Dad's Trip to Thighland

Roadtrip to the North/Northeast

My dad arrived around 2 in the morning after cleverly convincing a taxi driver to take him to my apartment from the airport for only about 3 times the going rate; to his credit, he did manage to go directly to my place with no backtracking on the first try - a feat that I took about 2 months to achieve. He came to the same realization that I had found on my first day in Samphran - there's just not a whole lot to do in Bangkok's pig-farming suburbs. I introduced him to the school's faculty, who, in true "waitresses in a Thai restaurant" fashion, tried to talk to me about him right in front of him in Thai - when this failed, they tried in English (not quite as discreet). He seemed to have some trouble with the idea of dumbing down his speech and was fairly incomprehensible to everyone.

A friend of mine had invited us to the famous Rose Garden which happened to be right down the street from my place. My dad didn't trust my motorcycle-riding skills so we opted instead to get a motorcycle taxi; unfortunately, with 3 people (one seriously unbalanced) on one little bike whizzing down the highway, it probably wasn't the safest option. The price of admission to the world-renowned Thailand cultural show was 400Baht so I was pretty happy that we had free tickets; it included boxing, sword-fighting, and a guy who could bounce a takraw ball across the room with extreme accuracy using only his butt. After the main show, a group of elephants performed a dance number and demonstrated their superb logging abilities. We took a taxi cab back to the apartment as this was a bit less suicidal.

We made record time getting on a bus to the north - an hour's van ride with no traffic, 10 minutes to buy a ticket, and 10 minutes later we were on the bus. After a quick, nearly bearable 11 hours, we were docked in Chiang Mai. We decided to experience a tuk-tuk and sped down the narrow alleys to the old city.

I had told my dad to pack only what was absolutely necessary into a "day bag" for his travels in Thailand but he showed up armed to the hilt with expensive gadgetry and bore some resemblance to a retired Batman. His convertible cargo pants held a GPS, MP3 player, CD player, digital camera, medicine cabinet, several pairs of glasses of varying strengths, and a few dozen other things in more pockets than I could count or he could remember. The result was that we were well prepared for any situation, but typically, by the time the necessary tool was found, the necessitating circumstances had long since passed.

For some odd reason, my dad prefers to eat at restaurants rather than carrying a spoon in his pocket and feasting out of the plastic bags they give you at markets, so we went to a vegetarian restaurant that had a serious hippie vibe (wheatgrass shakes, organic coffees and the lot), but served excellent pumpkin curry.

We trekked across town to a few of the more impressive wats. We eventually reached a forest wat that supposedly had caves and tunnels. We only found an open zoo which was so open that all the animals had been allowed to escape and all that remained were a few stray cats and chickens. Next door was a wildlife reserve featuring the nature trail of death; it advertised deer and other woodland creatures, but all we managed to find was an intense hike straight up a mountain.

For dinner we went to a Korean restaurant (Chiang Mai has quite the varied restaurant scene - we bypassed the Spanish/German Casa Hofferbraus). My dad decided that I had not been letting him make a sufficient demonstration of his wealthy westerness, and opted to prove a point by ordering a dish that was priced 3 times higher than the other menu items (500 Baht). Little did he suspect that this pricing anomaly came from the fact that his dish was intended for a family of 4; I was a bit on the full side after finishing off the remaining two-thirds of his stew, my own pot of bimbimbap and the standard array of 12 side dishes.

In the morning we picked up our car at Budget; at $40 a day (with full damage cover) this increases the cost of travel in Thailand by about a factor of 10, but the statistics involved in both of us riding motorcycles across the country for a week were astronomically against us. I was given the task of driving as, after 10 months of backwards thinking, I was decidedly less likely to effect a head-on collision.

On all of my past road trips I've had some inclination as to where I needed to go and what I needed to see; however, our guide books gave only a vague outline of this portion of the country and we really had no idea where we planned to go or what awaited us there, only that we needed to get from Chiang Mai to Udon Thani in 7 days.

Driving in Thailand is quite a bit of fun; unlike most other countries, there really aren't any laws whatsoever and at any given moment, you pretty much do whatever seems the least likely to get you killed. All classes of vehicles run along the nation's two-lane roads and most of them don't go all that fast - this makes it necessary to ignore any yellow lines they may have bothered to paint down the middle and pass whenever necessary - if a truck comes roaring around a steep corner 10 meters in front of you, all parties involved will simply brake, swerve or crash into the rice paddies as appropriate. A wide range of wildlife enriches the experience - herds of cow and buffalo believe they are every bit as entitled to use the road as you and don't make any great effort to get out of your way, and the hordes of stray dogs and cats have come to realize that the asphalt in the dead-center of the road is by far the best place to sun themselves on hot summer days. There are no speed limits that I am aware of; city limit signs indicate that you should reduce speed but never make any mention of how fast you should have been going or what your new speed should be; the general belief seems to be that the problem of speeding or wreckless driving will eventually sort itself out - in 3 months, I have never seen a traffic cop that I have recognized as such.

I had been travelling through this amazing country alone for so long that I was desperately seeking to share the magic with other people, but my dad's attitude towards the trip seemed to resemble that of a teenager or a sack of potatoes. Quite often I would see something utterly incredible and say "Holy crap, look at that, it's amazing!" and without looking up from his book, my dad would give the monosyllabic response of "yup." This is particularly frustating for me as on my last trip I drove 6000km across open desert without seeing a darn thing - my partner would go on and on about the beauty of the clouds, trees and dirt, but I think she knew as well as I that there really was next-to-nothing that merited a second glance - in contrast, every inch of Thailand is remarkable and it's hard to drive for 5km without seeing some wat, cave, waterfall, vista, or bizarre cultural phenomenon to make you jump out and start snapping pictures.

We made our way southwest to Doi Inthanon national park. There were plenty of massive waterfalls along the way and a pair of huge purple wats; the summit itself wasn't all that impressive as there was thick cloud cover and the view was nonexistent. On several occasions, I considered picking up a random Thai guy and asking him to navigate, as my dad could neither read the Thai words or relate what I said to the romanized landmark names on the map - this is not entirely his fault as the transcriptions for Thai are very bad and everyone who reads this without a working knowledge of the language will probably similarly butcher the words; it is extremely painful for me to hear the wrong pronunciations of Thai sites, so if on some future occasion, you happen to ask me about my travels, please follow these simple rules: all Os and Us are long, As are pronounced "ah", AE is a short A, Is are "ee" and all Phs and Ths are Ps and Ts respectively - this means that "Phuket" is not profane but "Phi Phi" is - if you ever happen to pronounce the word "Thai" like it's spelled, I promise I will become violent.

The quality of the road on the next leg of the trip deteriorated rapidly. There were frequent mudslides, downed bridges, wandering cattle, undermined sections of road along the cliff, and a myriad of other hazards. In one spot where we had to edge over high dirt amounds and around a few dump trucks, we failed to notice a sign indicating a turn to our destination and moved on to a road with an even lower level of maintenance. In one spot, patches of payment were interspersed with deep dirt holes along a stretch of road that was frighteningly close to vertical and we just barely escaped with our "city-driving" economy car.

When we finally reached the main road, the road quality improved but the terrain did not. Along the way, we came across a public bus that had crashed into the side of the mountain sometime earlier that day and was still stuck there, blocking 1.5 lanes of traffic. At another point, a cobra, several meters long, stood up and menacingly glared into our headlights - right before it delivered to our front-left tire venom enough to kill seven men but not quite enough to stop a Honda City. We escaped a close call with motion sickness and arrived in the touristy town of Mae Hong Son around 8 at night.

This place had a hilltop wat and a few Burmese-style temples to occupy our attention for an hour or two, then it was onto the long winding road to Pai. The premier backpacking destination of Thailand had long since been conquered by pale-skinned hippie types and it was now far easier to find s steak or cappucino than a dish of Penang curry. There were many boating trips on the surrounding rivers and treks into the neighboring highlands, but the fact that everyone spoke English and arranging such a journey would be a straight-forward matter, sucked all the fun right out of the prospect, so we quickly moved on.

After a few more hours of hazardous twists, flooded bridges, landslides and inopportunely-placed livestock, we reached Mae Rim and found a restaurant which served frog curry and snake... -headed fish - neither of these was the least bit tasty, but they made for an interesting culinary experience nonetheless. This was a full-service restaurant; since the prices ran at a steep $2/person, three waitresses stood by our table at all times - ready to refill our glasses, replenish our condiments or cut up our food, and our car was washed while we dined.

We rocketed down the superhighway (sometimes reaching speeds in excess of 100kph) to the town of Lampang. This is the only place in Thailand where horse-drawn carriages are still used for public transport. Following a few hours of Ben Hurr style races down the city's thoroughfares, we made our to the "most beautiful wat in northern Thailand." We killed 10 minutes or so so there before continuing on to Phrae (did you just think "Fray"? Better go back and look at my speaking guide!) where we found several other old wats, a teak mansion, and various other mildly interesting edifices. Before arriving in the town we happened upon a rock garden which featured giant stones which, given sufficient hallucinagens, resembled elephants, camels and stegasaurii.

The guidebook recommended a park with huge mushroom-shaped piles of dirt but after driving 20 km out of our way, the signs disappeared and the trail went cold. Further up the road in Nan, there were yet more wats and a provincial museum which actually bothered to put a few exhibit descriptions in semi-decipherable English. We happened upon a restaurant that served up all-you-can-eat vegetarian food for 15 baht - clearly the average Thai vegetarian doesn't down six plates full for his morning meal.

We drove north out of town to the Sisaphet waterfall and found that during this particular season, the trail to the falls was only accessible if you happened to be a salmon. From there, we went to Po Kua National Park where the staff was more than happy to take our money but couldn't begin to explain what there was to see or do there. Following many futile attempts at communicating in Thai, we left in frustration and headed down the road towards Bo Klua.

Shortly after the "2 km to Bo Klua" sign, we came upon a rather disheartening sight - a massive landslide had buried the highway under a meter of rock and made it quite impossible for our car to reach our destination which awaited us in plain sight only a few thousand meters away.

We had no option but to turn back and repeat the tortuous route through the mountains. We followed a sign for a waterfall and asked a dozen locals but never managed to find our way to it. Our new plan was to head due south and skirt the Laotian border down to Loei.

As darkness fell we discovered that we had passed the last guesthouse for a few hundred kilometers an hour before; with no desire to backtrack, we moved forward through the driving rain on a mountain road designated in our atlas with the words "other road." After about 5km we came to a landslide that was still in the process of sliding and started to rethink the whole drive-through-the-night plan.

We returned to the last gas station and attempted to set up camp in the dark parking lot. After about 20 minutes a half-naked guy with a headlamp came along and peered into our car. He didn't speak any English but he seemed to be all right with the idea of sleeping there. Ten minutes later he came back with his half-naked headlamped friend and we got sufficiently weirded out to peel out of the lot and head for the last town up the road.

We followed a few sets of directions that landed us in deserted rice paddies before getting a motorcycle escort to the guesthouse. For being in the middle of nowhere, it was nicely equipped with a TV and hot shower.

In the morning we followed a cave sign and a few sets of directions to an operational quarry. There were no further signs, but we did find a chunk of rock that looked as if it might have caves. The area was heavily overgrown and we had nearly given up when we sighted a Buddha statue through the trees. Armed with headlamps we crawled back through Amarin Cave where we were nearly lost in a labyrinth of tunnels, dashed upon sharp rocks, and eaten by bats, but in an hour's time, we managed to escape unscathed into the sunlight.

Shortly after returning to the highway, we found another narrow road that ran back through a few villages and paddies to a waterfall of sorts. Further down the road, we entered the town of Dan Sai - here we spotted an odd shape on the top of a hill and followed a few hundred stairs to what was perhaps the most impressive wat in all of Thailand - the outside resembled a European cathedral and every inch of the interior walls was covered with stunningly bright murals.

A few kilometers later we found a few orange-shirted men standing in the middle of the highway with an all-Thai sign directing us to turn off. We drove for a bit in this new direction before realizing that this wasn't going to get us to Loei - we returned to the road block and discovered that there was in fact a detour because the road ahead had flooded - ah, the joys of the rainy season.

Loei was pretty boring - the sole evening activity seemed to be going to the doctor or dentist and there were a few hundred offices scattered across every city block to satisfy this odd hobby. My dad decided to splurge on a room wtih AC/TV/heated shower/fridge/etc. - this did an excellent job of making all of our future rooms look really crappy. At a Chinese vegetarian restaurant we discovered that in 3 days the annual Vegetarian Festival would commence and crazy people from all over could once again march through Thailand's towns with sharp objects stuck through their skin.

We next cruised south down the superhighway towards Nam Nao National Park. One thing we began to notice in our northeasterly travels is that a great number of people are sporting home-made vehicles; the style varies by province but they appear to generally consist of a few boards tied to a lawnmower engine and top out at around 5kph on the area's two-lane highways.

At the park we met up with an English camp - we felt a bit like (insert good analogy here - all I can think of right now is jelly donuts at fat camp but that's not really parallel), as they all swarmed us, shouting out the standard mantra of "Excuse me, what is your name? Do you have girlfriend? Telephone number?" We met high school students from the States who were engaged in a one-year school/travel exchange - I can only conclude that I went to a pretty worthless high school as I was never offered anything near this cool.

We explored a 10km "trail" to see next-to-nothing except elephant-induced tree fall, many flavours of droppings and a few hundred spiders.

Afterwards we moved onto Roi Et. Here we ate at a Thai/Korean Restaurant which featured such delectable options as "Jellyfish Stew" but my dad had abruptly assumed a quasi-vegetarian stance that prohibited him from the more original menu items. In the morning we climbed up a 63m Buddha in an attempt to see a view of the town and then proceeded to the lake where giant catfish nearly stood upright at the edge of the water with mouths open just waiting for a hapless toddler to teeter into their waiting maws.

We had no agenda whatsover for the final leg of the trip, so when we saw the first signs for "Jurassic Park," we set a course for the mysterious attraction that had alluded our maps and guidebooks. As the kilometers counted down, we began to see pods of giant concrete dinosaurs popping up in random spots along the road. Nearing one forest wat, we ran through rows of gift shops selling inflatables and pre-assembled bone kits to reach the museum which was apparently at the heart of all the propaganda. Unlike its cinematic namesake, the "Jurassic Park" museum was lacking in the area of living, breathing dinosaurs, but did have a few interesting bones.

From there we drove straight to our car's drop-off point of Udon Thani. The English soundtrack theatre had closed so we opted to go to church instead. We found what we believed to be a Catholic Mass, but after sitting through the proceedings for an hour, we realized that the format didn't remotely resemble that of a standard service and, shortly thereafter, statues of Mary were handed to several parishioners and the priests abruptly left the building - we began to suspect we really had no clue what was going on.

In the morning we set out to drop our car off at the rental place. Unlike every other airport in the world, Udon Thani hasn't bothered to post any kind of sign or make any allowance to give tourists a chance of finding the airport. Relying solely on Thai directions, we steered down a long series of back alleys before arriving at a modern international terminal. The representative drove us back into town to the tourist office where we were informed that there was in fact nothing to do in Udon Thani. So, we went to a few markets, visited some Chinese temples, and walked around a lake before seeking out a bus to Nong Khai.

The central bus station doesn't handle buses to the border town 50km to the north but they didn't bother to tell us that; instead they arranged to place me on a random bus travelling through the city later that evening. It was 2 hours late and bore the label "Bangkok - Khon Khaen" (which makes Nong Khai about 200km out of the way - perhaps this is why it took so long to pick me up). Soon enough I was in the tourist-heavy ville on the Mekong River.

These smart cameras can always guess exactly the right moment to take the shot