We decided to trade in our beloved bikes and try our luck at motorbiking... surprisingly and despite Vasae's best effort, we came out alive :) We started the adventure in Pai, an amazing little hippie town north of Chiang Mai that's by a beautiful river, has incredible clouds, mountain views and a nice laid-back atmosphere. The town itself tries a bit too hard to maintain its reputation as a "hippie town" but once you get outside the touristy areas and just after looking around at the scenery for about a second makes this very easy to overlook. From Pai we rented motorbikes and drove a few hours through the mountains to another small town called Mae Ha Song.
Here is one of the river spots we visited around Mae Ha Song. We hid under a tree for a bit while the monsoon rains came pouring down.
Just to make sure no one/ my parents gets worried, I'll say this before I tell the following story: no one was hurt in the slightest. Since neither of us had ever driven a motorbike before we definitely took it slow in the beginning. And because I'm more comfortable with pretending like I now what I'm doing, I did the majority of the driving as Vasae just wasn't as comfortable behind the wheel yet. After getting carpel tunnel syndrome in my right wrist from driving for hours up and down winding mountain roads and playing at a waterfall, Vasae warmed up to the idea of driving. We stopped at a stop sign on the road coming from the waterfall that linked up with the main road back to town in order to switch. I hopped on the back, answered a few of her questions and held on tight. Vasae had one of two choices: turn left to go in the wrong direction away from town or turn right towards town and our guest house. She chose neither. Not quite used to the handling, Vasae simply didn't turn at all and ran us straight into the ravine off the road ahead of us. Luckily it was no serious drop at all and we were just at a stop so we were traveling at a speed of about 2 miles per hour. But she wasn't done yet... I guess she wasn't content with our landing because almost immediately after running into the ravine and kind of landing she revved the gas and buried us farther into the bushes. At this point I hopped off and almost lost it dying of laughter. Vasae is an extremely capable and intelligent human being so her doing this and her reaction to it all was pretty priceless. Needless to say, we climbed our way out and headed back, safely!, to town. Per her request, I drove :) This picture above is her 2nd and much more successful go-round with driving. Now she's a pro!
Above is our lovely little cabin we stayed in by the river.
Here is one of the river spots we visited around Mae Ha Song. We hid under a tree for a bit while the monsoon rains came pouring down.
Just to make sure no one/ my parents gets worried, I'll say this before I tell the following story: no one was hurt in the slightest. Since neither of us had ever driven a motorbike before we definitely took it slow in the beginning. And because I'm more comfortable with pretending like I now what I'm doing, I did the majority of the driving as Vasae just wasn't as comfortable behind the wheel yet. After getting carpel tunnel syndrome in my right wrist from driving for hours up and down winding mountain roads and playing at a waterfall, Vasae warmed up to the idea of driving. We stopped at a stop sign on the road coming from the waterfall that linked up with the main road back to town in order to switch. I hopped on the back, answered a few of her questions and held on tight. Vasae had one of two choices: turn left to go in the wrong direction away from town or turn right towards town and our guest house. She chose neither. Not quite used to the handling, Vasae simply didn't turn at all and ran us straight into the ravine off the road ahead of us. Luckily it was no serious drop at all and we were just at a stop so we were traveling at a speed of about 2 miles per hour. But she wasn't done yet... I guess she wasn't content with our landing because almost immediately after running into the ravine and kind of landing she revved the gas and buried us farther into the bushes. At this point I hopped off and almost lost it dying of laughter. Vasae is an extremely capable and intelligent human being so her doing this and her reaction to it all was pretty priceless. Needless to say, we climbed our way out and headed back, safely!, to town. Per her request, I drove :) This picture above is her 2nd and much more successful go-round with driving. Now she's a pro!
Here's a shot from one of the seemingly endless rice patty fields we drove by. So pretty! I'll get my hands dirty in one of these fields at some point...
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