Todd and Lisa's RTW trip

We have had some really fun times the last few days.

We rented a motorbike in Maehongson to cruise around to the different villages. Northern Thailand is so beautiful and the area we are in is really interesting. It is filled with different hilltribes. They all come into town to sell stuff, or buy stuff, dressed in the … hilltribe outfits. Unlike in places like Chiang Mai, they are wearing it because that is what they wear, not for tourist sake. So our first day in Maehongson we rode about 20 km to a Karen village that is known for following the tradition of wearing heavy brass necklaces that smush down thier collarbones and elongate thier necks. It was really cool to see. The women were quite beautiful in a deformed way. They were also very kind. They invited to sit with them, ask questions and take pictures. They told us that they usually start wearing the necklaces at about 5 years old and stop when they have 15-20 rings (4-6 kg’s). We walked to the end of the village and got to the school. It was just a few bamboo huts with kids running around everywhere. The boys were incredibly rambunctious. We think that it was because the girls always get so much more attention from foriegners. The overall experience was very cool, probably once in a lifetime!! Todds favorite part of visiting the village was the ride up and down the steep dirt road to get there. The road was dug more for trucks or mountain bikes… not our Honda dream!! Todd barrelled down it like David Bailey. Lisa did a good job at keeping her cool because she is sick of being told that she is turning into her mother (sorry mama j).

Yesterday we woke up eary but of course didn’t end up leaving town until 11. We can’t figure out why this always happens to us but we think it involves eating. We also decided to make our first visit to the thailand postal office. You wouldn’t think this was a difficult feat, but in a country with so many regulations and so little english, it proved to be quite time consuming. We definately had to eat after that!!!

We eventually headed out of town and back up through the mountians to go to a town called Mae Aw. The drive through the mountains is always much better than the destination. The land in Northern Thailand is Gorgeous!!!! It is so lush and green. They seem to be able to grow everything here mangoes, bananas, papaya, opium, rice, tea, coffee, cabbage etc. etc. We winded up and down the mountains taking in all of the awesome scenery. Along the way we passed old men in chinese hats farming their field taking tea breaks in the bamboo huts that we love so much. As we got high up the hills turned a much brighter green. Green tea was growing everywhere. We eventually made it up to Mae Aw. Mae Aw is a tiny village that is all chinese KMT. It is pretty much on the Burma border.
It was so quiet there and peaceful and everyone just kept offering us green tea. We accepted because it was freezing, and we hadn’t proper prior planned with our clothing. We hung around taking in the scerenity and decided to head back just in time to get dumped on!!!!

Todd plowed threw the rain. He was freezing so Lisa wrapped her floral sarong around him. Then he was plowing through the rain with a cape on, to the soundtrack of ‘leader of the pack’ and ‘maniac’ supplied by Lisa. It was the perfect example of Real Good Fun!!!

Today we headed back to Pai so that we can start heading towards Laos. We are taking a mini bus to the border, which is against Lisa’s principle of ‘NO minibuses’, but it is the easiest way to get there fast. We have a thing about the minibuses because the cost 5-10 times more then public transportation and they are really only for farang (foriegners). Everywhere makes it really hard for white people to get around like thai people, they always try to push us on the ” a/c minibuses”. Usually the conversation is something like this:

Us– What time is the bus to Pai
Them– ohhhhh… bus to pai only in morning… BUT we have a/c minibus
or
Them- ohhh bus to pai no good, bumpy road, dirty bus…. BUT we have a/c minbus.

Anyways tomorrow…………… we take the a/c minibus!!!!!

Isn’t this ice cream truck funny…. Its all about the motorbike in thailand!

These are the rules for our motorbike rental agreement. We especially like #2 and 3.

This was in chiang mai but it really made us miss Carson and David.

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 7th, 2005 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.