Caution, curves ahead

After a great start to our driving adventure and a break from the windy road for jungle trekking, we had the curviest sections still to come.

Mae Hong Son to Pai
This was the shortest day of driving of the entire loop, only 100km of curve after curve. Since this region of Thailand is known for its caves, we stopped at Tham Lod, a huge cave with a small river running through it. Here, you have to hire a local guide equipped with a gas lantern and a few words of English. We also hired a bamboo raft to take us one way down the river.

This is a pretty heavily visited cave and there were large groups of french and german tourists. But the cave was well worth the crowds, impressively tall with gigantic mineral formations. Unfortunately, since our guide’s English was limited to, “looks like…crocodile, Buddha, etc.” while gesturing to a formation, my need for science explainations was sadly unmet.

There is also a large group of bats that live high up in the cave. It is a surreal experience to be in a huge dark cavern surrounded by the sounds of bats above you (and a bit frightening as you may be the next poop target.)

Finally, Tham Lod has a few ancient wooden coffins brought to the cave by pre-historic people more than a millenium ago. The history is cool, but the actual coffins are not at all exciting to look at (so no pictures worth posting).

Pai

Pai was billed by one tour company as the place to “see hippies”. They still live there, selling their handmade jewelry. At night a few of the main blocks host a night market with plenty of meat on sticks and “caution, curves ahead” stickers. We also appreciated the diversity of bars in Pai, we found ones that wouldn’t be out of place in San Francisco or Burning Man — like the punk bar or the downtempo house bar.

Many of the things to do in Pai cater to the young backpacker crowd (tubing, whitewater rafting, etc). This is also where all the tourists rent motorbikes – plenty of young Chinese and Europeans struggling and laughing at their own poor skills. Unfortunately, we also saw plenty of people with scooter injuries and even witnessed a crash near our lunch stop.

The day we spent in Pai, we decided to recover from our trek by going to the Pai hot springs (which have a state park but also pump water to a couple of private resorts). When we got to the state park, they wanted almost $20 to enter (Thais only pay $3). We decided it was an affront to our sense of fairness and drove away.

As it turned out a nearby private resort has cheap day passes which include 2 hot spring tubs and use of the pool. We ended up spending quite a few hours there – very relaxing.

We really enjoyed the laid back feel of the town. If we weren’t already late in returning the car, we both would have been happy to spend longer in Pai (next time!)

Pai to Chiang Rai

Our final driving day was a long one, with the first part of the day’s journey being famously twisty and crowded with other tourists. This route was also frequented by my favorite Thai road sign – caution curves ahead – that shows up after already having come around curves as if we were unaware that the road continues.

The only stop we made was at a pair of roadside geysers about 100km from Chiang Rai. There were a few places to get lunch and a lot of souvenir shops. Clearly it is a common pit stop for tour groups on their way north.

Chiang Rai

Chiang Rai was our weekend stop – we got things done like laundry and a haircut for Eugene. While it has a few touristy things going on it is mainly just a pleasant Thai city.

The first night there, after a cheap all-you-can-eat hot pot dinner, we heard music coming from behind our hotel. We checked it out to discover a cute jazz and blues studio where musicians come to jam and cold drinks are served. We spent 2 nights listening to some pretty good jazz and even better blues.

As this was our last stop in Thailand, we spent our days getting our fill of Thai food and had one of the best breakfasts I’d had in all of Thailand – roast pork and duck over rice. Simple and incredibly tasty.

It was a bit sad to leave Thailand, but we had other places we wanted to see and do!