Northern Thailand

-
We had a wonderful and very adventurous time mountain biking in Northern Thailand.
We flew to Chiang Mai where we met our guide and drove to Chiang Dao which was the beginning of our cycling tour. We cycled along the golden triangle to Chiang Rai.
The roads were good but most of the time we were not on them. We cycled into the fields on torn dirt roads steep and filled with slippery rocks.

The dirt paths are hilly and we found the down hills to be just as challenging as the uphills.
Most of the paths are not maintained and suffered severe wash outs during the monsoon season that just ended.
Going down hill you cannot make much use of the breaks or you can flip over your mountain bike.
You have to navigate onto the better patches of dirt and keep on praying.
Our guide called it "A technical ride".

The Thai highlands are filled with rice paddies, garlic, peanuts and corn fields. We cycled through mango groves and banana plantations, got muddy and tired and happy.

We are back in New Zealand now with less than two weeks to stay until we come back to Colorado.

Popular posts from this blog

Days 44 & 45 - Hengchun To Taipei, And Rewarding Ourselves In The Hot Springs Town Of Beitou, The Long Walk South In Taiwan

-
Image
  Days 44 & 45 - Hengchun To Taipei, And Rewarding Ourselves In The Hot Springs Town Of Beitou, The Long Walk South In Taiwan   Last night, the Taiwan National Weather Service issued a typhoon warning and evacuation orders for the southeastern coast, exactly in the location where we were scheduled to walk. We decided to cancel the coastal walk, because the heritage trail was closed anyway, and instead head back to Taipei. But getting back to Taipei from our southeastern location would take some time. First we needed to get to the city of Hengchun, where we could take a three hour long bus to the city of Kaohsiung, and then take the high speed train to Taipei Station. The hiking group was in good spirits this morning, cooking breakfast and packing up their gear. We were all a bit disappointed that we didn’t get to hike the scenic route along the southeastern coast, but it was clear now that this typhoon was a massive one. News reports described it as a once in 30 years stor...
Read more