MISSION STATUS
Day: 6
Time elapsed: 108 hours
Time remaining: 58 hours
Distance covered: 405 km
Gasoline bill:circa Bh 800 (NZ$ 30)
Accomodation bill: Bh 650 (NZ $26)
Max speed: circa 130kmhr
Flat tyres: 1
Hey folks. Just back in Mai Sarieng after an eye-opening two days up in the hills at a tribal village. Before getting into that, i'll update ya on the eventful drive from Mae Hon Song to Mai Sarieng.
We decided to crank the 170km trip from Mae Hon Song to Mai Sariang ("MS") in one hit, rather than splitting it up with an overnight stop in Khun Yuam. The map showed a few 'caution: very steep" warnings on this route, so it was always gonna be a fun drive. I revived a bit of mapping and trig skills and worked out that we should able to get to MS in just over 5 hours, including windy roads; breaks; occasional explorations of whatever attractions we stumble upon and gas stops. While I was at it with the calculator and ruler, we realised that we could spend a night on a trek somewhere and still make it back to Chiang Mai in time for our flight down to Phuket on the 14th. Beauty! Had to ask around a bit to find out what day of week / date it was though, as we'd pretty much lost track (not for the first time). So yeah, the motorcycle tour was extended to a 7 day clockwise trip, including 2 days of trekking and a trip up Thailand's highest peak (Doi Inthanon). All on the one change of clothes we jammed into our daypacks on the 7th.
The Motorcycle Diary
7 Feb - Day 1 - Chaing Mai to Pai: 135km
8 Feb - Day 2 - Pai to Mae Hong Song: 110km
9 Feb - Day 3 - MHS to Mae Sarieng: 160km
10 Feb - Day 4 - Trekking somewhere out of Mae Sarieng (staying overnight at a hilltribe village)
11 Feb - Day 5 - Trekking somewhere out of Mae Sarieng (returning to Mae Sarieng at night)
12 Feb - Day 6 - Mai Sarieng to Doi Inthanon : 160km
13 Feb - Day 7 - Doi Inthanon to Chaing Mai (fly out 8am the next morning for Phuket)
Walked up a hill that overlooked Mae Hon Song to start the day: comparable to Mt Eden. Past a few Bhuddist temples, but were gretted at the summit by nothing more than some massive radio transmitters and a pack of angry dogs. After bearing out teeth at them we made our way down and hopped on the bikes for the drive.
All was going well on the road, even though there were some pretty serious gravel patches and potholes that snuck up when you least expected them. Until coming out of a sweeping right hand bend I felt the back of my bike slide sideways waaaaaaay more than it should. Serious oversteer. On a dry road and a pretty easy corner. Figured something was up, so I eased off the gas and came to a stop about a hundred metres down the road. By this time Dom and overtaken and was out of sight. I jumped off and looked around a bit - only to fit a flattened rear tyre. Pretty bl00dy stoked that didnt happen on any more of a corner or at any more speed than it did.
By this time Dom had doubled around to see what was up. Our bikes didn't carry spares; and since it was my rear tyre (with chain etc attached), our only real option was to ge the bike to the closes town for a tyre chang. We knew we were roughly 10kms from the rural town of Khun Yuam, so figured we'd flag down the next passing ute and see if the driver was keen to lend a hand. And it worked! Within 2 minutes I was sitting on the tray of some thai dude's hilux, holding onto my bike as we weaved into Khun Yuam. Ended up at a local mechanics workshop that looked like it was staffed with high school kids who hung there in the weekend. No worries. New tyre. New brake pads. We law around on the workshop's lawn while the boys sorted out the bike. Good as new b 500 later. That put us 70km down and 90km to go on the way to Mae Sarieng. The rest of the drive went smoothly, though I eased off a bit conscious of the lack of anything between me and the hard asphalt if anything similar were to happen at a serious click.
We cruised into Mae Sarieng just after 4pm (just as my mapping skills had estimated!) and found a shady place to sit on the lawn the browse the LP for a good place to crash (our general pattern after arriving in a new destination on the bikes). Walked into one of the guesthouses on the banks of the Mae Yuam river and hung around for a while waiting for someone to attend the desk. But no one came. We ended up talking to a couple of american chicks who were already staying there and they said it was generally pretty good: clean, cheap, relatively comfy. Right up our alley. They were actually volunteers; teaching english up at a hill tribe village and were just in town for the night... as we found out during the next hour as we sat around waiting for someone to come to the front desk.
When they did, we mentiond that we were looking to spend a couple of days doing a trek and having a nosy around a hill tribe village. They called up some dude who they recommended and he came around for a chat. This was our first meeting with "Pat", (his real name Hommeang, which we shorted to "Hommie"... coz he was our hommie" Pat talked up his eco-tourism tours up to his village, where his mother was a bhuddist nun, and where we would get a unique experience (unlike the "plastic" trekking tours that he said were run out of Chiang Mai; and the "broken" villages that they visited). Pat / Hommie was thai, but had pretty decent english and a colour brochure which he had made himself . Probably what sold us was his genuine enthusiasm for both the tour and helping the people of his village. The American girls were headed back up the village the next morning too (to the primary school where they teach), and with the renovations at the temple waiting we were meant to all be ready to leave at 8am.
Day: 4
Time elapsed: 96 hours
Naturally we slept in. Pat came knocking on our door at 7:57 and we quickly gathered (what we thought were) all our possessions and rammed them into our daypacks. Soon enough, we were heading up some dirt roads in the back of Pat's car. After about an hour we arrived at his mum's temple; but were just too late to move the last of the big golden bhuddas that were being relocated to a new prayer building. We explored the grounds for a bit, and the american girls (Elder and Jenny) showed us the 4 square metre hutt that they'd lived in for the last two months. Before long it was time for an early lunch for 12 (all locals loitering in the vicinity are invited), consisting of super-yummy pork soup, steamed pumpkin, rice and a few other dishes. Cuisine that was quite different from what we'd eaten off the street and in restaurants so far. The flavours from each dish came across as really distinct - not clashing with each other... if that makes any sense.
Post-lunch we jumped in the back of Pat's Mum's ute (yup, she's a bhuddist nun WITH a hilux AND a smoking habit), while he drove us to meet families of villagers. Between us, the american girls and a few straggler locals from the temple, there were about 6 of us in the hilux tray. First up we went to a village house where the family have two cottage industries going on: cotton production and coffee beans. Tens of kilos of beans were laid around on huge tarpulins drying before they were to be put through the grading and roasting process. Found out that these very beans are purchased by Starbucks and used in their brews. There were various cotton garments too, and we saw the entire process from cotton flower to thread, dying and weaving. I even had a go at the weaving on this bamboo and wood machine they had built to make the process less effort. Also pretty interested were the chants coming from a Catholic chuch nextdoor..... apparently large proportion of the village are varying denomiations of christianity after missionaries came to these parts in the late 19th century. They bought the coffee beans too; and many villagers continue cropping the coffee beans because the returns are greater than possible through rice or cotton (those those crops continue too).
After hangin at a few village houses, we hiked around the terraced crops growing on the 'organic farms', run by a cooperative between the local government and villagers. There's some relationship to the King in all this too; but unsure exactly of where he fits in. His idea? Some of his coin? The crops, irrigation systems and greenhouses were all pretty amazing considering the relative remoteness of the villages and their ancient culture. Crops ranged from tomatoes to fancy lettuce, passionfruit, cabbage, soy bean, plums, cherries, pumpkin and eggplant. As well as some local mellon they call 'Pamello'. Produce is harvested in the hundreds of kilograms to fulfill orders from as far as Chaing Mai and Bangkok. Pretty mean!
Back to the temple, and we got into a game of soccer with the local kids as dusk set in. Don't want to brag or anything, but I did score a hatrick.... even though some of the village kids rekoned Dom looked like David Beckam. Pity he couldn't deliver on the field! Dinner was just as diverse and yummy as lunch; and after it we helped the american girls with all the dishes (one of the perks of being a volunteer english teacher at the local school apparently), before Pat led us to the roof of the temple to watch a stunning sunset over the hills.
As the horizon's hue faded from an electric orange to grey, Pat suggested that Dom and I should jump in with him and go to the villager's hutt where we'd be spending the night. Our bed's were blankets on the wooden floor of their lounge; where we started off by being shown photos of the family at various tourist attractions around Thailand. Before long we had been invited to the neighbour's to hang on the floor of thier hutt's kitchen, plied with rice whisly and conversing / laughing with the families in the room through Pat's translations. Lit only by the glow of the open-fire in the middle of the room: it's walls and ceiling blackened by ash from the smoke. It was a pretty cool scene, with even their 7 year old son trying to finish his homework for the weekend late on this Sunday evening!
More people arrived and there were more questions for us about ourselves, our studies, life in New Zealand and how much we like Thailand. One of the young girls in the audience training to be a nurse in nearby Chiang Rai. It was widely accepted that New Zealand was very pretty, but that the culture there is a lot different to life in the village. We were also offered more delicacies in the form of a big salty ball of mashed up soy beans (to be eaten with a clove of garlic, which you use to spoon the mash and then swallow the whole lot); bitter tea leaves (to be chewed with a pinch of salt), and more rice whiskey. (not too damaging, considering my initial taste reminded me of the almost-100% ethanol that my science teacher distilled in third form as part of an experiment!) It was good times when Pat busted our his guiar and started sining some thai/english hybrid tunes.
A young man who was among the visitors that night invited us to a huge feast that was to be held as his new hutt the next day as a form of blessing (their equivalent of a housewarming). In fact, they were going to be cooking all that night for the crowds of people that he was expecting. Thinking that this sounded like some serious immersion into the local culture, we offered to help out with the cooking. What we didn't realise was that the cooking was to be of a pig and buffallo, which Pat had muttered something about throughout the day.....I'd kinda firued I'd be involved at a level more along the lines of chopping the carrots for the salad. At some stage Pat referred to the buffalo as a 'farang' (meaning foreign) buffalo, and made some crack about having a 'farang' bbq (ie. a Nick and Dom bbq!). We realised then that we could be in for quite the evening. Here we were: being plyed with booze, fed herbs and condiments (essentially marinated) while the whole village waited with anticipation and hungry stomaches!
At around 11pm, we all got up and were taken to the new hutt: where there were trenches filled with burning wood and at least 40 people had gathered both inside and outside the hutt. A huge black buffalo was tied up ouside and a pig was lying on the ground. We were lead into the hutt and offered more whiskey with marinade.
Things stepped up a gear when we heard a ghunshot. Rushed downstairs to see the buffalo on the ground. Without getting into the squeamish details, lets just say that I didn't miss not having my camera on me as they slaughtered and dissected the huge mammal. There were at least 20 men involved, and despite the gruesome reality of it, the whole operation was quite a sight. It was interesting to witness Pat deal with his own Bhuddist convictions (mum's a bhuddist nun remember), by not partaking in the butchering but instead busing himself with the roasting and grinding of the spicies to be used instead. Pat told us how he wouldn't take tourists to festivals like this, only friends. Which was quite cool, because even though he didn't know how we'd handle it, he took the risk. We dont call him 'Homey' for nothing. Personally the scene made me question my own carnivorous policies. Killing animals is a necessary condition of making the decision to eat meat, so it would be ignorant and not hypocritcal to condemn or be disgusted by the slaughter. Yet it was still pretty gross and sad to watch such a magnificent beat die. Then I started thinking about how it differed from killing/eating say chicken, or fish? Where do you draw the line? Isn't drawing a line per-se grossly arbitray? Food for though.
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Yet again, the internet place is closing up. Will get back in touch from the top of Doi Inthanon if possible; otherwise Chiang Mai on the 13th!
-Nick
To come:
- raw mince salad / cooking every last part of it (in soup etc) - 90min later all that left was of the buffalo were a pair of horns / 2am escape after "food just about ready"
- sleeping on the floor of some vilager's hutt, even though I had put on a hoodie and jacket "just in case" - getting woken up by about 5 roosters doing their thang at 5:40 in the morning
- walking to the housewarming as quickly as possible because they were"waiting for us", then having whiskey chucked in our hand and being sat down with homeowner for a breakfast of rice and buffalo-bit soup. Avoid the crunchy parts
-the creepy village 'spirit house'
-visiting the village school and dominating them at volleyball
-"massoman" chicken curry for lunch, heaps like indian chicken curry
-visiting a waterfall and a limestone cave on the drive down from the village
18 °C
30 °C