Travelers' Tales Thailand: True Stories (Travelers' Tales Guides)

by James O'Reilly

  —Jeffrey A. McNeely and Paul Spencer Wachtel, Soul of the Tiger

  MORRIS DYE

  Cycling Rural Thailand

  A cyclist at home, the author pedals the hills of northern Thailand.

  THE APPEAL OF MOUNTAIN BIKING IS A LITTLE HARD TO EXPLAIN TO someone who isn’t already hooked. Of course part of the attraction is the simple pleasure of being in the great outdoors and inhaling great gulps of negative ions as you roll through a pretty natural setting. But off-road cycling is definitely not like taking a peaceful, meditative walk in the woods. Nor is it generally a means of getting from one place to another—most mountain bikers I know are not going anywhere in particular…they’re just going.

  A big part of it is the joy of physical exertion and of reacting to the randomness of the trail; in that sense, mountain biking is a lot like skiing or dancing. It is a serendipitous game of give and take between cyclist and terrain, with the bicycle as a facilitator and mediator between the two.

  These various elements came together in perfect harmony one morning during a ride with two companions along the left bank of the Maekok River in northern Thailand. We were part of a group of twenty cyclists participating in the kind of cushy, full-service bike tour that has become so popular in recent years.

  When we arrived at the 14.2 kilometer point on day six of our nine-day itinerary, where the detailed route instructions said, “Maekok River. Hut on the right. Cross river by dugout canoe,” we decided to follow an enticing little dirt track that veered off to the left just before the river crossing.

  The path wound its way up and down through sunny meadows and patchy woods, with occasional glimpses of the Maekok and not a soul to be seen. Soon we arrived in a remote riverside village that seemed all but deserted. The village was a study in earth tones—a brown dirt road, a dozen or so brown huts made of wood and thatch, tall brown trees arching overhead, the mud-brown Maekok flowing silently below in the growing heat of the day.

  A few women peered out from the shadows of their homes to observe our unlikely arrival, the silence broken only by the occasional passage of narrow wooden longtail boats powered by outboard-mounted automobile engines with long propeller shafts screaming out behind.

  Past the village, the trail dwindled to a narrow track that led us on an exhilarating up-and-down jaunt through a grove of banana trees, through already-harvested fields of corn and rice, and finally to an uncultivated part of the riverbank where the trail divided, then subdivided, and finally brought us to a halt on a steep, impassable footpath surrounded by dry, yellow grass.

  It was the kind of ride that leaves you hot, tired, dirty—and grinning uncontrollably from ear to ear because you know you’re about to do it all over again in the reverse direction.

  Back at the river crossing, we loaded our bikes, one by one, onto a narrow dugout canoe and paid the local ferry-man ten baht apiece to paddle us to the opposite bank. From there it was a short ride to a lingering lunch of noodle soup and beer at a small riverside food stall with other members of our group. By this time, lethargy had set in along with the midday heat, so we chartered a couple of longtail boats to carry us and our bikes back to our starting point, a hotel in the town of Tha Thon near the Burmese border.

  Our journey in Thailand was typical of a proliferating species of package tours based on a simple formula: you love cycling and you love to travel. Pay a couple thousand dollars, and with minimal hassle you can do the same thing you do every weekend, but in an exotic and unfamiliar setting—say the Yucatan Peninsula, or the English Lake District, or the hills of Southeast Asia—with plenty of logistical support in the form of previously researched routes, pre-booked accommodations, luggage transfers, a support van, and local guides.

  Our basic route, which covered about 30 to 60 miles a day, was mostly on pavement—sometimes on busy, smoggy highways, but more often on relatively quiet country roads—with options for off-road side trips along the way. Much of the route passed through more or less flat agricultural land, but the itinerary was not without hills, some of them long and steep. For less experienced cyclists, there were various options built into the itinerary (including the option of riding in the support van) to make the tour more accessible.

  We gathered at a marvelously funky resort on the outskirts of Chiang Mai called the Chiang Mai Lakeside Villa, a complex of picturesque wooden cottages set around a large pond where a boat-like restaurant served exceptionally good Thai food. Chiang Mai is the biggest city in northern Thailand, and also the primary entry point for tourists in the region, so our first day of cycling presented us with rather a lot of traffic and an amusing assortment of roadside attractions: a snake show, an elephant show, butterfly farms, orchid farms, craft emporiums, and a quite unbelievable flower garden on the grounds of the Erawan Resort, where we stopped for the night.

  After dinner in the garden that evening, the Erawan treated us to an amateur “folklore” performance in which various young staff members from the resort played a bit of traditional hill tribe music, folk-danced in crude costumes, and then started lip-syncing to recorded Thai syntho-pop tunes. The soirée quickly degenerated into a kind of disco party at which I got my first-ever marriage proposal, from a 27-year-old member of the resort staff who wanted nothing more than to accompany me home to America. I declined the invitation and turned in early.

  So far this had hardly been an introduction to traditional Thai culture but an entertaining jaunt through a highly developed vacationland frequented by foreigners and middle-class Thais from the south. But as we continued cycling over the next few days, we passed out of the shadow of urban Chiang Mai and into the more rural and culturally diverse hill country of the far north.

  Before we got there, however, tragedy struck: as we coasted downhill from Erawan, one of the more agile and experienced cyclists in our group lost control of his bike on some gravelly pavement, slammed into a cement post and landed in the ditch by the side of the road. He was rushed off to a hospital in Chiang Mai for surgery to repair a broken hip and a broken femur. It was the kind of accident that could happen to anyone, and it served as a healthy reminder to wear a helmet and to take it a little easy when riding in an unfamiliar environment.

  One of Thailand’s chief accomplishments in the war against HIV transmission is that the medical blood supply is now considered safe, thanks to vigorous screening procedures.

  —Joe Cummings, Thailand - a travel survival kit

  Humbled by that incident, we continued cycling through flat, dry agricultural land past the towns of Mae Rim, Mae Malai, and Mae Taeng, and then into sparsely populated rolling hills covered with rice fields and teak forests. About 65 miles from Erawan—the longest ride on the itinerary—we arrived at the Chiang Dao Hill Resort, another cottage complex with extensive gardens. Here we would spend two nights, allowing time the next day for a memorable off-road excursion to visit several hill tribe villages.

  In the past ten or fifteen years, visits to hill tribe villages—which are known for their colorful styles of dress and intricate handicrafts—have become popular among Western tourists, who trek into the hills with local guides, sleeping in grass huts and taking pictures of exotic costumes—and sometimes smoking opium with the villagers. Predictably, the practice has been institutionalized to the point that the most accessible villages have transformed themselves into tourist bazaars where women and children in native dress aggressively demand money in exchange for photo sessions and peddle carbon-copy craft items with all the charm of car salesmen.

  On day four of our tour, we cycled out of the Chiang Dao Hill Resort, and a short way up the highway turned onto a dirt road that passed through fields of corn and banana trees, gaining altitude beneath a row of craggy pinnacles. A few miles from the highway we arrived at Hoi Jaken, a fairly modern village inhabited by a mix of Thai and Lisu people. We happened to arrive on the day of a nationwide children’s celebration, and an open field by the road had been set up as a kind of carnival with special games
and shows for the kids. The passage of sweaty foreigners on mountain bikes only added to their fun, and we were soon surrounded by curious onlookers who interrupted their festivities to enjoy this unexpected spectacle.

  Another popular way to explore northern Thailand is by motorbike, easy to rent in Chiang Mai. Show respect for the local people by cutting your engine and gliding in quietly when you enter a village.

  —JO’R and LH

  After entertaining the crowd for a time, we continued into nearby Doi Ngan, an adjacent Lahu village that was all but deserted this day—very likely because everyone was at the party in Hoi Jakan. From there the dirt road dwindled down to a smaller trail that passed through a pleasant forest where teak leaves the size of dinner plates dropped noisily to the forest floor, and where the sun shining through the branches scattered a mottled glow over the ground.

  A few miles into the woods we reached the end of the road at Bon Nong Kam, a remote Lisu community nudged up against the base of a steep hill that made further cycling impossible. This village showed little evidence of modernization, except for an odd mix of Western and traditional Lisu clothing; most of the men were in slacks and button-front shirts, the women and children in brightly colored smocks.The houses (perhaps 25 or 30 in all) were simple wooden structures with floors three or four feet off the ground, walls of woven bamboo, and roofs shingled with leaves.

  Unlike just about every other village we visited, there was absolutely nothing for sale in Bon Nong Kam. The adults seemed a little wary of our presence, though not unfriendly, while the children were amazed and delighted at the sight of so many farangs on bikes; they quite enjoyed staring at our strange-looking outfits, begging half-heartedly for money and hamming it up for our cameras.

  The visit left me feeling at once fascinated, delighted, and a little sad for although it was interesting to get a glimpse of hill tribe life, and although the bright smiles of the children left me giggling right along with them, I wondered what sort of problematic impressions we might leave as we passed through with our high-tech bicycles and expensive industrial toys.

  These people, would-be nomads in an age of private property, were caught in an all too common no-man’s-land between age-old traditions and the encroachment of the industrial world. I longed to learn more about their way of life, and to share with them my views on the complexities of ours, but since we had no language in common, playing with the children was about the only means of communication we shared. After an hour or so we waved good-bye and rolled back down the hill the way we had come.

  After leaving Chiang Dao, we continued on to Tha Thon and stayed there for two nights, with another successful day of off-road riding in between and a short excursion to the Burmese border. This remote checkpoint, less than a mile from our hotel, was nothing more than a couple of crude shacks on a dirt trail by the river. The smiling border guard posed proudly with his pornographic posters and a large machine gun recently issued by the Thai military.

  That same afternoon we could hear shells exploding occasionally just across the border, and there was talk of factional violence involving a militia group commanded by Khun Sa, an opium war-lord who controls that part of Burma. The fighting is said to spill over into Thailand on occasion, but local farangs assured us there was nothing to worry about.

  The next day we loaded our bikes onto longtail boats and motored downriver to Chiang Rai, with a stop for a gimmicky but fun elephant ride through the hills and a short trek to an opium poppy field kept by two elderly addicts. And on our last day of cycling we rode from Chiang Rai about 60 miles north to the Golden Triangle Resort. This large modern hotel sits incongruously at the confluence of the Sop Ruak and Mekong rivers, at a point where the borders of Thailand, Burma, and Laos all come together. Then on the morning of the ninth day we packed away our cycling clothes and boarded a chartered bus bound for Chiang Mai.

  The tour ended where it had begun, at the Chiang Mai Lakeside Villa, full circle on a mountain bike through northern Thailand.

  Morris Dye is a San Francisco Bay Area writer, editor, and Web site producer specializing in travel and outdoor recreation. He is the former associate travel editor of the San Francisco Examiner, and he has produced interactive Web-based programming for America Online and Microsoft’s San Francisco Sidewalk.

  Leaving China, the Mekong slides between Myanmar and Laos, serving as the border, then touches Thailand. Here—where these three countries meet—lies the heart of the fabled Golden Triangle, where most of the world’s opium is harvested and processed. It has long been an area of warlords and armed mule caravans carrying bales of opium paste.

  When I reached Sob Ruak, a Thai hamlet on the Mekong at the very center of the triangle, I found not mule caravans but big, shiny buses and European tourists. On the hillside stood two resort hotels; a third was under way on the Myanmar shore.

  The Thai military had pushed the drug refineries and mule trains out of the area. To replace the opium economy, tourism. Visitors fly from Bangkok to Chiang Rai, 40 miles south of Sob Ruak.They then bus here. Between November and May—the dry season—the two resort hotels are fully booked.

  “It’s the infamy of the place that draws them,” said Marc Cremoux, the dapper French manager of the Baan Boran, one of the hotels. “I hear my visitors say, ‘This is where the drugs come from.’ People think they’re having an adventure, even if they are staying in a five-star hotel and riding in air-conditioned buses.”

  —Thomas O’Neill, “The Mekong,” National Geographic

  JEFF GREENWALD

  The Burning Hills

  Going to northern Thailand can challenge your conscience, as well as your assumptions about culture and travel.

  LANDING IN MAE HONG SON, MY FIRST IMPRESSION WAS THAT we’d arrived during a solar eclipse. The sky was brownish gray, and an unnatural stillness lay upon the town. I stared at the sun: a persimmon billiard ball suspended above jungle-covered hills. From the hills themselves, columns of thick smoke rose into the air.

  “Burning season,” explained Boy, the young Thai guide whose awkward nickname made me feel like a Southern plantation owner whenever I addressed him. “The villagers burn the woods to plant rice in the rainy season. Too smoky.”

  I smelled trouble. Mae Hong Son, mere miles from the Burmese border in Thailand’s mountainous northwest, is famous for spectacular scenery and expansive vistas. I’d long fantasized about visiting this part of Southeast Asia, of trekking between tribal villages, drunk on the high-grade oxygen exhaled by a thousand square miles of jungle. Today, though, taking a deep breath was like smoking a pack of Chesterfields. I could barely make out the closest hill—which seemed, actually, to have a big Buddha on top of it.

  “That is Wat Doi Khong Mu,” said Boy, following my gaze. “Would you like to go there?”

  “Why not?” We left the airport and were greeted by Duang, our high-spirited driver, who lounged against the fender of a battered old Land Rover. I couldn’t guess Duang’s age, but he would have looked a lot younger if he had more teeth.

  The Thais call it the City of Mist, but its proper name is Mae Hong Son, and along with being the capital of Thailand’s northwesternmost province—hard by the border of Myanmar (formerly Burma), and six hundred miles from Bangkok—it also boasts the kingdom’s most spectacularly rugged terrain. Everywhere there are densely forested mountains, so many that four-fifths of the province is on a slope of at least forty-five degrees. Despite its beauty, Mae Hong Son remained cut off from the outside world, and rare was the Thai traveler or trader who dared the trackless trek from Chiang Mai. It was not until World War II that even a semblance of a road led in or out of Mae Hong Son, and the one constructed then (by the invading Japanese) was a twistingly narrow dirt lane that one downpour made impassable. Finally, in 1968, a paved road linked Mae Hong Son with Chiang Mai and beyond. In 1990, Mae Hong Son was a make-believe CIA air base in an alleged comedy entitled Air America.

  —Robert Sam Anson, “The Bridge on the Ri
ver Pai,” Condé Nast Traveler

  We drove two or three miles up the nearby hill, where the venerable old wat overlooked the town. The large Buddha I’d spied from below was made of plastered cement, and brightly painted. He was standing, palm raised in a gesture of blessing. Higher still, on an adjoining hillock, microwave towers beamed their equally sacrosanct signals toward the village. Boy strolled to a point overlooking Mae Hong Son. Though an opaque haze obscured the valley, I could imagine how spectacular the view must be the nine other months of the year.