In recent years the large rice mills north of Fang have become the place for much of Chiang Rais rice to be milled. Unfortunately the road they take was not built to take overloaded 22 wheel truck trailers. Add to that the heavy rain for two monsoon seasons and you have a highway with collapsed sections and a surface that is quite quickly breaking up. The local authorities are repairing the collapsed bits and a short section of surface near Huai San but far more needs to be done. To give some idea of the costs involved I stopped to photograph a collapsed section repair and was told by the on-site boss it was a 20 million baht fix. In typical Thai fashion a fortune is being spent putting street lights on a 4 kms section from Santi Suk to the police post at the Doi Mae Salong junction when the money would be best spent fixing those wide cracks in the tarmac that are common on very steep downhill sections. The road is open all the way from Fang to Mae Chan but presently not a joy to ride.
