MaeHongSong to Kunghong

Trip Start Oct 10, 2005

Trip End Ongoing

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Flag of Thailand MaehongSong, Thailand
Friday, October 28, 2005

MaeHongSong - I decided to take a back route from MHS to a place called Kunghong, it was only 200km and I had all day to do it in so I thought no worries. The first half of the ride went like a dream, lots of quick dirt tracks that snaked through the mountains, at one point I was riding on across the mountain ridge from one mountain to another for about 20km, there was mountain ranges on both sides of me as far as the eye could see, with the could cover being below me, it was spectacular. I stopped at a number of villages along the way but the best one was were on old lady invited me in for a cup of tea (being half English who was I to turn down a nice cup of tea), she was a fantastic old lady (105 if she was a day), chewing beetle nut and spitting the blood like juice out after every sentence. She did not speak any English and my Thai is not up to scratch to have a proper conversation but we managed to have one best laughs I have ever had. In the end I had to get a photo of her but it took a bit of persuasion on my part as she thought her hair was a mess, this is from a lady with skin as tough as a snakes and bright red teeth

Old Lady

. In the end she let me take a photo but said she was not going to smile... I will attach the photo next time. She was great and I Was truly disappointed when I had to leave.

So the journey continued up one mountain and down another, I don't think that these people get that many visitors as a lot of them run and hide when they saw me, the older people in the group where a little more open. I was making good progress until about 3pm when the rains came in, I was half way up a mountain at the time and had to stop as the rain was so heavy I could only see 10 feet in front of me, the red clay road turned to a steam within about 30 seconds and I had no option to wait it out. It rained for about I hour and once it finally stopped I attempted to get up the rest of the hill, it was like riding a bike on ice, I had to ride in the wheel ruts as they were the only thing holding the bike pointing straight ahead. I had to keep my legs hanging out to the sides acting like training wheels to stop the bike from falling (I came of a few times but not at any speed). Anyway I made it to the top in the end dreading coming down the other side only to find that that side on the mountain had not got any rain at all, go figure........

I was very please to get to the guest house even if it did not have any hot water and the room was a bit crap for what I paid, I slept like a baby.