Bike adventure

With no destination or plan, Alex and I set off around noon and stopped for some food at a roadside shack about 15 minutes away from town. A local guy told us about a road through the forest nearby, so we followed his directions and found ourselves in a National Park.

The roads quickly became dirt tracks. We went up and down over mountains, surrounded by stunning views. Not sure where we were going, we asked a local and were told a village was 5km away and then you could get back to Pai another 30km. However after 45 minutes of the roads getting worse and no civilisation in sight, we checked our GPS to find we were heading north towards Burma with no other roads on the map.

Despite mostly blue skies and blazing sunshine, we had a few spots of rain, heard thunder in the distance and we hadn't filled our tanks with enough gas for a long trip, so we had no choice but to turn around. It took less time on the way back as we were used to the terrain. In the 2 hours in the National Park, I think we only saw 5 vehicles. We visited a tiny village, saw chickens and motorbikes but no sign of any people.

Once we were back on normal roads (luckily), the skies opened and out of nowhere a huge storm erupted and we were forced to take shelter in someone's home. We were only a few minutes from Pai so once the rain had mostly stopped we got back on the road to find a tree had fallen a few metres away, completely blocking the road. I had to break a load of branches to clear a way around it.

It was like an episode of Top Gear except that it wasn't scripted and there was no casual racism.