Cycling Southeast Asia : 1

Hot springs.

Time for another cycling adventure!  I am back in Chiang Mai, having spent a month brushing up on my Thai, but my visa is about to run out so I need to leave the country.  My plan then is to make virtue from necessity, and ride over the border into Laos, and then on to Vietnam.  What can go wrong?  I start by heading out of town on Highway 118, it is flat and arrow straight, so easy enough for the first thirty kilometres or so.  But then I hit mountains, this is hard going, a climb up to three thousand five hundred feet, and it doesn't help that they are rebuilding the road, slogging up a gravel surface is not great.  Still, I can often ride or push on the packed dirt of the new road, avoiding the traffic.  And it sure is nice to stop along the way for a paddle in a cool mountain stream....  On the other side of the hill I find hot springs, huge fountains of sulphurous water, most cool - well, actually hot, so hot people are boiling eggs!  Next to the springs there is an amazing Angkor Wat themed resort, half built then abandoned...  A little further is my hotel, turns out the 'room' is little wooden house in traditional Thai style, no restaurant though so I head back to the hot springs for pad Thai.

My own little cottage.

There's more up and down the next day, worth it for the beautiful mountain scenery, including an impressive waterfall at my lunch stop.  I consume som tam, allegedly made with a single chilli - if so it was a big one.  It's a long push to high point, then a fun freewheel for ten kilometres or so, and then not far to my destination for the day, Phayao, a decent sized place nicely located by a lake.  My hotel here is a bit of a change, it has all mod cons, and I also find a rather classy restaurant with music, where I think I confuse them by eating two persons worth of food - barring all the salted egg anyway.

Next morning I take time to visit the lake, take a photo or two, and make like the Thai tourists and feed the fish - no western tourists here.  Then an easy day of cycling across a flat flood plain, stopping for lunch in Jum, guay tiaw luuk chin muu, that is noodles with pork balls.  I reach Chiang Kam before 3pm, it's not much of a place, but I find a nice hotel for only three hundred Baht, and a bar with good food, plus shouty Thai men.  It turns out they are the band, the music is good, if loud.

Phayao Lake.

Photos to go with this post can be found here.