How long is your neck?

Day 148

Today started off as another lazy day. Wake up around 8am, chat a bit on skype, waste time on the internet, take a nap, you know, the usual. I had planned on going towards this place my friend in Laos told me. The place is called: Lod cave. It is supposedly this spectacular cave and is one of the top sites in Pai. The only way to the cave is via bus, car, or in my case, motorbike. I set off for Lod cave because she told me that there were cool sites and villages that I could see on the way there and that it wasn’t just a stupid trip. I’ve wanted to see villages since I’ve been in SE Asia and so the prospect of seeing one was making me really excited. Lod cave is about 60 km away from Pai and so I set off with high hopes and a sense of openness. I didn’t know what to expect and I was excited about that. I rode for about 30 minutes before my butt fell asleep and I had gone about 10 km. The road to the main cities and towns are incredibly windy and it takes forever just to go 1 km. Luckily for me the roads were pretty open because it is the low season, however…it is the rainy season. The rain here is soft for a minute and then a torrential downpour for about 4 minutes and then soft for another 3 minutes and then it stops. It is pretty easy to tell when it is going to rain because the temperature dramatically drops. I admit that riding in the rain isn’t the most fun thing to do on a motorbike, especially knowing my track record with two wheeled machines. I continue to ride along the highway looking for signs for Lod cave and eventually see some. Now signage in Asia needs help. Arrows point to sides of roads or cliffs or to each other. I have no clue what some of the signs mean, and that is not good when everything else is in Thai and when I have no clue where I am. I think we know where this is going. I pass Lod cave without me knowing, but I had a clue that I did, but just like Dorrie said in Finding Nemo, “Just keep swimming, just keep swimming…” In my case: just keep going.

Eventually I arrive at a police checkpoint. The police officer stops me and starts talking to me. I’m not sure in what language because people here speak multiple sometimes. Probably Japanese though. He asks me in English where I’m going. I just point forward and say the next city, Mae Hong Son. He smiles and says, “OK, just 55km.” I’ve already gone 60km and that took me about 1 ½ hours. I say what the heck and keep going…without checking my fuel tank. About 10 minutes into my journey, I see that my fuel is dangerously low and I make an immediate U-turn and plan to head back about 20km to refuel. I reach the police checkpoint again and he tells me of a station about 6km away. I jet towards it and see a nice quiet little village. The buildings are simple, almost trash-like but there are all efficient, and their gas station is a woman with 3 barrels of gas. After a quick drink, I set off to Mae Hong Son again.

I arrived into Mae Hong Son without a clue of what I was going to do. I gave myself about 3 hours of time in the city before I would have to head back to Pai because I had to return my bike. I had a quick lunch and remembered seeing flyers for a tribal village called the Longnecks. Their tradition is to have their women bind their necks with brass rings in order to make their necks longer. Cool. I ask the owner of the restaurant which way to go and I set off.

Their village is about 10 km away from the town and is a series of windy side roads and brings you deep into their wilderness. Crossing over steams and such was cool but then I arrived into the village and was stopped by a tourist information dude. I had to pay 250 baht to see the village and my sense of guilt came back again. I’m all for taking pictures, but I’m not into taking them when I make the people just feel uncomfortable and I get a feeling that I am intruding. There were little vendors set up as I made my walk down a path towards the village and came to the bottom to see my vendors. The tourism totally changed the people of the village and now they make most of their money by selling their goods to tourists. It was sad to see, but I tried to make the most of it. It was cool to see their homes up close though. They are simple timber framed and their roofs are made up of wood and boat load of leaves. I ask a few of the women for some photos, and that made me feel much better about intruding, but not totally.

I now had a 110km journey to look forward to in order to get back to Pai and about 3 hours to do it in. No problem. Today’s trip started around 10am and ended at 7:15pm. I had traveled about 230km and had leveled up my motorbiking experience by about 12 levels. I was getting way more comfortable and found myself averaging about 50-60km/hr instead of 30km/hr. I had seen a cool culture and had been so cold from riding in the rain all day that I actually had the shivers and goosebumps. Overall, a great trip.