Thailand: (PART 2) Mae Hong Son Loop by Motorbike

Day 4: Pai –> Tham Lod Cave –> Ban Rak Thai (Mae Aw) 84 miles

The next day we both awoke feeling better. Josh’s cough had lessened, and my nausea had subsided, though not completely gone. We decided we had to move on if we had any chance of actually completing the loop around. So we headed out, and ended up covering much more ground than planned. We got back on the Route 1095 and took it up towards the town of Soppong to the Tham Lod Caves. There are hundreds of caves in the mountains up in this remote area, the Tham Lod Caves are the largest, and fairly well known.

As some of you know, I have a love for caves- so we knew we had to go here! It was a 100% local operation- the mouth of the cave and all inside it has a river, and the local people from the town make bamboo boats you can take into the cave with a local guide. You pay no fee for the cave itself, but you do pay for the guides and the boat. We paid the fee and walked to the cave entrance where we got into the small bamboo raft with our guide (who spoke no English). It was an incredible cave! There were all sorts of formations inside the cave, with lots of different tunnels branching off. The guide stops you along the river at 4 different points to get out and hike further up into the cave with their gas lantern to see the stalactites and stalagmite formations. It was really beautiful.

The river was really shallow, so there were several local guides pulling the bamboo rafts to the next spot, and we also saw a ton of giant fish that looked like carp (but I don’t know what they were) in the shallow water. As we made it toward the end of the cave, the guide would shine it’s bright lights up at the ceiling and show us all the bat caves. There were thousands of bats up in the top part of the cave. It ran shivers down my spine, and still does now thinking about it, yikes! The last stop we had inside the cave we hiked up some pretty unsafe stairs into an alcove that contained old coffins. Apparently the people used to use the caves as a burial site many years ago, and these were the remaining coffins. It was really cool, but also quite spine tingling.

After the cave, we headed back onto the road to what was one of our favorite stretches of the drive. There were beautiful mountain passes, sun flowers, rice fields, and hardly any people aside from the occasional passing truck with pounds of rice stacked high or 10-15 kids sitting in the back cheering at us white people as we went by.

This stretch was also home to one of the scariest parts of the trip.  We had just passed the trucks with all of the kids screaming at us when there was another motorbike heading straight toward us in our lane!  We couldn’t believe it.  Luckily, Josh with his catlike reflexes dodged the crazy biker.  We weren’t sure if he was confused, drunk, or both but he ended up crashing and running himself into a bush off the road after we dodged him.  We pulled over and ran after him and found that he was a bloody Frenchmen (no pun intended) that had been confused about which side of the road he was suppose to be on.  After his crash, we helped clean him up – he was ok just shook up.  It reminded us of the dangers of driving on the left side of the road and that we always needed to be alert.

We decided on the fly to try to stay at Ban Rak Thai for the night. Ban Rak Thai is an old Chinese village on the border of Myanmar and Thailand, that the Chinese came to many years ago to escape communism. It is a very small quaint town, famous for it teas production and tea tastings. We had heard about it through other bloggers and I thought it looked incredible.  Most only stay for a few hours and head out. We were running out of daylight and decided to stay the night there, and I’m so glad we did!

Day 5: Ban Rak Thai –> Mae Chaem 117 miles

Ban Rak Thai felt surreal. It was tucked up in the mountains, and took over an hour to get to off the main Mae Hong Son loop. Our bike ‘Red Lightning’ chugged S-L-O-W-L-Y through the mountains passing thousands of rice farms, then tea fields until after what felt like eternity we finally saw the Chinese entrance gate and knew we made it. We quickly found a guesthouse to stay before it got dark, and then grabbed dinner. This was not a tourist town. Or at least- not a western tourist town- there were definitely some Thai tourists visiting, but we only saw one other white couple. The guesthouse was simple but clean, but didn’t have our typical creature comforts. The shower was cold and the toilet was a pit in the ground. But the bed was comfortable and it was $12 a night, right on a beautiful lake overlooking the village. Thank gosh I was feeling a little better here.

Our Thai/Chinese Mama of the guesthouse made us several different teas on our arrival, and we relaxed and enjoyed the fact that we were off our sore butts and that darn bike for the day. It was a LONG journey.

We had a traditional Chinese dinner along the water at the only restaurant, and it felt really unique. Thai people? Chinese people? Both I suppose.   We woke up the next morning to roosters crowing and loud chanting. We looked outside and saw a large group of people doing Tai Chi on the waterfront, which was interesting, but not the chanting. Where in the devil was it coming from? Finally we realized that up on the hill was a temple, and it was the Monks. We quickly got ready for our next leg of the drive and slowly sputtered through town on Red Lighting, just in time to see all the monks coming down from the temple for their morning tea. It was one of the most unique places I’ve ever been, and by far the most out of our element we’d yet been on our RTW trip.

Day 5 was another long stretch, since we lost a day from our sickness. We drove all the way back down the mountain from Ban Rak Thai, and headed onto a faster, flatter stretch of road to Mae Hong Son. There wasn’t much to this Thai city, but we stopped and grabbed some coffee and breakfast there and walked around a bit to see what it was all about, then headed back on the road.   We had lunch at another small town that many people stay at called Khun Yuam, then continued along another very rugged stretch of road that had been paved many years ago- with many more potholes.

Waterfall Along the Way

Strawberry Fields

Because we had gotten an early start, we made it to our destination around 3pm, which was earlier than we thought, and I was SO HAPPY to get off the bike at this point. Our legs and back were so sore, and my butt was about numb from the ride and all the curvy stretches with potholes. We stopped in the complete middle of nowhere at a little guesthouse and restaurant called Hot Coffee, which was the only thing for miles around us. We had heard about this place through other bloggers as well, and we welcomed the bungalow by the river and its calmness.

Day 6: Mae Chaem –> Doi Inthanon –> Chiang Mai 91 miles

The next morning we got up early, had some COLD iced coffee (despite the name of the place), and were on our way back to Chiang Mai. This last stretch was extremely scenic at first with tons of sunflowers, cornfields, farms, and beautiful rolling hills. Then we got into the National Park, Doi Inthanon, and the road got NUTS. It made everything else we’d ridden through look elementary- which was saying a lot because it was all mountains. There was a very windy, very narrow stretch where you had to honk your horn at every curve because it was hard to see others. I was terrified, and grabbed hold of Josh as tight as I could without cutting off his circulation. I couldn’t WAIT to be out of that stretch of the road. After that we were pretty much done with the drive mentally. There were a couple cool viewpoints and waterfalls in the National Park, but we didn’t really care anymore, and just kept riding. We just wanted to be off the bike, and in a cold shower, so we trudged onwards back to Chiang Mai. We managed to make it back to the city unscathed, and Red Lightning still in tact and driving as good as when she started our journey. We turned in the keys, grabbed a cold shower, and went straight for a massage to fix our aching bodies from the long winding roads.   It was an incredible, unforgettable journey. I feel so blessed we were able to make it safely around the Thai jungle with minimal injury- besides the aching butt. It was one of the best experiences we’ve had on the trip to date, but I’m glad to have a little break from a motorbike for a bit.