Motorbikin' like crazy...

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After our 5th week in Thailand, we left Pai to get away from the black hole of hippy enlightenment and headed out on the famous MaeHongSong loop. We found a simple little guesthouse on the little lake in the center of town. I immediately got off on the wrong note with the lady running the place when I asked if there was a discount if we were to stay for 3 nights. "Cheap for you!" she said with a frown. This is an interesting point about Thailand and SE Asia. Julija has had success with this approach more than a few times, saving us significant dough, however, sometimes, as in this case, the owner can be very offended at your haggling. MaeHongSon is a quaint little town with not much going on besides a few little bars, a night market, and some wats (temples). The major thing to do here is to rent a motorbike and explore the surrounding areas--Mae Aw, an old opium town with great Chinese tea, some wicked waterfalls that were little more than a trickle when we were there (cool rock-hopping, though), the sacred fish cave where huge carp mysteriously swim out of a gorgeous stream that disappears under a giant rock mountain, some caves crammed with Buddha statues, and some crazy off-road jungle expeditions. While exploring along the highway, we rode into this little town and found signs toward the Susa Waterfall. We soon found out that this was not your average tourist stop. To get to this place, you had to pay a fee, then ride out on a rugged, steep, dilapidated road with numerous river crossings (no bridges) for 9 km and then a short hike. One of the hills was so steep, I thought the bike was going to flip back so I had to have Julija get off and move all my weight onto the front of the bike. We made it but the river crossings were the real fun...I had to stay on the throttle so the bike wouldn't die, and old Black Betty was bucking over the boulders, but we made it and the scene was pristine. There was no one there; deep green pools with cascading warm water flowing off of eerie limestone formations on the sides of the river and huge rock mountains rising up around us on all sides. Straight out of a cheezy tourist brochure, but real.

We got invited to a bizarre Lusu Hilltribe party to celebrate Chinese New Year by a tatoo artist named Tit, whose bar/tatoo room was across from our guesthouse. This was one of those moments when alarm bells were ringing inside my head...Julija and I have often discussed the importance of trusting our gut-instincts in situations like this, because usually if it feels off, it probably is, and you don't need to do anything that isn't safe. Is this really a party? Is it okay if we, the milk-faces, crash their party? Are we going to be poisoned and put into a communal stew? I got a little nervous and considered bailing out when Tit, who spoke very little english, showed me the trail that I would have to ride up in total darkness to get to the village. We went for it and made it no problem. It was a total rush riding up into this village in the middle of the night. The trail is basically a walking trail--narrow and winding through the forest, but we made it. I'm glad I've had a little experience on bikes, though, because not everyone could have done this. Julija held on tight, but was totally cool. We got to the village and everyone stared. Tit took us to his family's hut, where we were fed a great meal, with the main course being a whole-chicken soup (everything in tact...a chicken floating in broth), and an air of unspoken tension. Things loosened up a bit when some random village men came in and started making us drink thier rice-whiskey, which is actually a form of sake, but not entirely horrible. Oh ya, and we all drank from the same filthy glass. This got a little gross after 20 or so people had touched their fingers and lips to the thing, but I wasn't going to say anything. After all, I don't think they had running water of any kind. The place was so dry and smokey. We joined in the traditional dance, where the villagers hop around in a circle around a small birch tree (?) following a man playing a repetitive tune on a 3-string guitar instrument. They were upset when they found out that we were not going to stay the night on a bamboo mat in one of their huts, but I didn't trust them enough for that, so after some explanation that Julija needed her medicine, they let us go home and we did. It was an eye-opening experience that you wouldn't get if you booked a Hill Tribe Tour through a local agency. I was just amazed that people still live in such primitive conditions, and are completely content with it. That sounds like the words of a spoiled city-boy, but that's the way I felt. It was interesting and beautiful in some ways, but I couldn't live that way.

The next day we took Black Betty to Mae Aw and some other mountain towns on the Burmese border (sketchy), where Julija bought 2 huge tea sets for a good price, which we then had to get down the insane mountain roads, which consisted of about 50 steep switchbacks which I negotiated with aggressive precision. (Mailing the tea sets home was an experience, as we had to find a box to fit them and it ended up costing way more than the actual china to send them home...but we figured it out.) We got mud masks at a spa on the way back and swam in a mineral spring pool. Julija got to wear the manditory moomoo (sp?), which made her look like a toddler caught in a wet tablecloth. It was hilarious watching her swim with the Thai women in their silly swimwear and showercaps. That night, I ended up drinking at Tit's bar with a German guy and his Thai girlfriend, and a middle aged Thai woman begged me for 2 hours to come with her to the disco-tech, which I'm sure was someone's garage or something. We left MaeHongSon the next day on a hellish bus ride back to Pai for the Reggae festival, which turned out to be a major raging party.

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