Northern Thailand
Well, I think my slightly picture-of-self obsessed “What I Did In Bangkok” post was quite uninformative, so I’ll start again in Thailand. I spent maybe 7 days in Pai, and found a place selling amazing felafel!!
I met up with a mate of a mate, Chris Parker, who’s girlfriend Tom owns a sweet little bar that they wheel out every night called the Up 2 You bar.
So I spent a few days hanging out with Parkie and a girl from New Jersey I met, Talia.
We got into all kinds of sordid, over the counter, bucket drinking, cigarette smoking, crazy-eyed-guy-in-the-background nights on the Pai town.
Talia and I decided to go rockclimbing at Horse Head butresses near Chang Mai, where I met a cool pommy chick Jenny. Below the American guy is being shown how to tie in to the harnes with a figure-8 knot. Jenny is standing to the right in the shot, Talia on the left.
We did about 5 climbs ranging from (Australian system) a 17 to a 21. The last climb was a chimney, where you have to wedge yourself on either side of the walls to climb up. Below is a shot of me in mid traversal.
I spent maybe five nights in Chang Mai hanging out with Jenny and her mates. Through them I met Rachael and Tony, an ultra-ace pommy couple who I met up again with in Bangkok and went to Pat Pong road with. But anyway, the cool part was getting from Chang Mai back down to Bangkok!!! So… I got a bit lost…. I decided to go back down to Bangkok following a section of the Thai Burmese border run (called the Mae Hong Son loop) and I was fine getting from Chiang Mai to Mae Sariang, where I spent a night watching Man U play Liverpool with 100 rowdy thai football followers, it was after I set off in the morning that things got a little strange. After breakfast I asked a German guy who’d been staying at the guesthouse for 5 months (5 MONTHS!!!) what he thought of the road conditions from Mae Sariang down to Mae Sot. He told me, rather proudly, “Yeah I rode it, but it took me ages, heaps of dirt patches, a hard ride all round.” So I set of assuming the worst. The road was poorly signed, with no English translation, and I admit that I didn’t ask as many people as I should if I was heading in the right direction. I came to a national park area and relaxed, took a few shots with my vid camera and rode off thinking all was fine and I’d be in town in no time. Well, I didn’t twig that I was riding INTO a national park and that the dirt road was getting narrower and narrower because it was the wrong road. So I continued on my merry way for about 4 hours on the dirt and sand. I came across a couple of locals who had a flat tyre and I took out my mysterious metal box and inflated their tyres for them, they loved it! (note in the picture the conditions of the road… something seriously should have twigged)
Onwards through the jungle, an eye on the GPS “Yeah, I’m riding in the right general direction, no worries at all” over two river crossings, past a massive tree (below) and into a big Burmese refugee town with a deepish river and a rickety rope bridge blocking my path. At that point, after 5 hours down the (obviously) wrong road and with a big bunch of Burmese refugees staring at me, I eventually tracked down a villager who could speak English. They looked at the map for maybe 20 minutes, then I realised they had no idea what a map was or how to read it. The English speaker guy finally discovered where we were and told me that I’ve ridden too far west and that I needed to carry on, over the river for another 3 hours and then I’d be back to the town I started from that morning. d’oh!!!
I hopped on my bike, rode precariously across the river, and carried on for another hour until I reached a town called Laeku. Now this town must be an occasional stop on hill-tribe tours because they have a very rudimentary hut for visitors. The only problem was they hadn’t seen a tourist in ages… so they brought out their prettiest girl. Hahaha, this girl arrived completely covered in make-up and one girl who could speak English says “she can cook”. I politely turned her down and thought again of the sad pressures and opportunities that tourism has inflicted on Thailand’s poor. Not ready to go down without a fight, or let me go to bed without exploiting me, I get cornered by this guy who could speak some English and so I offered to buy a round of beer. The cheeky dude is pictured below, he ended up getting maybe 5 rounds for the whole group out of me before the night was through. No worries though, it only ended up costing about $4 Aussie.
Below are some more pics of the Laeku party 
Random onlooker, wife of shop owner
Best mate of cheeky guy who instigated the party
Cheeky guy, two random onlookers
Son and friend of shop owner and shop owner’s wife
Burmese cigarette
Their pet monkey, tied up 
So, that was my trip down to Bangkok from Chiang Mai. I safely found my way back to the main road. The German guy had described something pretty horrible, I found it like a major highway after the trials of the national park. I’m actually glad I got lost because I had an ace time with the folks of Laeku. This area of Thailand would be a great place to explore further on a smaller bike, maybe a 250cc XR or something.