How Are We Still Alive?
Seriously though. Five college students rent scooters for a day, survive downtown Chiang Mai, ride 60 miles to Doi Inathon national park, ride up Thailand's tallest mountain (8500 ft), and then ride back. Parents might want to look away for this post.*
View of Napapon Phoom-siri Chedi around 5km from the actual summit
*this is an active implementation of the "after-the-fact" method of keeping our parents in a constant state of medium level worry. They don't know that we're doing something dangerous, but always rest slightly uneasily, knowing that we might just be up to something.
Anyways, the idea of the day was to see something of Doi Inathon national park, one of Thailand's most spectacular national parks. This park is essentially a reserved area in a mountain range, crisscrossed by various streams and some of Thailand's best waterfalls. The name comes from Doi Inathon, one of the Thai kings. When we first arrived, we almost took advantage of this by taking our first showers in several weeks...but the water was cold...so we took pictures while we tried to comprehend the mysterious script that had been emblazoned on the sign:
I don't know....it could be fun...
the water is flowing
Next, we drove a kilometer of pavement and half on dirt in search of a cave.
check out our super awesome dirt biking skillz
Supposedly, the cave was unlit and offered the possibility of spelunking. My friends will know that I have an unnatural affinity for spelunking, mostly because spelunking is the best word in the English language (IMHO). Unfortunately, the cave had collapsed moments before our arrival, resulting in us wandering around for an hour looking for it (translation: we couldn't find the cave. sadness). Nevertheless, there will be more spelunking! Look forward to more posts on the subject.
By this time, our bikes, unlike us, had cooled down and were ready for the climb to the summit, also unlike us. We had already tasted something of the road, and I at least was apprehensive about convincing an urban scooter that it was a hill-climbing machine. Fortunately, this was somehow not a hard sell; the little scooters did well up the mountain.*
Yes, we were wearing helmets. It's the law (in Thailand)
*that is until DC's bike just stopped working. At this point, we had a decision:
1. leave DC. this would have been bad form, as you never leave a wounded man behind
2. turn around. (this isn't really an option, I'm just listing it to give the appearance that there was an alternative to number three.
3. 2 people, 1 bike. (Let's do a little math. Honda Scooter: 220 lbs Myself: 150. 530 DC: 160. Adding another person increases the total mass of the system by 44%, making the scooter only stable at speeds much greater than it could climb with two people on it. Ridiculous.
This was the worst idea we'd yet had
So on we went, having left DC's scooter at a waterfall about halfway up, reaching the summit around thirty minutes later. There were some spectacular sights on the way up in addition to the ongoing sight of one of the most insane roads I've yet been on:
At the summit, we had the most scenic view of a country full of pollution I have ever witnessed. We could see nothing. Being at the highest point in Thailand only meant that we were on a small island of green in a smoldering ocean of hydrocarbon-derived smog. It was a sobering sight.
There would be a picture of the smog here, but it's such an off-putting sight that we're going to spare our readers the trouble. (We're working on the picture)
However, the Thai air force, realizing that the summit needed some help in the PR department, built two spectacular chedis on the other side of the summit. This is one of them:
They take their temples very seriously here.
These two temples are so far our favorite in Thailand. Built in 1989, they are tastefully decorated in shimmering copper tiles and dark stone reliefs. The inside has a single Buddah figure in the center surrounded by marble carvings depicting the life of Siddhartha Guatama, the founder of Buddhism. We took some photos at the top. Bonus points for anyone who identifies the culture we're imitating.
Now, the moment that we had been dreading had come...downhill. The only bike that didn't have puny prone-to-overheating-and-failing-shortly-before-catching-fire drum brakes was DC's bike, which had a frozen engine halfway down the mountain. However, having survived this far against all odds, we spun the roulette once more and biked down the mountain. (It was Ben's turn to carry DC. The manual bikes were much better on the downhill due to their engine-braking abilities.)
It's a good thing that cameraman Daniel Posch has both hands on the bike while we careened down the mountain.
And......we made it!*
*Dc's bike was able to make it all of the way down since it was mostly downhill. However, about 20km or so into the journey back, his bike just cut out again. We went back to find him only discovering that he had mysteriously disappeared. He later described how a local had stopped to help him, ushered him into a bike repair shop, and tried to fix his bike. He learned that no-one had oiled the bike in the last decade (decade?!?!) and the cylinder had frozen, necessitating an overnight repair job. Enterprising DC, having been abandoned by his comrades already (we thought he had gotten his bike repaired and raced past us trying to catch us) wandered into a 7-11, somehow convinced the attendants to find him a ride back to Chiang Mai, hitched a ride with a group of GPS surveyors for a power company, and turned up several hours later at our hostel. The day after, DC gave detailed instructions to the mechanic from the motorbike rental agency, who hopefully retrieved the bike and got it working again.
You just can't make this stuff up.
