"The road less traveled...Meh"

I'm gonna start by saying I apologize for the amount of the word "We" I use in this post.  It's hard writing haha

We started our morning with a quick cup of coffee and an even quicker discussion about what we wanted to do with our day.  Renting a scooter and heading up to wat Phrathat Doi Suthep Rajvoravihara seemed like a fun option.  Yep Thats a mouth full so for the purpose of this post we will shorten it to Wat Phrathat doi Suthep hahaha.  Garrett read a couple of reviews that said this Wat was not to be missed except one… Chloe.  Chloe eloquently referred to this wat as “meh.” Meh?  Seriously?  An 800 year old temple on the top of a mountain is meh? Well, We’ll be the judge of that Chloe. 

It was so early that none of the scooter rental places were open yet so we decided to rent one from the guesthouse where we were staying. 

haha this needs no caption.. our whip

After being told to return the scooter with gas, we grabbed some crappy helmets and were on our way!  As soon as we hopped on, Garrett noticed the gas gauge was on empty.  We laughed and continued on our way, directly to a gas station. I have to admit, Garrett drove our scooter through the streets of Chiang Mai like Hans Solo flew the Millennium Falcon through the depths of hyperspace.  We didn’t win our scooter from Lando Calrissian in a hand of cards, but he was about as confident in our vehicle as Hans was about his. Okay enough Star Wars references for now i’m beginning to look like a geek.  Garrett and I headed for the hills after filling our tank and it was a lovely drive up into the mountain.  We were pretty hungry when we arrive at the wat so we had a quick bite to eat.  I had a delicious piece of fried chicken and Garrett had the standard Khao Soi.

Khao Soi

 Khao Soi is a traditional dish served in Northern Thailand with hand cut noodles. it’s similar to a stew.   Most of the women use scissors to cut the noodles into strips, some are wide (my favorite) and some are thin.  Garrett has been eating Khao Soi since we arrived and I have to admit it is sooo tasty.  Garrett was convinced the grayish brown pieces of spongey substance cut into squares was tofu.  I never saw tofu that color and was pretty convinced it was liver but I didn’t want to ruin Garrett’s day so I kept my mouth shut. We managed to confirm a few days later that yes it’s liver and now he and I both push the liver to the side of the dish.  

Hmong girl

After brunch, we started to head up to the long stairs to the temple when we see these absolutely adorable kids in traditional Hmong dress taking pictures with tourists.  These kids were hams! They knew exactly what they were doing!!  As soon as you start to take a picture they ask for money and when you give them some coins they jump in your arms and start kissing your cheek.  Our little nugget didn’t like that Garrett didn’t shave that morning.  These adorable kids were as trained for this as well as Toddlers in Tiaras are for a Little Miss whatever pageant.  One of these 6 year old girls even had an infant sister strapped to her back and the baby was happy as a clam.  It was priceless!!  The moms of these kids were sitting at the bottom of the stairs sewing costumes and chatting with each other. We loved these kids they were awesome.   

We climbed the long stretch of stairs and reached the platform where you pay admittance, and as I was paying the admittance fee, there was a bit of a commotion behind me.  Garrett turns around to see whats going on and much to our surprise there was a centipede about 8 inches long!!! It was beautiful and super creepy all at the same time.  I entered the wat and the first thing I could thing of was WOW!! Gold, gold, and more gold. This was the most impressive wat we had visited yet.  As you walked around there were drawn into different rooms of the temple where monks are giving blessings to the visiting tourists.  I participated in one blessing and Garrett participated in two.  It was certainly special for the both of us.  We walked around the grounds of the wat and took it all in .  Here is my response to Chloe… I feel sorry for you.  It must be incredibly difficult to please a woman who describes such a peaceful beautiful place as “meh.” 

 

After the wat, we decided to check out the Hmong Hill Tribe.  I’m not sure if that needs to be capitalized. (sorry mom)  We took the scooter through the National Forest on thin, winding roads  that lead us to the hill tribe.  It was an interesting community and as soon as we arrived there were coffee stands set up on the side if the road.  We pulled into one and ordered a cup of hot coffee and sat for a few minutes taking in the surroundings. 

After our coffee the adventure began.  We drove through the village hoping to get back on the road to lead us to Chiang Mai but what happened next was epic. We came to a fork in the road and had no idea which way would take us back to the main road so we did what all rational, educated people would do…we guessed.   Things were looking good for a while and we were descending the mountain on our tiny scooter at an even pace when the road starts getting a little sketchy.  The road turned from cement to clay and it clearly had been washed out by the rain because there were 18 inch ruts running down the road and big rocks everywhere.  The road was one sharp turn after the next all the way down. I trusted Garrett’s driving skills and he was doing an excellent job of getting us down a mountain on roads that should only ever be traveled by an ATV or monster truck. 

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Which brings me to what happened next, I was doing my best to hang on and not complain due to fear, when I looked down and there is barely any flat, dry road and a giant cliff to my right.   I asked Garrett to stop and I jumped off in fear that we will slide right over the side if the cliff.  He rode the bike down that section of the hill and I video taped it. That was the ONLY stretch of road that I jumped off.  Oh I think I forgot to mention that we lost our front brakes 15 minutes into our descent.  We didn’t see any other human beings for the entire time we were coming down the mountain.  We finally hit some better road and we realize we were in the clear almost 3 hours later!!! I haven’t been that white knuckled since I drove from Oneonta, NY to Binghamton, NY during a blizzard in my VW Golf to see Phish. (don’t judge!!!!)  We came through what may have been a farmer’s back yard and finally hit the main road.  Immediately we were driving around a big lake that we hadn’t seen before.  The lake had a hundred tiny huts on stilts all the way around so we decided to stop for lunch and check it out.  Thank goodness we did!  A young girl showed us to our hut, we took our shoes off and sat in the

hut for two hours eating, drinking and laughing.  We ate a delicious fish hot pot soup and some fried rice.  Both were so good.  We became huge fans of hot pot.  We also made friends with the 8-10 eighteen year olds in the hut next to us who were polishing off a case and a half of Chang beer tall boys, about 20oz bottles.  You could literally jump out of your hut and swim around the lake and jump back in the hut.  It was extremely cool and there were almost no tourists which Garrett and I truly appreciated.  This was one of our favorite days to date and I don’t think I have ever laughed as much as I did that day, and it certainly wasn’t “Meh.”