The Mae Hong Son Report
2006/02/05
Death Highway. Hah! You are nothing to me. You are puny. Your name is written beneath a pig's tail. You are the girlyman of Death Highways. I laugh in your face.
Ahhh... But you are so very beautiful; the grace and delight of your sinuous curves, the irresistible invitation of your rising, and falling, and rising again. Your flanks are adorned with pampas, bamboo, eucalyptus and fern. The sky above you is eternal blue. The air around you is filled with butterflies and birdsong - as it should be. It is my sadness that I must leave you here. I want to take you home with me. I would like to take you wherever I go and lay you down before me whenever I wish to ride.
Okay okay. Maybe I'm getting a little overindulgent here. While neither killer nor lover, it is a fine fine road. North Thailand is famed (by those in the know) for its fabulous motorbiking routes and roads. And this one is a standout even by North Thailand standards. If you're a rider, you love those tight twisty little bits when you're leaning hard over to the right, flip over left, flip back, etc., never pausing for the vertical in between. Racers call them chicanes. I call them fun, and this road has stretches like that in abundance. Along most of the road there is one side where if you wander 3 feet off course you are tumbling down an extensive embankment. There are a couple of places along the route where this is true of both sides of the road. It's a narrow two-laner in pretty decent nick. As twisty as it is, it rises and falls as dramatically and abruptly. There is one spot where you are descending through hairpins down one beautifully exposed mountain side and looking across to the near adjacent steep slope to see 4 levels of the road ahead zig-zagging up directly across the narrow fertile valley bottom. It's too bad the road demands such attention because rubber-necking is hugely rewarded everywhere. In many spots there are grand vistas over the steep, closely spaced hills, and at others you're nestled right into the forest. Now there are some pretty decent roads about that are fun to ride like this, but this guy is 165km long. About 45km are in open valley bottoms, mostly at each end. That leaves well over 100km of this exquisite wild roller-coaster riding. I hereby declare the "Death Highway" to be one of the best rides on the planet.
I didn't make it to Umphang on the mysterious unmapped road. At the top of the national park where the marked road terminates, it is gated and turns into cleared path. There is every sign that it was once a road that goes through, and there are machete marks that indicate it might be kept at the ready in case it needs to be a military route into the Myanmar (Burma) border hot spot. I walked a couple of kilometers down it through the jungle forest. It didn't show any signs of dissipating, but did have a few fallen trees etc. across it. Had I a mountain bike of the pedal variety, a tent, and 4 gallons of water I would have taken it. I estimate about 30 to 50 km this way to Umphang.
I went around the long way, nighting over in Kamphaeng Phet, which meant I had to ride the highway to Umphang twice. Poor me. Umphang is a lovely small laid back community in the middle of gorgeous hills beside a large lazy river. In the late afternoon and early evening they play lilting traditional Thai folk tunes from loudspeakers mounted on power poles throughout the town. The thing to do here is to take river rafts down to the biggest (400m high, 300m wide), most revered waterfall in Thailand, take elephants from there to a local Karen village, and 4 wheel drive it back to Umphang. It's usually a 3 day adventure. I didn't go.
I did however sleep in a cheap row house of charming little guest house rooms, all sharing a common porch. On this common porch the Thai guys 3 doors down kept their fighting cocks caged overnight. It's a myth that roosters crow at dawn. They actually start around 2:30. Rooster for breakfast: that's what I want. Slow roasted on a spit over an open fire, perhaps with a nice Chianti and some fava beans.
Thus Umphang. I would like to tell you about the Karen refugee villages along the Umphang road and between Mae Sot and Mae Sariang, and the rather terrible plight of the inhabitants. But I'm running out of time. Some other day maybe. In Mae Sariang I had dinner with a Swiss guy who had come from a fresh scooter collision with one of those road dogs I was mentioning. The dog was ok, but the Swiss guy's arm had some pretty good road rash and his neck didn't work so good. He went to the local hospital to get his wounds cleaned and bandaged, got some pain killers from their pharmacy, and was presented with the bill. Wait for it, Canadian health system users... 50 baht. $1.50. I love this country.
Tonight I'm in Mae Hong Son, where I've been before, and it's a treat to be in familiar territory a new time. There are thunder clouds, and thunder. I'm waiting for gaps in the only tropical rain I've seen this journey to make my way back down the road 6km to my hillside cabin abode for the night. I've got a bag full of peppered cashews, some Mandarin oranges and a quart of Leo beer for sitting on the porch and watching the gentle storm. I guess I'm doing all right. I hope you all are too.