Dalma’s Take 2: Chiang Khan to Chiang Mai
Dalma writes posts for a Facebook group called “Easy Coast Female Riders”, describing to her motorcycling community her experiences of riding in countries. This is the second from Thailand covering Chiang Khan to Chiang Mai.
OK, so this will sound like I am the princess unable to sleep on a single pea, but while touring on a motorcycle, I find that rest and overnight comfort are a must. Oh, and coffee. Coffee is vital. To be fair, comfort, in general, is darn important to me no matter the time and place, but when I spend the day sitting on a shaking chair that is so small that I cannot shift my position and no matter how padded my behind may be, it ends up hurting. You can be damn sure that I want to be pampered and sleep on feathery clouds during the night. All the bikes I owned or rented before had comfortable seats and allowed for movement and/or standing while riding, but this little scooter doesn’t. Plus, regardless of the bike, the main reason I don’t like camping is the lack of comfortable sleep, which can easily flare up old injuries and throw me into an inferno of agonising pain. So when my partner woke up to me quietly sobbing from tiredness this morning, he sprang into action. First, he got me coffee, ‘cause you know… he has to throw caffeine at me to stay alive, and he knows me way too well. Then, he found us another place to stay, announced that we were leaving the previously booked place early, and moved us into a hotel only six minutes away. As a result, I am writing this post after a mid-day nap, propped up in the most comfortable bed while he is out for lunch with a friend, and we’ll spend an extra day in Chiang Mai. But I got ahead of myself and ended up whining about sleep more than writing about riding.
After relaxing in the very picturesque Chiang Khan on the Mekong River, we left towards Chiang Mai, allowing two days for the trip. The first day we did 274 km to Uttaradit in about six hours. The ride was slow, and uneventful, the day long, hot, and tiring. The only excitement was when I said ‘got slapped by a leaf’ which David misheard as ‘f$%ck the police,’ leaving him puzzled and saying how “unlawyerly” of me this was, then promptly giving me a lecture about a hip-hop song with the same title. In Uttaradit, we stayed in an extraordinarily average hotel. You can tell that the standards are not too high when, instead of napkins, there is a roll of toilet paper next to a jar of butter on the breakfast buffet, which includes cold eggs that turn out to be soft-boiled when peeled. But rooms everywhere in Thailand are enormous, showers have instant water heaters, and until now, all beds – while hard – were comfortable.
From Uttaradit, we did another day of only 239 km in less than four hours, stopping for lunch at a gorgeous little roadside restaurant built on stilts over a pond full of koi fish. We had some amazing spicy tom yum soup and awesome iced coffee and arrived in Chiang Mai by 2 pm. This segment of the road was beautifully windy but – unlike the previous, narrower twisties – rather busy highway style. Navigating between high-speed cars and slow trucks around fast corners required constant concentration, but we found it rather enjoyable. In one of the villages, we met a larger group on a riding tour that left from Kuala Lumpur. Most of them were on big BMWs and wore suspiciously new and clean-looking adventure gear – although one couple had a cute, half-enclosed scooter with a Spiderman on the windshield, which was, at least, quite original for an adventure tour.
Upon arrival in Chiang Mai, we were happy to check into a promising guest house in a pleasant, quiet area, only to end up sleeping on coils pressing into my ribs and waking up exhausted. (I mean, it is bad enough that I have to travel with a CPAP machine due to severe sleep apnea; I don’t want to sleep on no damn pea! Tantrum over.) So we spend a little more on comfort, but we are still within budget. Thailand is cheap with variations, and we spend between AU$ 30-50 per night on accommodation, which typically secures comfort and quality service. Within this range, we stayed at a hotel with a pool, restaurant, amazing breakfast included, massage and all kinds of facilities you can imagine, where a one-month long-term stay would cost $800. The weird hotel in Uttaradit with the terrible breakfast was also within this price range, though at the lower end. The painful bed in the otherwise nice and clean guesthouse was $44, while this last place in the same area cost $65 with a discount received through one of the booking sites we often use. This room is a full suite rather than a room, and it seems bigger than the apartment I grew up in in Romania – hence the price, I guess. It is located on one of those tiny, narrow lanes that are a joy to ride on – except if you come face-to-face with a car. I cannot fathom how on earth a car can turn into these lanes when, from the street, they are unrecognisable, looking more like a private walking path leading only to someone’s front door rather than a public street, but they do.
As always, when something unexpectedly interesting happens, we fail to record the trip here on the tiny lanes but we will record it when leaving. In the meantime, David is writing his own blog about the trip, downloading and editing the videos we take so that we can spend the rest of the year rewatching and remembering the adventure as fuel for our soul, waiting for the next trip to fill us up properly again. Speaking of fuel and filling up… my scooter has a 5-litre tank with the cap under the seat, so I have to unstrap and take off my bag to fuel up every time, and way too often. Now that, at least, is a motorcycle-related complaint 🙂