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| The Ping, at Hot. |
OK, so the kayaking thing is a bust, but I am not just going to sit around at home - not least I have booked a whole bunch of hotels and indeed a train back from Nakorn Sawan, so I need to get there somewhere, and obviously the best alternative I have is to cycle. First though, I have one room booked that is a pretty long way from Chiang Mai, and also the other side of some very large mountains from the next hotel, booked for four days later. So, having returned to Chiang Mai via an expensive taxi ride and dumped the boat back at home, I decide to do some extremely lazy travelling, by car. One day I will do road trips, oh yes... but I am not old enough yet.
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Always nice to come here.
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Anyway - obviously my destination, Hot (actually pronounced more like 'hort') is of course on the river, more or less, but it is also on the main road from Chiang Mai, which as it turns out takes a very scenic and exciting mountain route. Hot turns out to be a nice little place, and I find a good restaurant too. Taking a look at the Ping, I notice it is flowing quite quickly, just as it was away from the resort yesterday (yes, there was a massive weir there too, but I'd have had to get out of the water anyway...). I wonder if this stage of the kayaking would have worked? Although, my accommodation, though very pleasant, is three kilometers uphill from the river, not sure I'd have enjoyed that much. Anyway... it was worth driving here, not least as on the way back I'm able to visit Doi Inthanon, Thailand's highest mountain of course. Yes, I have done all the things here before, but even so, this is the nicest day I've ever visited the twin Pagodas, and they've laid out a new garden next to the King's too, very nice. I had not noticed the neutron monitoring station by the summit either...
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| The bat cave! |
Back to Chiang Mai for one night, then I am off on my bike, yet again. It is a familiar route, over the mountains to Lampang, then down highway 1 to Thoen and on to Tak. These places remain not terribly exciting... I do at least find a bar in Lampang, but beyond that it is back to, restaurant and then retire to the hotel / resort. I am staying at some quite nice places this time, I basically tried to book as near the river as possible, whatever the cost. So a couple of times I find a wedding ceremony happening, Thai weddings are quite strange - it seems to be a thing to have some kind of comedian keeping up a more or less constant patter, including making very strange, loud noises. All makes sense to them I am sure. This trip is I guess slightly different to the first time I took this route, in that I am going the other way - well, it is downhill I suppose! Also it means I spot things to look at that I didn't notice from the other side of the road - for instance, there is an interesting cave temple a little south of Thoen, not only containing many life size statues of monks, but also a large colony of bats. With only my phone torch to guide me I get really quite close to them, most cool.
Photos to go with this post can be found here.
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