We got up to ChiangMai from Tak, and because of it being Bike Week, we'd booked into a cheepie hotel near to the Bike Week base. The Imperial Mae Ping hotel where it was based was charging £30 a night - way out of our league. Our hotel was charging £8....
It was The King's birthday, and everybody was out celebrating across the country with dancing, fireworks, street markets, speeches, prayers and candles. He's a very popular king, and seems to genuinely care about his people.
We found a quiet corner by this chinese temple.
And listened to some 'interesting' chinese music.
We'd booked into a hotel right in the midde of the 'bar girl' area, and during our stay in ChiangMai, listening to fat ugly old men calling young thai girls babe became a bit painful. Anita suggested to the girls in this bar that they have a policy where if you're old and ugly you don't get in the door. That made them laugh.
In that same bar, the local Thai boxing champion was enjoying a beer before his fight that evening and boasting that he'd never been beaten. Anita suggested (troublemaker) that I arm wrestle him, and I was amazed that I beat him easily. It looks like I'm contemplating what to have for breakfast....
The Bike Week was a disappointment in a lot of ways. The dancing show that they put on was good, but the bikes were all Harleys, and the party was upmarket and tame - a total contrast to a european bike rally.
They handed out paper lanterns for us to light which was fun.
This was a japanese guy that we were talking to during the evening. He'd bought a bottle of whiskey which he demolished with help from a friend or two, then rode his Harley home wearing an indian headdress instead of a helmet.
We looked hard at the ethics of it, then decided to go to a local tiger camp. They hand rear the tigers from cubs, and allow visitors during the day when the tigers are sleepy. They're not drugged, they have all their teeth and claws, and the three that we were in the enclosure with were 2 years old and weighed around 200Kg. We watched the keepers playing with them, and they seem to be treated well with big enclosures. Any program to release tigers to the wild would just be giving poachers something to hunt.
It was a truly unforgettable experience. We had to keep behind the tigers to stop them from 'playing' with us, and they just seemed to want to be stroked.
Nice teeth...
Anita thought she'd died and gone to heaven.
We came back down to earth and fed the carp in the moat that surrounds the city centre, with one of them tame enough to hand feed.
Thailand is popular with tourists for a lot of things, and tattooing is a big one. The tattoo artists work by hand using what looks like a long needle, and produce fantastic results.
On a more cultured note, one of the many Buddhist temples offers a 'monk chat', and we spent an interesting hour talking to a couple of monks. They got to practice their English, and we learned a lot about Buddhism. This temple dates from the 13th C and one of the relics stored there is said to have miraculously duplicated itself. The monks placed it on an elephant and allowed it to wander, and where it stopped and died, there they built a new temple - on a mountain at Doi Sutep. If it wasn't raining we'd be there today. This is the first rain in weeks.
Chiang Mai is also famous for its markets. There are areas of the market that specialise in almost anything you could imagine. We even found a whole alley selling just fishing nets. Tribal embroidery and clothing is popular, and the colours are wonderful. A lot of the stalls have an area at the back where the family lives.
The mountain roads around Chiang Mai form long loops, and they're something of a legend. On the main loop there are supposed to be nearly 3000 curves, and it's possible to buy not only a certificate, but even a t shirt with a drawing of someone standing next to a car throwing up. Tasteful.
This lorry driver didn't make it round the corner, and lorries were queueing down the road to offload the coal that he was carrying.
As we came round one of the 3000 corners, we saw huge golden statues on the hillside. It turned out to be a temple site with dozens of statues, including this reclining Buddha which must have been a hundred feet long. It's amazing what you can do with concrete.
This is Ganesh, and to get the scale, you can just make out somebody kneeling at his feet
The fat Buddha.
As often happens, we stopped for lunch, and drew a crowd. Anita kept them entertained by getting the shortest bloke (blue shirt on right) to get on the bike and had to physically shove him on to everyone's amusement.
My job was to avoid the potholes - some of them pretty big.
And some of them REALLY big.
On one of the loops near the Burmese border is Mae Hong Son, just a lovely chilled out town. We met up with Sheonagh and Pat again, and this picture shows them by 'Sunset Coffee Bar' at the top of a hill. Unsurprisingly, there was a beautiful temple at the top as well.
This is a view from the guest house that we stayed in, looking across the lake at a temple. While we were there there was a week of celebration after the king's birthday, with markets, street kitchens and musicians all around the lake and through the streets of the town. It was all quite magical.
This is Sheonagh and Pat probably on curve number 2473, and was when we took a trip out to the Burmese border town of Ban Rak Thai to meet the mountain tribespeople there - know as the 'longnecks'.
It was very childish, but I couldn't resist clambering down to this waterfall. It was scarier than it looks as there was a huge drop behind me.
The children in Ban Rak Thai were beautiful.
This lady was full of fun and although we didn't share a language, we seemed to have a long chat! She proudly showed us a postcard with her on the front.
Dad was getting a helping hand with stripping the bamboo from his son who seemed to know how to use the machete, it was just too heavy for him to lift....
The people of Ban Rak Thai are Burmese, and had been taken from a refugee camp 3 miles up the road on the border. Neither them nor the other 10,000 in the camp could enter freely into Thailand, and it wasn't safe to go back to Burmha. Maybe one day in the future they'll be free to roam the mountains without worrying about borders.
Not a sign that you'd expect to see in England.
Stopping for fuel we got chatting to another bunch of Thai bikers, and they ceremoniously put a sticker on our pannier. They were lovely people and down-to-earth bikers.
We'd hoped that this trip would allow us to meet a lot of good people, and we are constantly ovewhelmed and humbled by the kindness and friendliness of people that we meet. Just sitting on a log taking a break, a lady came up to us and excitedly asked for a photograph with us. She was on a trip with colleagues, and it was her birthday. Pantharee, Pen, Pornchai and Wasana, it was truly a pleasure to have met you.
The roads were superb, and even the dual carriageways were twisty. Not without their hazards though.
In the more remote areas, petrol stations were fairly basic.
Hot springs are common in this area, and the enterprising locals weave eggs into little bamboo baskets for people to dip into the boiling water. 20p for 2 boiled eggs, and they'll give you a plate, cutlery, salt, sauce and a drink of water.
This garage was straight from the 1950's.
A friendly Tuk Tuk driver. These little taxis are all over Asia and the sound of their noisy engines is everywhere in town.
A temple in Chiang Dao.
Having ridden past dozens of signs for caves (the rocks are all limestone), we gave in and went into one. After you've seen one, you've seen them all really, but the caves here seem to have no health and safety interference. Crawling through holes on our knees, clambering down slippery steps and coming to huge chasms with no safety rails was interesting. This was a Nelson Cave Spider that ran away after the photo.
And of course there were shrines and reclining Bhuddhas (no room to stand!).
There were also bats on the ceiling, but the droppings seemed to have been swept up every day.
Well, we're still in Chiang Mai, and people here say that it's a bit of a trap for the traveller, and there certainly seem to be a lot of whites settled here. Sheonagh and Pat are here still, and will be heading off tomorrow on the same route (ish).
We've used the time here to apply for an Indian visa which we pick up on Monday 20th. The plan was to head east into Laos then south into Cambodia, but we had a call from an old work colleague yesterday to say that he's going to be here on Wednesday. Maybe we'll stop just a few days longer.....
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