lady-boy’ by Sjaak and Hans (and us, with a name like Jesse it doesn’t help matters). I think it was a bit unfair to keep teasing him on the strength of his motorbike being less than manly. Given that he was never more than a minute behind us it would have been more appropriate to give us the stick for being unable to outpace someone on a 200cc cruiser.

Hans had rather overdone his trip out with the boys and had to get back to Chiang Mai to drum up some business. Sjaak had to get set up for his whistle stop trip to Cambodia and S Thailand. We left them to hoon off to Chiang Mai and prepared for a long day down to Lampang to meet up with Coen and Karin.

There by the side of the road was a red and white Bertha. Such a long time since we’ve seen a pukka R100 GS/PD that we had to pull up and blather with the owner. What an excellent chap it turned out to be; category ‘A’ American - worldy, educated and caring. We are often a little quick to criticise but hopefully we try to give a balanced report of what we see and hear. This is a man who instantly gained my utter respect - not because he was riding a BMW (we rapidly agreed that this bike is too heavy for riding off road), but he had very quietly beaten the import system to Thailand and so had his bike here for as long as he liked. There are those that really try to scam all the time and those that just take good fortune when it comes. In his case, the Thai authorities failed to register his bike when he came from Malaysia and so he’s kept it here for three years and flown in and out for touring trips. He was completely aware that there may be problems when he tried to leave but accepted that he’d just have to deal with that when it comes up. So who is he and why is he really so deserving of admiration? Blah is from Seattle (which is in itself is promising) and is a doctor (good but tend to be essentially financially motivated in the States) working in Kenya (OK you can forget the big money, then) on the control and treatment of AIDS. I guess the only worrying thing about him is his (like me) chosing a BMW. Nobody is perfect. This was a very frustrating chance meeting. Here was a guy I’d really like to spend more time with but we’d already planned to meet the Landcruisers. C’est la vie.

After Chiang Mai, the road became a rather dull dual carriageway. Its not just having been spoilt for a while on the perfect biking roads of the north-west, I’ve never been a fan of fast straight dull roads. As we left the outskirts of Chiang Mai there were a couple of hugely overloaded pickups. The boxes of oranges filled the load area and continued up a clear 6 feet above the roof of the cab (including somehow the space over the cab, too). I shook my head at the driver of one as we stood alongside at a set of lights. As if to disprove my assertion that this road was too straight and boring, we came upon that self same pickup lying on its side in the gutter with its cargo of oranges scattered hither and thither about 100 km down the road. He must have passed while we were filling up with petrol. To keep up with us with a load like that does rather suggest that a lobotomy might be in order. I saw him looking down at his cash crop spread across the verge, and he devastation was obvious. But I wondered whether he had learned from this error or would repeat it next year, putting this disaster down to being unlucky. Thank heavens for the nanny state and draconian police in Britain that generally nip such stupidness in the bud.

We had been in email connect with Karin and Coen the Dutch couple last seen in Bangkok. They are coming north as we go South after doing a detour into Myanmar. We planned to meet in Lampang south of Chiang Mai, partly because I had no desire to go back to the town so heaving with tourists that Berthette was unwelcome.

Lampang is not a tourist town and the place we had arranged to stay at and meet up with the Netherlanders was once we eventually found it, well and truly shut down. Shit, why is it always this way, we decide to plan something and it all goes wrong. But there was a little note pinned to the gate, addressed to Patrick and Helen. Who needs mobile phones eh? They had found another place to stay, nice they said, and there was a little map. I love overlanders, there is always a way, to get in touch. The mobile phone has erased people’s creativity. Last time we were back in the UK, people were perplexed by the fact that we were mobile-less, found it impossible to imagine how get togethers could be arranged. But here in Thailand in a town none of us have been to before we can organise to meet up, with people we haven’t spoken to in 3 months, even when the intial plans have to be shelved.

Their chosen place was lovely, really lovely, and for once I was captivated by the more expensive room. Because it had a bath.....a real bath.....not just a shower. Until that moment I had not been aware just how much I had missed this luxury. To be able to lounge and soak in hot water.......heaven.
I should not have let myself get so excited. Yes there was a bath. Yes, there was hot water, but in order to get hot water the water outflow was so slow that the bath could not fill fast enough to stay hot. It was pathetic really, but I suddenly wanted to cry. For months I have travelling perfectly happily with just a shower for an option, sometimes only a cold shower, but I had allowed myself to get all excited by the idea of a real bath. I shocked myself at how disappointed I was. The room was still a lovely room and the bathroom very nice, but it was a hot bath I had craved and would have to wait longer for.

There is something nice about meeting back up with other long term travellers there are so many things that need no explanation. There are certain commonalities that apply to us all. But there are also subtle ways that we differ. Karin and Coen with their roof top tent, rightly felt that with the weather a nice temperature and dry it was a bit OTT to pay for accommodation, and used the tent on their van on the street outside the hotel. So different from the bike, easy enough to pop up their roof tent, but for us to pitch our freestanding tent on the road it would be a little weird. They are probably even more careful with their money than us, which makes a change.

Of course a meeting with Karin and Coen would not be complete with a few games of Settlers, and this time we were privileged to be initiated into the finer points of the extended version.

Lampang on first inspection had little to commend it, but I grew in the day or so I was there to rather like the place. Original stylish teak buildings, Burmese style wats, and horse and carriages still plying their trade, gave the place a strange mix of modern concrete with relaxed timelessness.