Gillie, my dad and I motored up to the Golden Triangle last week. After spending hours combing Chiang Mai for the right bike (a manual 125cc Honda Wave with disc brakes... enough engine to get the two of us up the hills, and the brakes to get us down), we were ready to go.
We spent half of the first day getting out of Chiang Mai and away from the four lane highway. Riding a glorified scooter, with a passenger, through the thick of Thai morning traffic - gets a little hectic.
We took a break at the first elephant camp we saw.
It was neat, but sort of sad at the same time. The elephants were clearly captive, and didn't look all that happy.
At least we got to feed them some bananas:
About an hour out of the elephant camp, the pungent aroma of garlic filled the air. We rounded a corner to see two or three flat beds truck piled high with heads of garlic - several thousand to a truck.
Just outside of Fang, we stopped by this temple.
Thailand is just littered with these things.
The next morning we departed for Mae Salong. It's way up in the mountains of the Golden Triangle, about 80 km from Fang.
When communism swept through China, a bunch of nationalists fled here. It's kind of like Taiwan, except much smaller, more mountainous, and with many more trinket sellers per capita. Here are some pictures:
Next up was a 120km ride to Mae Saeau. The ride was gorgeous, up and down twisty hills, past several fields of rice paddies.
We even passed through a herd of cattle that had wondered onto a mountain road, 
and scootered past a little wild fire blazing through the roadside forest. 
If you find yourself in Northern Thailand, here's a word of advice: don't go to Mae Saeau. A more fitting name for this little hamlet: "The Town that Food Forgot". Gillie and I went to three different restaurants that all claimed to be closed. We ended up gorging ourselves on a collection of snacks cobbled from the odd food vendors scattered around town - chicken satay, corn fritters and fried bananas. The most excitement in Mae Saeau was watching the artfully tied baskets on this truck pass by: 
After four days on the road, we were happy to get back to Chiang Mai, and onwards to Laos. 
I'll close with a short video we shot; please note the police officer* to the left of the screen. (*He's actually a mannequin.)
remember when i commented on this? somehow the comment was deleted.
ReplyDeleteall i said was
"great vid. great post."