Wednesday, December 15, 2021
5:07 a.m. Room 21
Tha Song Yang Hill Resort Hotel
Tha Song Yang, Thailand
I spent some time yesterday looking carefully at the road from here to Mae Sariang, which is about 150 kilometers away. It’s highway 105, of course, and it looks like it goes through some beautiful, hilly countryside. In fact, about 50 kilometers from here, highway 105 turns inland and leaves the Moei River and the border with Myanmar. And then it appears to have to cut over the tops of a series of hill ranges. For perhaps half the distance, there aren’t many opportunities for the road to follow flat valley plains or to go parallel to the hill ranges. It looks like it has to cut across them. And that could lead to a lot of climbing up and down. And for the last half, it follows the eastern edge of a wide valley. Highway 105 skirts along the edges of the hills to the east. And the hills to the west are four to five kilometers away. The two hill ranges are separated by a very distinct farming area. It’s a long and narrow heavily cultivated valley, stretching perhaps seventy kilometers from southern to northern tip, where it narrows down to a point.
The first 120 kilometers don’t seem to offer any opportunities for following any kind of secondary road. But at the town of Sop Moei, you start to see some squiggly lines to the west. And those squiggly lines eventually turn into secondary road 1194, which parallels 105 but a few kilometers to the west running through farming country. I imagine I will turn off onto those squiggly lines and then follow 1194 to Mae Sariang. I don’t think 1194 hugs the mountains or offers any particular scenic views, but it would be nice to get onto a smaller road than 105 whenever possible. I imagine 105 will be relatively busy. In fact, I will keep my eyes open for any kind of accommodation at that point where the wide valley begins. There are a couple of small communities located there, including Sop Moei. And it might be a good idea to spend the night there and then have the next day in full to meander through the farming countryside for the final 50 kilometers and arrive in Mae Sariang fresh and full of energy. In fact, there is a town called Mae Moei, just 50 kilometers from Tha Song Yang. And there is a hotel listed on Google Maps that comes highly recommended. I could spend the night there. A final option is to ride a mere 29 kilometers up the road and see about staying in Mae Salid. That is the small town that sits right at the entrance to the Mae Moei National Park. That is the entrance at the other end of my self-named Mae Moei Loop that I attempted yesterday. Staying at Mae Salid would give me the opportunity to ride into the scenic area that I never reached yesterday.
It was while I was looking at this route so carefully that I decided to stay one more night in Tha Song Yang. I still want to see the beginning of the Mae Moei Loop had I gone in a clockwise direction. Mae Salid is only 29 kilometers away along smooth highway 105. There should be no drama or surprises in terms of riding there. I could be there in thirty minutes. And then I can ride into the mountains for the day. I know for sure that the loop road is paved all the way to Mon Kiew Lom, which is 24 kilometers inside the scenic area along my loop. The road might even be paved for another 20 kilometers after that. It’s hard to tell.
I made up my mind to do this because my attempt to complete the Mae Moei Loop in a counter clockwise direction didn’t work out at all. I did have a good day, and I enjoyed the ride very much. It was full of beautiful scenery and interesting experiences. But the road was so rough that it was impossible to continue and finish the loop in one day. In fact, I only covered 25 kilometers in four hours. That represents only twenty percent of the total distance of the loop. I knew that the road would eventually become paved and the traveling would be easier, but I didn’t know when that happened. And I didn’t know how much rougher the road would eventually become. But no matter how I looked at it, I couldn’t see how I could cover the remaining 100 kilometers in the time remaining in the day. It was already past noon at that point, and I couldn’t see how I could complete the loop and be back in Tha Song Yang before dark. In any event, even if I managed to do it, I didn’t see the point. By the time I reached the scenic areas of the national park it would be so late in the day and I would be so tired that I would have neither the time nor the energy to enjoy it. I’d just end up racing down the road to get back to 105 and then race back to Tha Song Yang. So, I called it at after noon and simply turned around.
I’m very glad I made that decision. In a way, I was lucky to make it as far as I did on that road without a flat tire or a mechanical breakdown. I didn’t want to push my luck and end up with a flat tire in an even more remote and rugged area. At the exact point where I turned around, I encountered a pickup truck up on blocks at the side of the road. From a cursory glance, it appeared to me that its rear differential had failed. The differential had been completely dismantled and both wheels had been removed and there was transmission fluid all over the ground. It was one of the sadder sights you can see on a road, and it made me reflect on what could happen to me if my scooter broke down.
The day before, just as the sun was setting, I hopped onto my scooter and rode fast to the point where the southern part of the Mae Moei Loop began. I wanted to make sure that there was at least a road there and that it was drivable. Google Maps indicated that was the route to follow and that there was a road there, but I wanted to make sure. I found the road without any trouble, and I followed it for five or six kilometers inland, and it was largely paved the whole way. The pavement was pretty rough. It consisted of those large sections of cement rather than tarmac, but it was still easy riding. And right at the beginning of the road, I noticed an interesting temple. I thought I could visit it during my loop attempt.
In the morning, I packed up as best I could, and I filmed a complicated sequence of me getting on the scooter and leaving. I’d been so pleased with how my efforts turned out with the Mae Usu Cave trip that I wanted to try out this technique again. I haven’t seen much of the video yet, so I don’t know if my efforts resulted in anything, but I enjoyed doing it. I set up the camera outside my room, and I filmed myself getting on the scooter and riding away from two or three different angles. And I filmed little bits of me turning the key in the ignition and the scooter turning on. Then I moved the camera down the hotel grounds to a couple of spots to record my departure. And, finally, I mounted the GoPro on a highway sign to capture the moment when I exited the hotel grounds and turned onto the highway. There just happened to be a person walking along the highway as I did this. I think it was a woman, and she took an interest in what I was doing. She had a striking appearance, and I think she was also in the video frame as I rode my scooter past the camera.
The morning was quite cold, so I had worn my orange jacket. I was glad to have the jacket, though I have to say that it wasn’t very effective. The cold morning air cut right through it and still chilled me. The morning air was also incredibly damp. In the short ride down the highway, the GoPro and my glasses and the scooter all started to drip with condensation.
The start of this countryside road was somewhat typical in that it was marked by about a dozen very old signs. The signs were quite large and elaborate, but they were all in Thai, so I don’t know what they were about. But, apparently, there were lots of things along this road that needed to be announced by signs. I chose that point to do another segment of filming myself. I mounted the GoPro onto one of the signs, and then I turned around and went back out onto the highway. When there was a break in the traffic, I turned around and rode up to this road and the set of signs a second time as if it was the first time. And I stopped right in front of the camera and then I got off the scooter and gave a little summary of where I was and what I was doing for the day. In the morning, I had recorded a screen capture of Google Maps while I talked about the Mae Moei Loop, and I will insert it at this point. This moment at the signs will be official start of the video. I’ve decided to test the idea of doing a little bit of pre-planning of videos. I’m trying to do just a touch of visualizing what the structure of the final video will be and then making sure I film segments that fit into that structure. It’s a bit like visual storyboarding. This might help me shorten my videos. My usual approach of simply turning on the GoPro in the morning and then filming everything that happens from the start to the end of the day naturally makes for long videos.
After I officially started the video at the collection of signs, I decided to visit the temple at the start of this road. And I shot that visit in the same way. I tried to set up the GoPro in various places to film myself as I arrived, got off the scooter and then climbed up the steps to the temple. The temple was busier than most temples I visit. Through chatting with a man, I found out that they were celebrating the birthday of someone connected to the temple. So a lot of people were coming and going in various vehicles and dropping off food and drinks. The young boys I had noticed the previous afternoon were also still there, and they became the highlight of my visit. I couldn’t really talk with them, of course, but they followed me around to a certain extent and took an interest in what I was doing with my camera. At one point, I noticed that the boys had gathered at a shrine and were doing something with orange sheets. At first, I thought they were setting up a kind of curtain. I even had this crazy thought that they were blocking off my view of this shrine. Perhaps the monks had been offended by my use of my camera and they had instructed the boys to block off this shrine so that I wouldn’t be able to take any video of it. However, the truth turned out to be not so dramatic. It was quite mundane, in fact. The boys were folding up their bedsheets from the previous night. And I was pleased to note that they had quite a specific and deliberate technique for doing it. One end of the bedsheet was either tied to a post or held be a second boy. And then a boy would pull the sheet tight and run his hands along the sheet in a kind of slicing motion to flatten the sheet and divide it into neat segments, each segment being about the width of one hand. And these segments were neatly folded on top of each other lengthwise until the entire sheet had been turned into what struck me as a long cloth fan or a deck of cards. And then it was folded up section by section from end to end until it was a neat package, which was tied together with a long cloth cord. With its precision and neatness, it reminded me of military procedures. And that made sense as I can imagine that the life of a novice monk would include discipline, routine, and neatness. It’s probably similar to the life of a soldier in barracks. Both worlds value neatness and order and routine.
From that point, my day fell into a pattern of banging and crashing and bumping along that countryside road. Occasionally, the road would be paved for a few hundred meters, and I would race along happily. But the pavement always ended, and the road reverted to what was probably the roughest and steepest and most challenging road I’ve ridden on to date. But there were many rewards for that effort in the beautiful scenery. The road was full of interest as well because convoys of pickup trucks continued to carry out sacks of some kind of harvest. I eventually figured out that the crop in question was corn. I found a large pile of these sacks at the side of the road, and I was finally able to get a close look at them. The bags weren’t tied up, and I was able to see into them and I saw that they all contained cobs of corn. I’m fairly certain that these bags would be processed first, but I’m not clear about that. It seems to me that carrying corn cobs out wouldn’t be very efficient. They would surely want to separate the corn from the cob first. That would greatly reduce the volume of the load to be carried out. Yet, I saw no piles of empty corn cobs anywhere to indicate that this had happened.
I hemmed and hawed constantly as I rode along. Should I keep going? Is it possible to complete the loop? And the road teased me as these countryside roads often do. It would become so rough that it was laughable. It became ridiculous to even be there on a scooter. And the road became so steep that I started to think my scooter needed climbing ropes to get to the top. It was obvious that I should stop and turn around. But right at that moment, the road would level off and became smooth dirt or even paved. And then I would suddenly be racing along and thinking that maybe I can complete the loop after all. I certainly didn’t want to turn around and give up too easily. But then the road would fall apart again and be even worse than before. And then time became an issue. And that was the true deciding factor. When I pulled up Google Maps, I could see my physical location on the loop, and I saw that I had barely made any progress at all. And it was already past noon. I made the call and turned around.
Returning to 105 was a lot faster than my trip out. I wasn’t stopping as much, of course. And I was going largely downhill instead of up. And I was more familiar with the road, so I could ride much faster. But it was also physically demanding, and I found myself quite tired and sore by the time I made it back out. That feeling contributed to my sense that turning back was a wise move. I’m sure I would have been this tired and even more tired had I continued on.
Once on 105, I raced back to Tha Song Yang. I went first to a gas station to top off the tank. Then I dropped by the local Lotus grocery store to get some food. A set of six or seven huge expedition-style motorcycles were in the Lotus parking a lot, and I spent a few minutes looking them over. This wasn’t a Harley club. These bikes were a mixture of BMW and KTM and others. And they were monstrous. The bike bodies themselves were massive, and they had equally massive engines: 1200 CC and in that range. On top of that, they were loaded down with full sets of pannier bags and luggage racks and all the electronics that could possibly fit on handlebars. These were serious machines. I have to admit, however, that my overall sense of awe was tinged with a sense that these were ridiculous bikes for riding around Thailand. Nobody needs a 1200cc motorbike like these for the highways and roads of Thailand. In fact, I would think that such big motorcycles would be more of a hindrance than a help. The roads here are narrow and changeable and curvy. I imagine that a smaller, lighter, and more nimble bike would be much more suitable. Sure, these bikes look impressive. I would call them awe-inspiring. But I don’t see the point of using them for a tour of Thailand.
I tried to chat with these guys on camera, but it didn’t work out. The first guy I approached didn’t speak any English, and he was busy. The second guy spoke a bit of English, but he was also quite distracted, and though he agreed to speak with me, he didn’t seem to really know what I was doing. And he was very much not interested in answering my questions or even paying attention to what I said. I doubt I will include any of that in my final video of the day.
Seeing those bikes made me think about Itchy Boots again and Noraly’s decision to go with a smaller motorcycle for the rest of her trip to Alaska. I think that was a wise choice. And her bike’s 300cc engine is more than powerful enough to handle anything she might face on her journey. In fact, by the time I finished watching her first couple of videos about buying the motorcycle, getting all the necessary gear, and then shipping the motorcycle to Ecuador, I had to wonder if it was even worth it. I do get the appeal. I really do. There is nothing more enjoyable than contemplating a trip, planning for that trip, and then buying and organizing all the gear you think you’ll need. I enjoy that process as much as anyone, maybe even more. But the investment of time and money and effort involved is so great that I can’t help but think that she’d be better off doing what I’m doing: just renting a local scooter and go bumping along. I have the idea that the bigger, more powerful, more advanced, and more modern your equipment, the more you end up being isolated from the country you are visiting. You can end up traveling inside a bubble and cocoon of all your aggressive, brightly colored, advanced and technical equipment, and that can have the effect of separating you from your surroundings.
Simply buying the motorcycle and outfitting it is a massive undertaking that takes weeks. And then there is the effort of crating it and shipping it to Ecuador. She then had to get it out of the airport in Quito and through Customs while getting all the proper paperwork and permits. She had to hire an agent to guide her through this process, and it still took an entire day and long into the evening. I can’t even imagine how frustrating and exhausting that process was. And that was with a professional agency helping her. Imagine doing that on her own.
And, of course, she has to go through the process of acquiring the correct permits and papers and deal with customs at every single border crossing. It all starts to add up to work that consumes all of you.