Brett’s Travelblog of Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China and The USA

Still alive…. Just about….

Went mountain biking today which was fab. Picked up at 9am and headed out of town in the back of a pickup truck. As it turned out there was only one other person on my trip cause its out of season here, Crispin from Somerset, the boss and his Thai helper. We made our way up the top of Doi Suthep about 1650 meters above sea level. After getting to the top they started unloading the gear, giving us body protectors, shoulder pads, elbow, pads, knee pads etc. I thought this was well over the top after sticking it all I looked more like I was going to play American football rather than a bike ride down a mountain.

The ride was going to take us about 4 hours covering about 25km through a mong Hill Tribe Village, plantations growing bananas, coffee beans and the like, jungle and pine forest. Although I dont know the dif between jungle and forest??? no one else did either.

We set of down a little dirt track into the jungle, then all I can say is ohhhh my god!!!!!!! the ground disapeared ( Kinda) the paths turned into single tracks, covered in tree roots ( very slippy ) rocks, mud, holes, and the steepest treck you can imagine. Even holding both brakes as hard as you could you would still carry on slideing down hill.

I tride to take it easy but it was the hardest bit of mountaing biking Ive ever attempted. Suddenly the idea of all this saftey gear seemed like a great idea, because of the steepness it was so hard to go slow. These tracks were so slippy and steep that you couldnt even walk down them. Well it took me about 10 minutes for the first accident, hitting a tree root and the front wheel stopped dead, I thought something was wrong when I saw the back of my bike passing over my right shoulder as my left shoulder hit the ground and slid for a bit with the bike. All that paddding worked a treat so dont worry yourselves, not even a scratch.

Just after that we turned up at a little settlement a drank water ( my own ) we then hit the road again and so did I within 5 minutes I was off agian….. You feel like such a fool but under the conditions not supprisng. Luckily the weather was hot and sunny, how you would have got down in monsoon rains I dont know. Even the leader came a cropper at one stage going over his handle bars and head buting the ground, his helmet came in handy.

Things did get better as you got used to it and it was a great laugh, managed to stay on too for the rest of the trip.

Talk about bug city though, things everywere, dont know how many flies I swollowed???
The noises from such small insects at times was deafening sounding like band saws cuttin wood.

We eventually finished the trip at Tueng Tao Lake and had a much needed rest followed by a fried rice meal. I was gald to be in one piece though, not even a scratch.

Also came across this little fella, closest thing I saw in the jungle to a tiger……

More trecking 2moro so lets see how that goes, no bikes though, just elephants and bamboo rafts etc.

Heading out for a meal now then the night Bazzar and a few bars. Keep in touch, laters

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 6th, 2005 at 8:34 am and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.