Northern Thailand

Hi Everyone!

I've been in Northern Thailand for almost 1 month now and I'm leaving on a train to Bangkok tonight followed by another to Cambodia tomorrow. It has been an amazing time and a beautiful place to visit and cycle. I started my trip going directly to the city of Chiang Mai to spend some time with my girlfriend Kelly. She was living in Chiang Mai for a month training in Muay Thai (Thai Boxing). We spent 11 days seeing the sights and having a lot of fun. Here's some pics from our time together:

Kelly in front of a beautiful lake at the Night Safari...we saw all kinds of animals here including Rhinos, Giraffes, and Lions.

Here we are in our cool "zip-lining through the jungle gear"...awesome views and fun flying from tree to tree

This was Kelly's favorite day I think...We got to ride an elephant on a jungle tour followed by an elephant show where they painted a picture and performed a little dance.

Here are some paintings we saw at the Sunday Night Market while doing a little shopping

Bamboo raft ride :)

On July 11th Kelly headed home to surprise her family in Utah...i was sad I wouldn't see her for almost 3 months but the bike trip was something I had been planning to do for almost a year and a half and I knew I would regret it if I didn't do it while I was on this side of the world...I'm lucky to have such an understanding girlfriend.

Since I was already in Northern Thailand I elected to do a loop that would take me up to the Golden Triangle where the borders of Burma, Laos , and Thailand meet and then back down to Chiang Mai.

My first day on the road I got to see some elephants crossing the road near a training center...that's just cool to be riding your bike and all of a sudden you see some dudes riding elephants.

This is one of a few side roads I took that had no traffic and monster trees...Awesome :)

I checked out this Cave in Chiang Dao...I had not been caving in awhile so it was enjoyable crawling through some tight spaces and checking out the formations. Also there were some pretty cool buddha statues inside.


Here is my German cycling buddy Tobias that I met on the road. I'm not sure we would have met had I not had 3 flat tires in one day (turned out I had some cheap tubes from the Philippines...no problems since) ...usually that's not a good day of cycling but it was nice to run into Tobi and have a cycling buddy for 4 days. We found this restaurant where you could grill up all the meat you wanted for only 95baht (3 dollars)...the German definitely had his share of meat and I had about 5 plates of fried rice (still addicted after living in the Philippines). Good times.

You see a lot of Buddas and Wat's everywhere here. This was the coolest Buddha I think I saw on the trip. It was situated on mountain side outside of the town Tha Ton.

This a pic from my hardest day of biking on the road to Mae Salong...Maybe the steepest grade of roads I've ever seen in my life. Me and Tobi found ourselves having to take breaks just from walking and pushing our bikes. The route also made for some fun downhill rides but it became a little demoralizing going straight up and straight down over 3 mountains in only about a 25km stretch...felt good to take this picture and look back at the road we had climbed and we definitely deserved our lunch when we arrived in the town.

We took a rest day in Mae Salong and spent a lot of time drinking tea and eating Chinese food. It reminded me of my brief 6 weeks I spent in China three years ago. The town was settled by KMT refuges from China after the Communists won the war. It was really interesting talking with this tea shop owner who speaks English, Mandarin, Thai, and Burmese about the history of his family and the town...I think Mae Salong was maybe my favorite place I saw in Northern Thailand.

The day me and Tobi left Mae Salong we had some pretty heavy rain and more biking through the Mountains. This picture doesn't do justice to how amazing the views were riding along the ridge with the mist in the mountains.

Here is one of the cooler looking places I stayed at on the road near the Golden Triangle area.


I've really enjoyed the roads, people, and places but I think what I might miss most about Thailand is the food. My two favorite thai dishes are kao phat kai (fried rice with chicken...doesn't sound too exciting but it's always good) and pad thai (delcious noodles). Other favorites are the curry dishes and these fried dough things with banana inside called Rotee...DELISH! Me and Kelly also took a thai cooking class in Chiang Mai so hopefully we can recreate some of this goodness back home.

Here I am being a dork in front of Khun Kon Waterfall...the ride there was worth the 24km detour...this is shot is for Sherry :)

I'm leaving for Cambodia tonight. Looking forward to Ankor Wat followed by Laos and then Northern Vietnam. Its gonna be Rockin. Since I left my house in San Joaquin I've biked just over 1100km when you combine my ride around Panay and this loop through Northern Thailand. So far I'm really loving the whole experience of touring with a bike and I'm feeling myself getting in better shape day by day. If I have time I'll try to post another update further down the road. Take care Everyone!