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So Leigh-Anne and I have spent two weeks in a place called Railay in the south of Thailand and are now in Malaysia. But more about that later. For now it's time to recap on our recent escapades with the hire car.
We hired ourselves the smallest (read: cheapest) car we could find. This was a Nissan March. Which to anyone in Europe is a Nissan Micra. b****in! We picked it up from Chiang Mai airport and after trying and failing to find a clutch pedal we were resigned to the fact that we had hired an automatic.
On Day 1 we drove to Pai. It took us about 4 Hours. The first half of which was on a decent highway where you could travel at about 80-100km/h great. The second half, however, was a bit more complex. The terrain between Chiang Mai and Pai involves a lot of mountains. It appears that Thai engineers, unlike Swiss ones, dislike tunnels. Cant go through it, have to go over it. That involves a large amount of windy roads snaking up the side of hills. Some pretty easy to drive and other bits having us pray that the poor Micra would make it. Foot to the floor at 25km/h (15mph) was a sad reality for us on a number of occasions.
Before we got to Pai we decided to stop for a coffee. As we were about to slow down for the stop my mind was determined to find a clutch. My left foot pressed hard on the closest pedal to disengage the gear. That happened to be the break pedal which we realised as we left a little of the tyre on the road. Thankfully there was no one behind us.
We saw a sign to a national park with hot springs and decided to give it a go. We took the March through its paces a bit; very steep and bendy roads. We got to the national park and were charged 200Baht (or Bath on many signs) each for entry - £4 each. Parked up and walked round the 2km or so trail to the geysers. Impressive stuff. We passed a bit of perfect lawn in the middle of the jungle, about 4m by 4m, which was cordoned off. The pictures next to it showed the Queen kneeling down on the grass with some children. A little strange, a bit like everything that the royal family touches becomes a shrine. We got to the baths which were filled by the water from the geysers and were pretty disappointed that 1. they cost extra and 2. there were no unisex baths. We grumbled about it and decided that it wasn't worth paying another pound to sit alone for 5 minutes in separate baths until we got bored. Back on the road.
When we reached Pai we needed to find our hotel which was a little outside of the town itself. It was at about this time the GPS ran out of battery. Trying and failing to charge the GPS, we were left with a sketch of the route (in Thai) downloaded from the hotels website. Half an hour later, after deciphering that we needed to go right at the airport... and then finding that the airport is in fact a field with a strip of concrete in with no buildings to be seen, we arrived at the Hotel. The hotel was pretty nice, we had our own detached circular building divided into sleeping and bathroom areas and you could walk out stairs on the outside to the roof where there were chairs for us.
We went into Pai. Pai is a hippie's retreat. If you want to stay in Thailand, in a pleasant place, for a long time, with lots of food options, for not too much money, without having to learn a word of Thai, while growing dreadlocks and finding yourself - Pai is where you want to do it. Very nice night market we had decent food and went in search of our new favourite desert; mango and sticky rice. Success. We also bought a charger for the GPS so we could charge it in the car or in our room.
On awaking the next day we went off to breakfast which was mammoth. It included orange juice, coffee, toast, 4 pancakes, egg, bacon, salad and fruit. Good times! We spent an hour or so fighting with the GPS chargers and bits. It turned out that the (cigarette) charger on the car didn't work. Ryan attempted to be practical and replace the fuse but was thwarted by the lack of spare fuses. Leigh-Anne took the initiative and called and emailed the car company. Time to be off - this time Mae Hong Son.
There were a lot more bends in the road again and some more mild motion sickness. Nothing like buses in Vietnam though. After about 3 hours we made it to Mae Hong son. Mae Hong son is not visited by many tourists. There are a scattering of guest houses which are around and near the town's lake. The lake has a circumference of maybe 500m and a bit of parkland along one side. There are a few restaurants, guest houses and, of course, a temple overlooking the lake. Unfortunately no swan shaped pedalos this time but it would take about 3 minutes to do a length of the lake so probably not worth it. We had a walk around the lake which was really beautiful except for two things. The first was the Thai Lady selling something at the side of the lake who saw the farangs coming and proceeded to wheel her disabled son into view and try the guilt treatment. The second was the amount of crusty dry dog poos peppered over the lawns. Nice!
We stayed in some bungalows on one side of the lake. The town was super sleepy but we got some lunch - they didn't speak any English, we didn't speak any Thai but they did have an English menu. We had a bit more of a walk around and then headed back to the bungalow. We sat on the porch for a bit and chatted as the sun went down to a sound track of Thai-chi being performed in the park. Balance from the participants was encouraged as one wrong move could find you closer than comfortable to one of the aforementioned peppered poos. We decided to go for dinner and a night market had appeared from nowhere onto the roads near the lake. We had a look and ended up buying two t-shirts which chronicled and celebrated the bends of the road and the travel sickness which comes from it. One of these was all in Thai and meant for Sol "Get me a t-shirt, all in Vietnamese, no one has one of those" Vietnam couldn't deliver but Thailand can.
We got some food and as we were eating a man in a kilt walked past. "Why did someone just walk past in a kilt?" The question was answered a few minutes later when the bagpipes started. A little surreal sitting in Thailand, eating Thai food with bagpipes in the background. A few locals gathered to watch the crazy farang. We have a picture in the gallery.
Next to Mae Sariang. Much more sensibly straight roads now but still some bends thrown in there to make sure you're concentrating. We stopped at the top of a mountain at a 'view point'. Two things happened at the view point. The first was a gaggle of children in traditional hats swarmed around the car 'Hello Photo!' they chorused... over and over. The second was that the view was pants. Not because of the lack of scenery, but the lack of visibility. When you can only see 50m for the haze the vista a few miles away is a lot less impressive. We retreated back into the car after repeatedly denying the assertion that we really would like 'hello photo'.
Mae Sariang was more quiet than Mae Hong Son. We booked into a guest house which was recommended in Lonely Planet 2007 "300-600B per night" the reality was 1000B per night - rampant inflation! Room was OK. We got lunch and then at about 4:30, headed for the national park which was about 5km away. This national park was a little different. We arrived at the checkpoint at the entrance to the park to be greeted by a very polite Thai man who spoke no English. We attempted some communication and were provided a park brochure. After trying to pay - I thought all national parks charged for entry - the man shook his head and let us in. We had free reign of a national park! What to do? All signs pointed in the same direction, so we'll drive that way. After about 200m the road had given way to a concrete passage through the jungle which was about 1m wider than the March. The signs on the 'road' indicated that the river that ran through the park was in 38km and there was something else (the words were in Thai only) was in 19km. Well let's see how the road goes. After 2km the road became a dirt track and then another km presented us with a dry river bed. We managed to get past these obstacles and back on the dirt track. The track climbed and winded and every so often the tyre tracks of the 4x4s that usually grace the track dipped so low that the poor March had it's underside tickled by rocks and roots. A few times the track was so steep that the tyres lost some grip on the track and we slowed to 5kmph with foot to the floor. None of this stopped the mighty March! We were passed on a few occasions by locals either on motorbikes or 4x4s and they gave us looks of amazement that we got the March this far. We decided that 38km to the river bed was never going to happen before it got dark so we would try for the thing which was 19km down the road. We counted down the km markers 10km from the thing, 9km from the thing... We finally arrived at 0km from the thing. Nothing was there. No river, waterfall, peak, viewing platform, outstanding trees. Nothing. We turned round after the epic outbound journey so that we could experience it all again! The return journey was same same until the riverbed where the different approach meant that a specific rock which stuck 15cm out of the ground was in a perfect position to dent our bumper. Leigh-Anne expertly directed us around the rock even though I was pretty insistent that it would be fine to drive over from my blind position in the drivers seat. Common sense (i.e. Leigh-Anne's way prevailed) We made it past the river bed and back to civilisation before it got too dark.
The next day and we were off to Mae Sot. As we left Mae Sariang we had half a tank of petrol. Plenty of petrol for 145 miles. Or so we thought. The roads were a little unforgiving. Perhaps not quite as bendy as before but they were giving it a good go. To make up for the fact that they were a little less windy the road kindly decided to give way in lots of places, potholes abound. From the potholes it was clear to see that the foundation for the roads was pretty much sand and the tarmac was about 3cm thick. That a hardy road does not make. After a while of tacking these roads we were presented with a perfect stretch of new road for 20km or so, followed by roadworks. These roadworks meant that the tarmac disappeared completely and we drove over sand for a km before returning to the road. We were starting to run low on petrol. The GPS was the answer. Nearest petrol station please. 85km away! This did not look so good. Our driving style changed from pushing the poor car to it's limits to little old lady driving to get everything we could out of the tank. We prayed that the roads would not deteriorate and thankfully these were answered. We arrived at the town with petrol stations with abut an 1/8 of a tank. Now to fill the car with Gasohol 95. But none of the 4 petrol stations had Gasohol 95 just Gasohol 91. After a brief spell of wardriving (Driving around to find an open wireless network) and a google we decided that it was pretty much the same and would be fine. Crisis averted.
We arrived at Mae Sot. It was not the greatest place to drive and not the greatest place to be. The driving was bad as it involved driving a one way system through a street market (picture flies, uncovered raw meat etc). This was probably the place we least liked in the whole of Thailand and it may not be a coincidence that it was so close to the border with burma. We stayed at a pretty rubbish (but cheap) guesthouse and apart from having a run and being gawped at by the locals not much happened here.
We didn't hang around the next day and headed to Tak. We arrived in Tak at around 11am and decided that it wasn't for us; an uninspiring and not very characterful city we decided without leaving the car. We got some petrol - no chances this time - and the headed on to Lampang. By this point the roads were much better. We spent most of the day travelling to Lampang checked into to an OK, if dated, hotel which we had to pay for wifi and the breakfast was rubbish - bad times. We went out for dinner and watched an army of geckos eating flies attracted by the lanterns at the restaurant.
The last full day with the car and we headed from lampang to lamphun. On the way we stopped at our last national park. The park is situated in the mountains which run between lampang(shire) and lamphun(shire) another drive with some very steep bits ensued including accident blackspots with big signs declaring that many accidents had occurred here. When we arrived at the visitor centre we decided to walk to the peak of the mountain range. We were not really sure how far this was as the map we were provided with had pretty ropey distance information. Our best guess was that it was about 5km. After walking for rather more time than was expected we reached the point which was supposedly 1km from the visitor centre. We walked a small amount further and signs declared that we had travelled a further 500m. It was at this point that we decided to pack it in and head back to the car. We were being harassed by a number of tiny buzzing flys who insisted that the best place for them was 5cm from our ears. That coupled with the unknown distance remaining to walk. These reasons made our decision easy. On the way back we measured the distance by our pace and we think the "1km" section was 4 times as long as the "500m" section. :S
We continued on to Lamphun and stayed in what was probably the nicest accommodation we had in Thailand. Lamphun is a small place. We had lunch in town at the same time there was a parade out of the local temple. We also then walked down the road and it looked like there were preparations for a Ladyboy talent contest. We gave it a miss. We were pretty exhausted and we found that we had two English language film channels so we ended up watching The Da Vinci Code and Black Swan. We then realised it was too late to get dinner so ended up eating crisps, biscuits and icecream for diner!
On the final day we headed back to the airport to return our car. We got our deposit back and got a refund for the GPS! Then a plane to Phuket.
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