Motorcycle adventures

After coming back from trekking, I accidentally ran into Maria and Erik from Sweden again (I previously met both in Sukhothai and we spent a day in Chiang Mai together). We decided to meet up the next day to rent two motorbikes (costing 2 EUR to rent for 30 hours!) and explore the surrounding of Pai (of course, I wasn't driving! but fortunately, they were willing to bring me along anyways :-)).

After going to a waterfall close-by and really liking the whole motorbike idea, we decided to drive the road to Mae Hong Son the next day (about 110 km from Pai). The road is very windy and you would never see curves as steep as that in Germany, but by motorbike it was actually a lot of fun. We had some amazing views of the mountains and so much fun on the way that we decided to actually drive all the way to Mae Hong Son. If you don't stop all the time along the way, it should actually take you about 3 hours to get from one place to the other. So after having a snack in Mae Hong Son, we kind of hurried up because we didn't really want to drive in the dark given the difficulty of the road. We didn't even think of what else could happen on the way...

About half an hour after leaving Mae Hong Son, one of the machines ran low on gas so we were looking out for a gas station. Quite unsuccessfully! After we still didn't find one after more or less 20 km (which is a lot given the small size of the tank and the amount of gas the bike was using on the steep slopes with two people on it!), we really started to worry a lot. We had asked people before, and they all told us that in the next village there would be a gas station which we now couldn't find. So we knocked on the door of what seemed like a motorcycle repair station and after a few minutes the owner came out dressed only in a towel (directly from the shower :-)). He understood our problem and looked very worried. What worried us was that he didn't even point into a direction anymore, like the people we asked before him did...

Soon we found out why: the gas station was closed already!!! We were happy to reach this village and there was no way we would make it back to Pai which was still about 40 km away. To make things worse, it started raining. It was pouring down on us and who hasn't been to any tropical region can't even imagine how much rain can come down in only a few minutes... There we were: by now in the dark, with heavy rain (which made the road even more dangerous), freezing to death, our body was aching from sitting on the motorbike the entire day and without any gas...

But this wouldn't be Thailand if there wouldn't turn up some angels to save your life :-) While escaping from the rain under some random roof (at least we were in a village when the rain started!), we found out that the family next-door actually had a whiskey-bottle full of gas (around 1 liter) and they were happy to sell it to us for 30 Baht (the normal price). When we told them that we still had to go to Pai, they started worrying, too, and started to get some more gas out of their own motorbikes (with a small pipe and the poor guy that was sucking the pipe to get the gas running for sure drank quite a lot of the gas). By this point of time, I was willing to pay them 100 EUR for the gas they provided to us, but the family refused to take more than the agreed 30 Baht (around 60 EUR-cents)...

With all the gas we had by now, we should just be able to slowly drive to Pai. The rain had stopped but we were still worried about the road conditions given that it was pitch-dark and very wet by now. After some debating of whether we should just stay overnight in the village (but Maria and Erik had to leave for a trek at 8 am the next day), we decided to try to slowly drive to Pai. As soon as we left the village, we actually felt like in a horror movie since white mist was rising from the street and around us was only pitch-dark forest and strange noises!

We were counting down the kilometers and were quite lucky because their were some long downhill slopes. However, after a while the other bike was running out of gas also, so we decided to push the motorbike up any uphill slopes (we still had about 10 km to Pai and there was continuous lightening, so we didn't know whether it would start to rain again any second!). Going like this would have taken us at least 1 or 2 more hours (by now it was 10 pm and we were supposed to return the bikes by 9pm, which was particularly tricky since we had a small accidents with one of the bikes the day before and were not sure whether they would still accept our insurance if we returned the bikes late since the accident could have happened before...), but then our next angel turned up. All of a sudden, a pick-up stopped next to us (which was a miracle itself since there was hardly anymore traffic) and was willing to take the three of us and the two bikes! So we lifted the cars on the pick-up and actually had to sit on them so they wouldn't fall down. This is definitely the coolest way I have ever ridden a motorbike!!! It is a pity that we didn't take a picture of this situation, but believe me, nobody was feeling like taking any pictures at all. We were freezing to death given the speed we all of a sudden had, but still feeling so relieved since we arrived in Pai within 10 minutes.

Once in Pai (after being on the motorbikes for about 10 hours!!!), we had to realize that the agency where we rented the bikes was already closed (although they were open at this time the day before!). This was a real problem because not only didn't we feel like paying the fine of 20 Baht per hour per bike but also did we get really worried about the insurance issue... We tried to wake the owners of the agency up, but without success. Since there was not much we could do (by then it was past 11pm) we decided to just meet the next morning as soon as the agency opened again (at 7 am!). Which doesn't sound very hard, was pure horror to us... After an exhausting day like this and dreaming about just sleeping in the next day, getting up at 6:30 was a plane nightmare...

To cut a long story short, we ended up with the best possible outcome: after the agency wanted to charge us for another complete day for the two bikes, we ended up paying nothing, got our deposit and passport back and they didn't even check the bikes so the accident went unnoticed (which shouldn't really matter to them, given that we had an insurance just for the case of an accident!). Completely happy, I went back to sleep until 1 pm and really felt sorry for Maria and Erik who had to head out for their trek...



Some of the people I hang out with during the last days: Sonja and Mark from Switzerland (which I met on the trek) and Maria and Erik from Sweden (which I already met in Sukhothai).

A nice village we passed on our first afternoon with the motorbikes.

My view during all our trips: Thanks Erik for being such a great driver!!!

Me pretending to be the driver :-)

A mountain range at one of the wonderful viewpoints.

Impossible to put more stuff on one single pick-up! This guy was actually quite annoying - he always overtook us downhill and then got really slow as soon as the road went uphill again...

The same viewpoint as on one of the previous pictures, but now on our way back. As you can see, it is already getting pretty dark...

This is when we seriously started worrying about the rain...

Here we knew for sure that the rain would be a problem...

A heavy rain coming closer this morning - I hope it didn't catch Maria and Erik on the trek!

Trekking in Pai

After my last post, together with some people I met, I took the bus from Sukhothai to Chiang Mai where I only spend the night because I really didn't feel like being in a big city again. Furthermore, I was hoping (correctly!) that it would be a little bit cooler in the mountains. We went to the night market (which is the biggest one in Thailand) and got a foot massage, but that was about it. I plan to really discover the city once I come back from the countryside :-)

From Chiang Mai I took the ordinary bus (which means the one without AC) to Pai and it was the best decision ever! Instead of having some AC that does not work anyway (as it again happened to me on the bus to Chiang Mai), I could at least open the window plus I was sitting right next to the door which was kept open for the entire journey, too. The road to Pai was quite mountainous and at more than one point I thought that our bus wouldn't make it up the steep slopes. The bus also made some funny noises, which you can hear in the video below:

Pai is a small village of only 3000 inhabitants but apparently it was a solid link in the Hippie Trail and there are still some old Hippies left here from the good old days some decades ago (also, there are new wannabe-Hippies coming to town every day...). It is quite relaxed and the best way to get around is by renting a motorbike (for 2 EUR a day!) - I didn't try that yet, since I never drove one before but might try this afternoon with a Swedish couple I met in Sukhothai. Also, the city experiences many blackouts which usually happen when I am in the internet or after dark...



These are the bungalows next to the river where I stood the first two nights. It is really cheap here and I only paid about 2 EUR for a bungalow with private bathroom! The first time I entered with my backpack and I had serious doubt whether the floor (made of bamboo) would support me since it was swinging quite heavily. But nothing happened and I really do believe now that bamboo is a very strong material :-)


This is the bamboo bridge leading to the bungalows.

It looks quite romantic but it is swinging just as the bungalows are and has some pretty big wholes in it. Anyways, after passing it a few times, you get used to it and even cross it at night without any lights.

I planned to go trekking right the day after I arrived in Pai, but since it is the low season no trekking company had enough people to form a group (although the minimum amount of people is only 2 to 3). So I was "stuck" in Pai for a day and decided to do a Yoga course for beginners! I never did Yoga before, so I figured it was a good opportunity. It was harder than I imagined it (it turned out I was the only real beginner among 9 people...), but the breaks to relax make it less challenging than it would have been otherwise. I received a small booklet so I can continue at home and hope I will do that. I am not really into the spiritual part of Yoga (like shouting out your anger and so on), but I really do like the exercises.

The next day, I could finally start my trek! I intended to go on a 3 day trek but there were only people for a two day trek and I would be happy about that afterwards. We were a group of 4 (a couple from Switzerland, an US-American girl and I) and our guide (Toi).

After trekking for a while, we got to this Karen village where we had lunch in the house above. The Karen are originally from Burma and migrated to Thailand in the 18th century. Today, many Karen have fled Burma and live as refugees along the Thai side of the Burmese border. Unfortunately, given the land shortage, they are under a lot of pressure from the Thai government and much of their traditional life style is slowly disappearing.

All the houses have a fire place inside the house and that is where our lunch was prepared.

What else do you need in your bathroom? The essentials...

As you might have noticed by now, I really like huts and any kind of tree with fruits on it...

Here they are drying rice and to protect it against hungry birds or other animals, they put some eagle wings up there.

The roofs of the huts are traditionally made from these big leaves from a tree they call Red Tree. This kind of roof has to be changed every three years whereas the ones made from the palm tree leaves last for 4 to 5 years.

Now is the season to renew your roof since the raining season will come pretty soon. Also, the red tree is just loosing its big leaves to make the roof.

On our way out of the Karen village.

We mainly walked throught the jungle / forest.

We quite often passed big forests of bamboo and wild trees (the curly ones).

Unfortunately, we also saw many burned forests... The farmers change their rice fields every five years, so they have to make place for some new ones while the old fields recover. However, very often the fire gets out of control and burns parts of the jungle. Most burning takes place at this time of the year so the fields are ready for the upcoming raining season.

That's how we arrived a small Lahu village where we stood overnight... About half-way between our lunch break and the village it started to rain. First only slightly and we were really happy about the refreshment but then the rain got stronger and stronger. We waited inside a cave for a little while, but then we had to carry on since the river we still had to cross was getting bigger and bigger. It turned out that we got right into a typhoon and we had to walk for what seemed like hours to me in this really strong (and cold!) rain and lightening. We arrived the village completely soaked and frozen and really felt bad to enter the house like this...

Fortunately, our hosts directly turned on a fire so we could dry our clothes and warm up.

These are our hosts. In this small village only a total of three families lived, all from the Lahu tribe. The Lahu came to Thailand about 100 years ago mainly from China and Burma. In total there are about half a million Lahu, 80000 of them fled to Thailand. Needless to say, the village didn't have any electricity.

Some more family members - I can't even guess how many people slept in this tiny room...

This is the house we slept in: us in the left room and the family in the right room.

The other house in the village. If you look carefully, you can see the boys are just having a "shower".

This is our host with a baby ant eater - his mother was already eaten :-(

This is after it started to pour again... It was raining so heavily that water came through the roof and we had to fix it at quite some parts. Our hosts didn't have time to prepair the roofs for the raining season yet since they are working on a fence to surround their farm. It was only the second rain this year and nobody expected it to be as strong.

This is a present we got from our hosts. They don't sell this stuff, it is mainly used as presents.

In the morning... First, it took us some time to get to sleep because the pigs below us were making crazy noises since they were frightened by the thunder and lightening. Once we slept, it started to rain again but fortunately only a few drops fell down on us and then it stopped.

Our host and I. The family was really nice and would always sit with us. Once again, it was really a pity that we didn't have a common language to communicate in... His wife was selling some bracelets and lost one on the floor. So I picked it up to give it to him and he gave it to me as a present. Now I wear this pinkish-purple bracelet and I am quite proud of it since it was a really nice gesture :-)

In the morning we continued hiking to a bigger Lahu village where we had lunch. Here too, they were fixing the roofs everywhere (note that they use the other kind, the palm leaves, here).

As soon as we walked into the village, these boys showed up with their roosters. We first thought they only have them as pets but then it turned out that they organize rooster fights... They were pretty excited about showing us the skills of their animals.

This cutie we also met in the village. He was playing very happily with his sack of rice, but then got pretty scared when he saw us (as you can tell from the face!).

Garlic... You really see garlic everywhere here! Until 15 years ago, the region was mainly producing opium and our guide told us that sometimes on the treks you could see a caravan of 50 horses (all protected by guards with machine guns) walking by in a distance and one would have to hide in the bushes. However, the Thai government is pretty strict on drug law enforcement, so the farmers were forced to grow garlic instead (which of course is not even nearly such a nice business...). The opium production moved further north to the Golden Triangle and the treks got a bit safer (and less adventurous). The most dangerous animal in the region is the king cobra. The tigers and elephants disappeared around the same time as the opium business.

We survived!!! After the trek, this nice pick-up picked us up and we had a nice refreshing trip back to Pai!

Travelling alone

Many of you have asked me whether I am not worried or scared about travelling on my own and I want to give you a quick update on my current opinion :-)

Of course I am not some weird antisocial nerd that doesn't feel like talking to other people within several weeks. So I would prefer to travel with somebody (that I enjoy travelling with!) but since these people didn't have time, I rather go by myself than not to go at all.

But now about the being scared thing: I think there are two points to it. First of all, people might be scared of travelling itself. Of being in danger while on the road, of not finding the places or buses they want to find or of the new environment / country itself. I am sure this fear pretty quickly fades away once you have travelled to another country and you find out that people are more or less the same everywhere (or at least human nature is in general a friendly one) and you will always somehow find what you are looking for. Apart from this, I am pretty convinced that the US or big cities in Europe are a lot more dangerous than most parts of the world (and for sure than Southeast Asia!).

Second of all, people might be scared of actually being alone. That obviously depends on the person, but although I am quite happy to hang out by myself, I must admit that I felt weird in the beginning. Somehow, you just think that everybody else has somebody to talk to and you are the only one wandering the streets alone (and you think that everybody notices and that makes you feel even weirder!). However, you soon realize that it is not like this and there are actually many lone travellers. And there are certainly advantages to being on your own: it is a lot easier to get in contact with local people since they are more likely to talk to one lonely foreigner, you can observe your surrounding a lot more and you actually get to take more pictures (that you can chose to delete afterwards...).

Apart from that, you always meet other travellers and that can actually show you even more how nice it is to travel alone... I travelled with quite some people over the last few days and apart from that it is of course more complicated to organize a bigger group of people, it can have many other downsides, too. You would think that the travellers you meet here are more or less similar to yourself and have similar interests, but no way! I met some people that are just not interested in local people and their life and actually behave so rude towards them that it is embarrassing to be in the same group with them... There are so many different interests and you constantly have to compromise and don't get to see the stuff you actually want to see. After meeting some of those weird people that I can't identify with at all, I actually prefer not to talk all day than having to talk to them.

So don't worry! I am really happy here and completely fine with being by myself! (Although I am looking forward to travelling with Natalie to East Africa!)

Sukhothai - the ancient capital of Thailand

Barfoot greetings from Sukhothai! As some of you might know, you always has to take off your shoes before entering a house in Thailand. However, I did not know that this also applies to internet cafes!

I am in Sukhothai, also called Thailand's cradle, at the moment and this will finally be a post with pictures :-) Around the 13th century, Sukhothai rose as Thailand's first capital and here the first Thai alphabet as well as distinctive architecture and art was developed. This glory lasted for about 150 years before the capital was relocated to Ayuthaya further south and later to Bangkok.

While travelling from Bangkok to Sukhothai, I was again surprised by Thai friendliness. Still in Bangkok, I took a bus from my hostel to the main government bus station and had no idea how much the fare would be. So I showed the cashier (who didn't speak English) all the coins I had and she counted them and took all of them. First, I thought it was a typical tourist rip-off and she took just all the money she could get from me. Later however, I realized that the real fare (printed on my ticket) was even more than she took from me. So instead of ripping me off, she actually let me travel for less! Also, she was really friendly in pointing me how to get to the station etc.

Once in the big government bus station, the information counter was empty and I had no clue where to buy my ticket. So I walked up to one of the counters but again, no English was spoken. All of a sudden, a Thai girl came up and more or less arranged the entire journey for me - out of plain friendliness! My bus was delayed (which I didn't know so I was worried that it had just left from another platform) and again, other passengers took care of me. Particularly cute was one grandpa who was always smiling on me, offering me his Coke and letting me know where I had to get off the bus. However, it was a pity that most of these people don't speak any English (and that I don't speak Thai...). It is kind of true that you can get around with English since most hostel staff and tour operators speak English. However, if you want to communicate with the normal people on the street, things look quite different.

The bus trip to Sukhothai (normally 7 hours, our trip about 9 hours) was kind of a pain. I travelled during the day to see a bit of the environment and villages on the way. However, the AC wasn't working properly (outside it had 40 degrees, inside even more!) so after a while we all just passed out plus we had to close the curtains anyway because of the sun :-( When I finally arrived in Sukhothai, I immediately fell in love with this place! It is a very nice rural town with lots of green and less hectic than Bangkok. My hostel is really nice also and I could just hang out there for another week!

Yesterday I went to see the main attraction of the town, namely Sukhothai Historical Park (a UNESCO World Heritage Site), the old ruins of the former capital. At breakfast I met Lola, an Argentinian girl (such coincidence: she is from Cordoba, moved to Europe for her boyfriend and is now together with a German guy!) and we rented some bikes to drive the 14 km to the Historical Park. On the way we passed through many monastries and small villages and it was a great way to experience "normal" Thai life. Again, everybody on the way greeted us, but some of the small kids (especially the young monks) were even afraid of us :-(

The Historical Park was really impressive, but we arrived just at the worst time of the day and the heat was nearly unbearable... Quite funnily, many Thai people and even a monk asked us to take a picture of us! We felt quite special despite the dirt and sweat on our skin (and we innerly hoped that they weren't taking the pictures only because they never saw such a DIRTY tourist before :-)).

But now it's time to finally show you some pics:


A typical Thai house in the region: usually they are built on stilts and the part below the house is used to hang out during the greatest heat or for cooking.

We met this small monk on our way to the Historical Park. Somehow, the road sometimes led us directly through monastries (or we just got lost...) which was really interesting. This young fellow was a little shy and the other monks started to make fun of him and then showed him how brave they are by posing for a picture.

Also on our way, this music teacher who we coincidently met and who spoke fluent English invited us to his school and showed us some traditional Thai instruments. His students got really excited about the strange visitors but then quickly ran away when he asked who wanted to play a little piece for us :-)

Beautiful scenery along our way. The trees and other plants are just so colourful here! And you can find all kinds of (in Germany) expensive fruits just on the side of the street - that is paradise!

A hut along the way with the coconut station just in the frontyard.

That is the situation that happened to us all along the way. Whenever we would pass any child or adult, they would smile and wave at us quite happily.

We passed the ruins of this Wat on our way to the Historical Park. It is quite impressive to see such scenery all along the way - there are so many Wats here!

This Wat was decorated by many big elephants and if you look closely you can see that people still give oblations to them (some of the elephants are holding some mangos - and we resisted to "take" them!).

Lola and I having fun with the autotimer.

I really like this picture, especially how the monk and this amazing tree are reflecting in the water.

We finally got there: Sukhothai Historical Park. This is one of the numerous Wats (Wat Mahathat) inside the old city walls.

People still use some of the Wats to pray.

These little monks were really afraid of us! The adult monk that was with them wanted to take a picture of us together with them, but they refused strongly. Only one had the courage, but still he didn't feel like smiling :-)

On our way back, when all our bones were already aching from our horrible mountain bikes, we saw this beautiful sunset behind just another monastry we passed on our way.

Okay, I guess this post is quite long already, so I rather stop. Probably tonight I will visit the public retiree aerobic that takes place every evening for one hour close to the hostel (they are so cute!). So far, I didn't have any stomach or mosquito problems, however (a completely new experience) I am sleepless!!! Although my days here are quite exhausting, I am just full of energy and usually can't fall asleep until 2 am - this never happened to me, but I guess it is better than sleeping too much on my trip :-) Tomorrow, I will move on further north and keep you updated from there!

P.S. We had 45 degrees Celcius today...