[Part II: 5 Days in Northern Thailand] Chiang Mai - Pang Mapha - Pai - Mae Hong Son

I had a trip to Northern Thailand sometime in early Dec. See Part I for Day 0 to Day 2 (Dramas guaranteed), this post covers the second half of my trip so let's go!

DAY 3: Around Mae Hong Son

Introducing our lovely place in Mae Hong Son:

MAVA MUSCOSA GUEST HOUSE!

It's a very lovely hut/cottage concept and when this view greeted me in the morning, I knew my day was just gonna get better from here.

Wandered around the city and found ourselves up in the hill at Wat Phra That Doi Kong Mu. It's a beautiful white temple overlooking the city town and there was a cafe called the "Sunset Cafe", where the name itself was pretty self-explanatory. 

There are a lot to do/see at Mae Hong Son - hill-tribe village visiting, waterfalls, trekking, caves etc. But after a soul-damaging 10-hour ride (See Day 2 in Part I), all we wanted to do was to ride around randomly at our own pace into some nearby villages. 

Every picture looks like a postcard.

I had the BEST surprise when we got tired and returned back to our place.

WE FOUND PUPPIESSSS!!! ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥

Next thing I know, I was in heaven.

Spent the rest of my afternoon playing with them and napping in the sun.

THAT's how you should holiday.

Went back to the temple place again cos F wanted to get some sunset shots. 

The sky was on a glorious fire, and it was so beautiful. Like as if the day was mustering everything that it had and giving its last shot, burning ferociously for the one last time.

None of the photos are edited. So just imagine that beauty.

We stayed a little more till the night and were rewarded with a night of stars, with a guest appearance of fireflies, and me trying to start soulful conversations (and failing) while F being engrossed in his long exposure shots. It was quite an out-worldly hour, in the good way of course.

Then we went to the night market at the city's central lake, where the boys played games under their parents' cart...

..and motorbikes exploded...

..and temple bells jingled..

..and Thai kids contributing to phone addiction statistics while still sucking on his milk bottle..

..and some late Loi Krathong celebrants released their sky lattern and nearly burning it down cos they were taking too long with their selfies ..

..and concluding the day with a scenic shot featuring our dinner (aka BBQ eggs, fried bees and deep-fried veggies)

We could have done so much more if we weren't too traumatised by the previous day and had more time, but hey, sometimes it's indeed the journey that counts.

I learnt to take rest after a draining day, that's something I wasn't used to do. Vacation is not all about checking off the list and chasing adrenaline after all. 

And always, ALWAYS play with puppies. 

DAY 4: Mae Hong Son to Pang Mapha 

First thing to do when I woke up: PUPPPPIES!!

Had a warm sunny breakfast under the sun with the puppies and started our winding road back again! HELLO BUTT SORE (again)!

We struck jackpot again with our accomodation. 

Let me present you the 'Little Eden Guesthouse'! 

We had a really really cosy little hut, and there's a sunny pool outside, and BEST of all, I lovelovelove the common lounge! It was right beside a lake and some forested area. You could have a beer while swinging on the hammocks, but I chose a two-hour nap instead (not really, the nap chose me). 

We hopped on our little scooter and went scooting around the fields, the hills and the villages nearby. There were a lot of trekking and mountains around for the catching sunrise and sunset, but they required a little travelling and our butts were way too abused to sit on the bike any longer. 

I was posing with the setting sun in between my fingers and it bore some resemblance to diamond rings. That when I decided to make it bigger.

The day soon ended with tummies full of random food.

DAY 5: Pang Mapha to Pai

After a quick bite of breakfast, we were back to the road for Pai again. This time, it was freezing cold along the way and that familiar feeling of fixing our eyes on the road and trying hard not to die was back again. I fell off the bike halfway and landed on my butt. I cried a little bit and F got freaked out hahhaha.

Pai!!!

The EASY Guesthouse Errbady!

It was a really rustic little place but comfortable enough to take a rest for a day or two. It was right in front of Wat Phra That Mae Yen Temple, which we should have climbed if we weren't so busy being lazy. 

I would recommend taking this road to get through Pai, it's called the 'rural road' and though it is slightly longer than the 1095 highway, the scenery definitely made up for it. 

Pai is a popular destination among the northern Thailand travellers, and it has flights coming in mainly from Chiang Mai. But the town itself is so small that you would have to drive passed the airport once or twice on your way around Pai. 

We headed for the Pai Canyon in the afternoon and I like it soo much there! You will see why in a minute.
One thing to note is that the place is quite sandy and there is no handles or safety structures at all, so proper shoes are a must. 

F decided to not carry on with the hike when he saw the vertical drop cos of his cameras and all. So I abandoned him hahah 

The canyon was hell of a climb! 

I had to use all four limbs at many points and the path got more and more unwalkable as one went in further. As much as I would like to know where my limit lies, I had to turn back cos '127 Hours' was starting to haunt my mind. 

There's me forgetting momentarily of my phobia for heights.
And that's me remembering it suddenly. 

We decided to catch the sunset at the canyon but it was still earlier, so we headed down to a nearby river to chill.

I got bored after some napping and selfies, and the river started to tempt me with its glistening water. So I decided to take a plunge. Literally. And it turned out to be a stupid idea cos the river was of walkable depth and I ended up with scrapped knees instead. 

The sunset at Pai was a very enjoyable one. Couples beside us were immersed in love and there were people singing and joking somewhere in the distance. The sun dyed everything a glory shade of gold, and added some dreamy rosy tinge to the clouds in the east. 


At that moment, I started to miss Thailand already. 



A quiet and beautiful ride back to our place. 

Went to the night market and amused myself with a bamboo cup. We hit some beers and avocados and our last night for the trip crept in before we knew it. 

DAY 6: Pai to Chiang Mai

Oh what's new. Turns and turns, uphills and downhills. 
This turn was painted red probably because some fatal accidents happened here before. F for some reason was especially intrigued by this turn. 

There's this part of the road that was extremely sandy due to the roadworks and I laughed when we stopped for a rest as F turned around showing his sunburnt face and dirty jacket.

The ride to Chiang Mai was tough as we had to ride under the noon blazing sun and the scenic view gradually died out and turned into monotonous city buildings. We had a quick bite at the local market and after a little bit of wandering, we bid goodbye to these very memorable times and places. 

Thank youThailand for not killing us, thank you F for almost dying with me.

I needed an escapade of nature and adventure, and this trip gave me a good dose of both. 

[Part I: 5 Days in Northern Thailand] Chiang Mai - Pang Mapha - Pai - Mae Hong Son

I took a short trip to Northern Thailand for 5 days earlier this month with my friend F. It was a much, much needed holiday from the life-sucking machine that is called work. 

It was, however, a very poorly planned trip (i.e. we only decided on going for the Northwestern route instead of the Northeastern side the night when we arrived in Chiang Mai) and you'd get to see why through the post. 

Nevertheless, I managed to get a good fix of nature, adrenaline and misadventures. And here we go!

 ✧

DAY 0: Reaching Chiang Mai

The domestic flight from BKK to Chiang Mai was delayed for an hour without any explanation, and it had me irritated panning myself around the gate while the Thais were just super chilled, reading their papers and all. That's the defining moment that I realized that I have left Singapore and reached in Thailand, Land of Sabai Sabai. 

The Old City of Chiang Mai is very near to the airport. We chose to walk, but you can always get a tuk tuk from the airport at 60B each.There were a lot of bars and eateries still opened when we reached around 11pm, so dont worry about food. 

But it doesn't mean you should take your own sweet time to get to your guesthouse.

LESSON #1: Always tell your hosts your check in time +/- 2 hours and arrange for passing of keys especially if you are reaching at night. 

Otherwise, you could try:

1) Shouting "ANYBODY IN??" x10 outside the locked door

2) Forcing open the door and failing

3) Getting the host's number from the neighbour and failing to get through

4) Thinking about finding another accommodation but deciding not to cos you've already paid the deposit 

5) Explaining to the guest who happened to be returning back and asking her to let you in

6) Digging through the reception's desk and drawers to find your room key (Not Advisable)

7) Leaving a note explaining everything (but just briefly mentioned about the digging through their drawers part) to the hosts when they come back the next morning. 

Anyone who briefly knows my soul, knows that Somtham (Thai Green Papaya / Mango Salad) is my spirit animal. So it's a no-brainer to guess what is the first thing I bought. But there's also when I had my Lesson #2.

LESSON #2: Always make a small marking on your money, particularly the big notes.

Even up till now, I still think I've given the Somtham seller a 1000B note though he insisted that I only gave 100B. Even though there was indeed no 1000B note in his money basket, I still find it suspicious because I don't remember having any 100B note with me in the first place. I gave him the benefit of doubt my stupidity this round, but I went back that night and marked every single 1000B note I had. Nobody is gonna fool me twice.

DAY 1: Around Chiang Mai

The Old City of Chiang Mai is still dynamic place, where you literally see the old and new / East and West culture collides. Lot of temples, eateries and cafes to keep you occupy for a good half of the day. 

We rented a typical Thailand Honda scooter at 180B per day and officially became our trip. It would the be machine that would be responsible for our lives for the next 5 days. 

LESSON #3: Remember to haggle your bike rental price if you are renting for a few days. Check if insurance is covered. Take picture / video of the bike condition before leaving the shop. And most importantly, do not let them confuse you with the days of rental and the dates.

For example: If you are renting the bike from today to tomorrow, you should only be paying 1 day of rent. But if you were to count by dates, then you would have two days (ie. 30th Dec & 31st Dec). We didn't figure this out when we make the payment, so we technically paid for one extra day of rental. 

Rode up to Doi Suthep and visited the temple there. 

Saw this sign at the entrance and I just couldn't resist myself.

Note: Ignore the "Foreginer pay here" sign at the entrance, there are so many unguarded entrances around the temple once you walked beyond that point. 

There were many place of interest along the way, several other temples, palaces and waterfalls. We wanted to go to the peak, but it was F's third time riding a scooter in his life and the roads were more getting more difficult as we rode up. So we came to this viewpoint, played with some kid, and decided to head back down.

She talked to me SOOOOOO long in Thai and I thought she liked me so I was just kissing her and hugging her. Turned out that she was after my baht (I wanted to say butt -HAHA- but it's just such a bad pun) and after given her 20B, she wandered off heartlessly busy counting her earnings for the day. 

LESSON #4: No elaborately dressed Thai kid actually like to cuddle with you. Don't be naive and believe in love.

We then wandered off to a ticketed waterfall place. There were 4 or 5 waterfalls and a good half an hour trek. Would be nice if the weather was not too cold and you could have do some swimming in the waters. 

Got back to the city and went to check out the market. Cheap, delicious and weird (I am talking about beehive /bee larvae kind of weird) food guaranteed. 

There's a HUUUUUGE (you won't be able to finish everything in one night) night bazaar just outside of the Southern gate of the Old City. Don't miss it especially if you were there for the weekend. Food, drinks, interesting accessories, fantastic roadside massages etc. all in one. 

We walked into a temple and the lights suddenly went off halfway through my prayer for the Thai God's blessing. It turned out that they were conducting some ceremony for the Thai King's oncoming birthday.

LESSON #5: If you are a free-thinker, always make it a point to go to the local religious place and ask for the local god's blessing. Especially essential if riding on mountainous roads was gonna be involved.

DAY 2: Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son (Call us mad)

DAY 2 is the EPIC DAY  to be remembered of my N.Thailand Trip.

Not because that it was fun or exciting, 

BUT BECAUSE IT WAS A FREAKING PILGRIM

Let me first introduce you the "Switzerland of Asia - MAE HONG SON LOOP"

source

The Mae Hon Son Loop is a comprehensive way to discover one of Thailand's most authentic provinces. For those wanting to get out of the tourist scene in Chiang Mai, and experience authentic northern Thai & Shan minority culture, the Mae Hong Son Loop is the perfect antidote. Mae Hong Son is the most mountainous province in Thailand and receives few visitors due to its relatively remote location and time needed to reach it.

The loop is approximately 600km long and needs a minimum of 4 days to complete, this excludes time for sightseeing and activities along the way, so adding on an extra few days for this is recommended. The Mae Hong Son Loop is a circular route which starts from Chiang Mai and takes you through the Mae Hong Son province ending back up at Chiang Mai. The Mae Hong Son Loop can be taken clockwise (Chiang Mai-Mae Sariang-Mae Hong Son-Pai-Chiang Mai) or anti-clockwise (Chiang Mai- Pai- Mae Hong Son- Mae Sariang- Chiang Mai). Source: Wikitravel

Our plan was to get to Mae Hong Son and come back from through Pang Mapha and Pai because (1) we didnt have enough time to complete the whole MHS loop; (2) we wanted to clear the longest leg (Chiang Mai to MHS) in the earlier part of the trip.

Source

Source

I apparently didn't read the Wikitravel guide carefully cos I dont remember reading about distance and casually told F that Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son should be around 30+km. And apparently I seemed really trustworthy cos F took my word for it.

It turned out to be a freaking 255km.

And our butts basically got killed from the 10-hour ride. 

To add to the ordeal, I ALSO missed out the"most mountainous" part.

Good job me. 

source

JUST. LOOK. AT. THIS MADNESS.

 The road was turning like intestines like that for a good 3/4 of the journey, and the uphill and downhill certainly did not make it any easier. In fact, the 1095 route from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son is infamous for its 1864 turns. 

And to make F the scooter newbie to drive on this kind of roads for 10 hours with me and another 3 big bags was just MAD MAD MAD!! I have no idea how we even managed to survive and finish the journey. Must be due to Lesson #5 (see above).

LESSON #6: Always find out how far the journey is before embarking on it. Also, never trust me with numbers (e.g. dates/distance/money). 

Suddenly found ourselves at the end of a military cannon halfway out of Chiang Mai. I like unexpected road condition like this hahah.

Once we were out of the city, the scenery was fantastic.

Sometimes when you think life couldn't get any worse, it would. Just to prove a point.

Our tyre BURST halfway down a hill and we just glided our way to the nearest shop, which miraculously appeared not far away on an otherwise civilization-less road. A helpful local told us to find the mechanics shop 1km down the road and offered to pump up our tyre so that we could ride it for another 5 minutes. 

I got so overwhelmed and tired of my heart being in my throat for hours and hours of horrendous mountain roads and its non-stop turning, that a burst tyre was the last straw on my mental stability. I wandered off to take photos of nonchalant sleeping dogs as F stayed with the bike.  

LESSON #7: Sometimes life sucks. You should try to deal with it until you couldn't anymore. Then just ignore it. 

The pumped tyre didn't last us a minute. So we had to push the bike down to find the shop. When we reached the shop, the person kept pointing to the school down the road and asked us to go in. We were super hesitant and reluctant, cos WE ARE TRYING TO GET OUR BIKE FIXED BEFORE THE SUN SETS YO! AIN'T NOBADY HAS TIME FOR SOME STUDYING RIGHT NOW. 

But what else could we do? 

After some finding around the empty school and exaggerated sign language, we finally found the legendary mechanic, who was so shocked by how damaged our tyre tubing was that he just kept shaking his head. 

And it's time to hit the road again. This time, we really had to rush because sun was setting down fast and there was no street light on the mountains.

This sunset shot was taken so half-halfheartedly. All that was on our mind was to get to Mae Hong Son asap.

The following journey was double the intensity of the half prior to it. It was pitch dark, the uphill/downhill didn't stop, neither did the turns. We didn't even dare to lose focus for one second (thus the lack of pictures and videos) and rode in complete silence. I tumbled off the bike and rolled into the grass at one point, but also saw the most amazing starry skies I've ever seen in my life. It was a perfect moment mixed with awe and adrenaline.

LESSON #8: When you find yourself at a life-and-death situation, have faith and focus.

This was my state when we finally finally reached our place in Mae Hong Son. No words could describe the wave of relief I felt at that moment. 

I promise things would get better from here. 

See Part II.

He’s a boy, and I’m just a girl

 ✧

In the past 23 years, my life events had been a series of random happenings, fleeting memories, hasty outbursts and sudden mishaps – all of which my participation could only be described as half-hearted at the best.

But things have changed – drastically – this year, because of this one incredible human that came into my life. And right because of him, I feel like I have only begun to understand life right now and I can’t never thank him enough for that.

He is Q, which to me it just seems like the most beautiful alphabet ever.

As boring as it could ever be, we were classmates in college. “Can’t believe we actually have to start our stories in the most uncool manner possible – ‘we were classmates!'”, it is still something we joke about up till today. But we definitely didn't start off smoothly. 

Time had put up 4-year long test for us, as we were made to remain unclose and unlove, distracted and drained by people who weren’t made to stay. There were brief moments where our souls met and looked into each other – the memories of them stay unbelievably magical even until now – but we were too scared to acknowledge them and give the feelings a name. Because it seemed like time was telling us no, people were telling us no, society was telling us no; so in the end, we too told ourselves no.

‘No’ was all that we could hear, but what exactly are we saying ‘no’ to? We didn’t know back then, all we knew was that if we ever say yes, it would be the start of a complete whole new dimension of life and the idea of it was just way too daunting for us to even think about.

That’s the first lesson he taught me of love – that it is the ONLY one single thing that can ever be meaningful throughout the whole of our lives, and even though we can recognise it by a single moment, it takes immense amount of courage to embark on it. And sometimes, we got scared.

But life always loves to surprise.

Circumstances unfolded themselves in a way that neither of us had planned to, and suddenly, it felt like we could say yes. But still, for long while after that knowing, both of us hesitated. It was a long period of mutual and self-doubt, where we ignored our hearts and succumbed to the noises in our heads. There were nights after nights where I would lie wide awake, heart racing furiously at the memories of his words, the look in his eyes, my hair where his scent lingered and the temperature of his touch. I have a reputation for sleeping just about anywhere and anytime, so you could imagine the sheer intensity of thoughts that have to be present in order to keep me up that awake throughout the night.

Sometimes, my heart was so weighed down by the thoughts of him and pumping so angrily in my chest that I had to take a few deep breaths to calm it down. I remembered thinking, "If muscles have a finite extent of usage and would eventually stop working from years of accumulated wear and tear, then I am literally killing myself faster right now by missing him so tragically hard and sending my heart muscles to a non-stop HITT workout". Yet, there was nothing I could do but to miss him, rejoicing over any little happiness we had and then getting stuck in the imaginary doom that we won’t ever work out.

It was a months-long torment that I had with myself, which I am sure he had it himself too. But on hindsight, that’s when I understood yet another lesson about love – that it is indeed bittersweet, that it really has the capability of swinging one back and forth the spectrum unannounced, propelling you to a state of overpowering happiness at one moment and leaving you wading in absolute despair the next.  

“How could this possibly not be love? What else could make me feel this much if not love?”, I asked myself this over and over again whenever the noises inside my head started to sound. Time didn’t give us the luxury to toil in our own hesitation, it slipped away mercilessly as I swung between retreating back to my comfort zone and taking that leap of faith. Soon, we found ourselves standing at a point where we both realised that this would be the last chance that we would ever ever have for each other and for ourselves, that's when we finally, finally, jumped in.

And that’s the start of our stories.

✦

p.s. Pardon me that for a long time from now, this space will be filled with many sentimental posts like this. I am having the love of my life, it’s so incredibly beautiful that it is really important for me to pen it down. Thank you for witnessing it with me. 

p.p.s. And on another note, today is the day that I listed him as my 'Emergency Contact' and I felt that it was SUCH a remarkable milestone in our relationship. So I texted him to exclaim "our" new achievement, hoping to trigger a string of emotional declaration of love and celebratory mood. Instead, he  stayed online certainly long enough to read my texts but then went offline without replying. Wellllllllllllllllllllllllll, I suppose this clearly tells you who is more excited for this relationship yea?