Daewoo’s 07 Trip – Ride Report 3 – Chiang Mai to Pai
Finally the real riding was about to start…
After one day on the XR (only 3 hours), my @rse was pretty sore…
After 2 (only another 3 hours), it was very sore…
Now we were about to head out for 3 days of riding, I was pretty nervous…
On his previous Honda based tour, (sub)Tropical John and Miss Elle had missed out on seeing the sunflowers near Mae Hong Song by a couple of weeks… they wanted to go back again, and were nice enough to invite me along for the ride…
The proposed itinerary was 1 day to Pai, 2nd day through Mae Hong Song (MHS), see the Sunflowers, and overnight in Mae Chaem, 3rd day, Mae Chaem, up to Doi Inthanon and back to Chiang Mai…
TJ and Miss Elle were aboard the Honda (XL250) Degree (AKA Honda Delight)… It was set up with a nice top box, large tank bag, sheepskin seat cover, and an experienced rider…
I on the other hand, was on a hired XR250 of unknown quality, had a backpack on my back, a seat as hard as a cat's head (a term usually used as an adjective for describing a certain body part), and no real riding skill to speak of…
I have also spent most of my life refining my personality to be as critical and annoying as possible without quite being murdered…
I wondered if TJ knew what he was getting himself into…
The route itself is easy to follow… head north from Chiang Mai on the 107 past Mae Rim, Turn left onto the 1095 (about 20km), brake, turn, accelerate, brake, turn, accelerate, repeat 1400 times until you reach Pai… even I couldn’t get lost, plus I had the brilliant map called ‘Mae Hong Song – the loop’, published by The Golden Triangle Rider… only 175 Baht… bargain…
Anyways, TJ, Miss Elle, and I headed out of town about 9:30 or so, fuelled up, and off we went…
About 10km up the 1095, we decided it was time for an early lunch, and TJ decided he wanted a little hed… (เห็ด
so we stopped at this little restaurant overlooking a little lake… luckily for TJ, they know all about Hed there, and can take you on tours of all the different types of hed available… they do warn you about wild hed which can be dangerous apparently, and as far as we could tell there was no magic hed…
Here we are at the hed restaurant, but none of us ate mushroom… the waitress did get me thinking about pumpkin tho…
Just before we left, Elle asked TJ a simple question which he alleged she had never asked before, but which I then felt the need to ask before we headed off from any stop point… “Do you need to go to the toilet John?”…
We stopped at a viewpoint only a couple of K’s further along to take some photos, so that we knew what we looked like before all of this started… (Apparently John didn’t need to go to the toilet yet)
The roads from here all the way to Pai seem to be made for riding (obviously no one told all the Diesel Toyota Hiace mini-buses though)…
When we got to Pai everyone had shirts saying ‘Chiang Mai to Pai, route 1095, 1460 bends’ or something so that gives you an idea what the roads are like… it is heaven on a bike, but must be murder crammed into a mini bus…
I couldn’t help but stop to take a few photos of the roads to tease the riding folks back in Australia…
Pai itself wasn’t really my kinda town (from what we saw anyway)… it has this whole ‘trying to sell itself as trying be hippy’ thing going which is a bit of a contradiction… a bit like Byron Bay in Australia, it seems to be just to big and commercial to really be a hippy town anymore…
There were some new bungalow developments getting ready to open …
We holed up in the Tonsa Guesthouse (north from Th Chaisongkram near the bus depot) which was really good…
TJ and Elle took the small Wooden room at 200 THB and I took a large brick one at 300… mostly because I could snore for Australia, and I kinda like Miss Elle (TJ can go jump )
The rooms were of course basic, but were clean, in good condition, with a comfortable bed, and nice bathroom…
It turned out that this would be the best night’s sleep I had in my entire trip to Thailand, so the bed must have been comfortable…
Surprisingly, my backside was a little tender by the time we got to Pai, but nothing like it was by the time I had returned to CM from Chiang Rai… it think it must have been the constant shifting in the saddle for all the corners, as opposed to the 3 hours in the same position of the day before…
The bike performed faultlessly all day… TJ was of course riding very responsibly, having the beautiful Miss Elle on the back… a few times I would stop to take a photo, and then ‘stretch the bikes legs’ until I caught back up to TJ, and even though it was a dirt bike, on knobblies on the road, with me steering, I have to say it handled great, and was a lot of fun to squirt through the bends…
End of Day 1 of the MHS Loop…
Cheers,
Daewoo
Finally the real riding was about to start…
After one day on the XR (only 3 hours), my @rse was pretty sore…
After 2 (only another 3 hours), it was very sore…
Now we were about to head out for 3 days of riding, I was pretty nervous…
On his previous Honda based tour, (sub)Tropical John and Miss Elle had missed out on seeing the sunflowers near Mae Hong Song by a couple of weeks… they wanted to go back again, and were nice enough to invite me along for the ride…
The proposed itinerary was 1 day to Pai, 2nd day through Mae Hong Song (MHS), see the Sunflowers, and overnight in Mae Chaem, 3rd day, Mae Chaem, up to Doi Inthanon and back to Chiang Mai…
TJ and Miss Elle were aboard the Honda (XL250) Degree (AKA Honda Delight)… It was set up with a nice top box, large tank bag, sheepskin seat cover, and an experienced rider…
I on the other hand, was on a hired XR250 of unknown quality, had a backpack on my back, a seat as hard as a cat's head (a term usually used as an adjective for describing a certain body part), and no real riding skill to speak of…
I have also spent most of my life refining my personality to be as critical and annoying as possible without quite being murdered…
I wondered if TJ knew what he was getting himself into…
The route itself is easy to follow… head north from Chiang Mai on the 107 past Mae Rim, Turn left onto the 1095 (about 20km), brake, turn, accelerate, brake, turn, accelerate, repeat 1400 times until you reach Pai… even I couldn’t get lost, plus I had the brilliant map called ‘Mae Hong Song – the loop’, published by The Golden Triangle Rider… only 175 Baht… bargain…
Anyways, TJ, Miss Elle, and I headed out of town about 9:30 or so, fuelled up, and off we went…
About 10km up the 1095, we decided it was time for an early lunch, and TJ decided he wanted a little hed… (เห็ด
so we stopped at this little restaurant overlooking a little lake… luckily for TJ, they know all about Hed there, and can take you on tours of all the different types of hed available… they do warn you about wild hed which can be dangerous apparently, and as far as we could tell there was no magic hed…Here we are at the hed restaurant, but none of us ate mushroom… the waitress did get me thinking about pumpkin tho…
Just before we left, Elle asked TJ a simple question which he alleged she had never asked before, but which I then felt the need to ask before we headed off from any stop point… “Do you need to go to the toilet John?”…
We stopped at a viewpoint only a couple of K’s further along to take some photos, so that we knew what we looked like before all of this started… (Apparently John didn’t need to go to the toilet yet)
The roads from here all the way to Pai seem to be made for riding (obviously no one told all the Diesel Toyota Hiace mini-buses though)…
When we got to Pai everyone had shirts saying ‘Chiang Mai to Pai, route 1095, 1460 bends’ or something so that gives you an idea what the roads are like… it is heaven on a bike, but must be murder crammed into a mini bus…
I couldn’t help but stop to take a few photos of the roads to tease the riding folks back in Australia…
Pai itself wasn’t really my kinda town (from what we saw anyway)… it has this whole ‘trying to sell itself as trying be hippy’ thing going which is a bit of a contradiction… a bit like Byron Bay in Australia, it seems to be just to big and commercial to really be a hippy town anymore…
There were some new bungalow developments getting ready to open …
We holed up in the Tonsa Guesthouse (north from Th Chaisongkram near the bus depot) which was really good…
TJ and Elle took the small Wooden room at 200 THB and I took a large brick one at 300… mostly because I could snore for Australia, and I kinda like Miss Elle (TJ can go jump
)The rooms were of course basic, but were clean, in good condition, with a comfortable bed, and nice bathroom…
It turned out that this would be the best night’s sleep I had in my entire trip to Thailand, so the bed must have been comfortable…
Surprisingly, my backside was a little tender by the time we got to Pai, but nothing like it was by the time I had returned to CM from Chiang Rai… it think it must have been the constant shifting in the saddle for all the corners, as opposed to the 3 hours in the same position of the day before…
The bike performed faultlessly all day… TJ was of course riding very responsibly, having the beautiful Miss Elle on the back… a few times I would stop to take a photo, and then ‘stretch the bikes legs’ until I caught back up to TJ, and even though it was a dirt bike, on knobblies on the road, with me steering, I have to say it handled great, and was a lot of fun to squirt through the bends…
End of Day 1 of the MHS Loop…
Cheers,
Daewoo