getusoutofhere.net (for the burmese refugees)

Words and Photographs By Ben Hopkins 

The rasping of my lungs resonates awkwardly with the high pitched tone of a trillion screeching insects as I pedal out of  Mae Hon Son and over the days highest climb. For someone who can't normally be bothered to organize a piss up in a brewery the logistics of organizing a tour of this length can take their toll before the journey begins. The bicycle has to be groomed to its virginal best; visas, vaccinations, maps, guide books, tools, cameras, toiletries, toothpicks and snot-rags and what seems a myriad of trivial details must be laid in place before I finally throw away my front door key and head out on the wide open road.

And at that moment it all makes sense.

'Climbing out of Mae Hon Son I'm tempted to join my dies in a mud bath.'

On my first nights stop I put up in a tiny bamboo hut ($3) overlooking a stream in the village of Soppong. Night time is my favorite time. Encased in a cocoon of mosquito netting I fling back an ice cool beer, chuckle at the hopeless mosquito's who stand no chance and finally fall onto my  back to out snore every creature in the valley.

The following day’s 50 kilometer ride would be a potter if it weren't for the fact that a 500 meter ascent laced with what seem like 500 hairpin bends sits midway between my breakfast table and supper.

Thankfully the Gods display a little mercy whilst having a good laugh at my suffering. A three wheeled tractor comes chugging alongside me as I'm struggling to hold 5km's per hour a few hundred meters into the climb. Grabbing an iron rail at the rear end of its trailer I'm left facing two growling dogs foaming at the mouth and spluttering bile in disgust at my presence. The little buggers will have to chew my knuckles to the bone before I let go of this one.

Descending into a pastoral valley I happen upon a town called Pai where I find a room with shower for only $4.

Over the past few years this small town with a population of around 3,000 has evolved from a sleepy haven of tranquility into a bustling mega store of tourist attractions. However, despite the fact that backpackers appear to out number the locals 3 to 1 the people in Pai somehow seem to retain their mild mannered charm.

In the towns market wizened Karen hill-tribe grandmas with dark turbans wrapped around their heads sell hand-embroidered crafts on the sidewalk. Teenage Lisu girls in their traditional vivid tunics and black trousers accessorized with frilly pink socks and plastic sandals use their motorcycles as shopping carts for the fresh produce sold by Shan and northern Thai curbside vendors. A robed and skull-capped young man peddles authentic chocolate croissants under a hand-lettered "Muslim Homemade" banner.

Guest houses, open air restaurants, second hand book shops, music venues, massage, tattoo, and beauty parlors squeeze themselves between numerous shops and centers offering courses in yoga, meditation, jungle survival skills, Thai cooking and kick boxing. The population is mostly Thai and Shan but there’s also a small Muslim community from the Yuan state of China. At around 5:15pm the sound of Muslim prayer blends with popular western music as the bars and restaurants begin to fill with travelers from all corners of the globe.

At dusk I stroll over to one of the mobile cocktail bars that sell nicely laced margaritas at $1 a cup. Three young women from England are flinging them back like there’s no tomorrow and raging on about a white water rafting cruise they’ve just returned from.

“Awesome, awesome,” one of them keeps repeating.

“Yeah, like, I was sort of holding on for my life when that guy, what’s his name, anyway, you know, sent the boat down the rapids.”

One more margarita and I’m off to the Trek Adventure Shop to book myself on a two day trip down the rapids.

‘The question every long distance cyclist must ask himself at some point.’

Thailand has three seasons; hot, hotter and hottest. Early June is pretty hot but it’s also the beginning of the rainy season. This accounts for why our water raft gets stuck in the silt as we   set out on a two day cruise penetrating the wild and lawless jungles of Mae Hon Son. Another reason we get stuck is because there are eight of us plus our luggage balanced on one rubber dinghy.

Every one on this boat which include three local guides, an Irish couple and two Canadian guys seem to be content to sit back and take in the marvel of nature surrounding us. Our guide Ray, the joker-man and his cohorts from a nearby village whom Ray introduces as Banana Man and Chili Man (don’t ask) keep us entertained with jokes about how foreigners have heads the size of cabbages and legs as hairy as monkeys. 

‘Into the heart of darkness.’

There are no rapids to speak of on the first day but the calm waters are a pleasure in themselves. The heat rises along with the sun while diamonds dance in the water and dragonflies the size of sparrows hover overhead.

Puffing away on a huge Burmese cigar Banana Man leans over and hands me over a plastic drinking bottle I assume to be water. One large gulp sends a bolt through my system and returns me to some place I thought I’d left behind.

As we approach our lunch stop Ray raves on about how we’re going to see some wild monkeys in the jungle, swinging from the trees. There are monkeys alright and they’re wild, wild with rage because they’re swinging from chains. Convenient for taking photo’s but when one of the Irish guys gets too close the monkey tears at his shirt, rips out a container of mosquito repellent and proceeds to drink it. Perhaps he thought it was moonshine but as we leave the scene all that’s left is the horrible sound of a monkey puking up and Banana Man making jokes about ‘farangs’ (westerners)  with heads the size of cabbages.

‘This monkey's gone to heaven.’

Night falls fast in the forest where our accommodation is a few bamboo poles hammered together and of course mosquito netting. The mosquitos in this region of North West Thailand are known to carry one of the most virulent strains of malaria in the world. Dangers hides in hidden places but when Ray produces a riffle looking like a relic from the American civil war, loads it with gunpowder and starts shooting bullets into the sky the danger of being mauled by wild animals or kidnapped by border insurgents disappears pretty quick.

Night time is mesmerizing in the jungle. Spike Milligan once wrote,

“There are holes in the sky where rain gets in. The holes are small, that’s why rain is thin.”

Tonight the holes in the sky are letting in the brilliant light from a thousand stars unimpeded by city lights and forming a dome overhead within which hundreds of glow worms are putting on a show for my benefit. Perhaps it’s the moonshine but I’m almost tempted to applaud as I doze off to sleep.

Mow (pronounced cow with an ‘m’) in Thai language means drunk. Mow is also the nickname of Banana Man’s moonshine supplier and he has his home in a jungle shack in the hills above our camp.

At breakfast and to the delight of Banana Man Mow appears from the jungle. It’d be difficult not to see him coming from a distance. With a body like a stick insect and a face like a dried up grape Mow marks his presence by cackling like a crow and swinging his hips like Mick Jagger. He’s already into his first bottle of moonshine for the day as he plonks himself down beside Banana Man.

In this remote spot there are no shops or even roads for miles which makes Banana Man Mow’s only contact with the outside world. Every week Banana Man will supply Mow with whatever he needs from town which isn’t much for a guy who lives off moonshine and fish in a hut with no electricity or running water.

Mow is one of those characters who sets people laughing just by being himself but his life is more tragedy than comedy. Living a day to day existence of isolation and hardship Mows fate is to remain put.  Twenty years ago he was married to a divorcee in Chiang Mai. One night he staggered home drunk and raped his wife’s daughter. Facing a long stretch in prison he disappeared into the forest, built himself a shack and has soaked his sad sodden soul in moonshine ever since.

‘Mow welcomes in the day with a cup of moonshine.’

Banana Man swaps tobacco for moonshine as we head on down the river.

Today we hit the rapids. The boat bounces over the tumbling water and it almost becomes dramatic, but not quite. To experience the real fast stuff it’s necessary to arrive late in the rainy season when the waters are a few meters higher. I’m not sure the moonshine would be wise at such a time but then I’m not sure these guys would care all that much anyway.

In Thailand when accidents happen you alone take responsibility. On a recent trip to Kanchanaburi in western Thailand I met a furious American with 30% of the skin missing from his right leg and bandages holding his joints together.

“Those assholes; the God dam breaks didn’t work properly and there was no tread on the tires. And they want me to pay for the damage.”

He may well have been right. The motorbike he hired was probably well below the acceptable safety standards demanded in the west and if the same accident had occurred back home he’d probably be waiting on a huge check by now. But in Thailand if someone drowns because the captain of the boat was drunk then that’s considered bad luck rather than criminal negligence.

It’s late in the afternoon when we reach the final challenge of this tour, a ten meter high slab of rock jutting out from the river bank. The challenge isn’t to climb it but to jump off the top of it. My immediate instinct is to scramble to the top and jump. Then I pause to figure; “hang on. Here I am, weighing over 90 kilograms plummeting ten meters into a river that’s several meters below its highest tide.

So I nominate my Irish friend as a sort of crash test dummy. He’s half my weight and young enough to still have bones like rubber. Just as I’m about to suggest he should think twice it’s too late.

With a loud “Jesus” he hits the water at full pelt, disappears for no more than a second and immediately springs up again, as if his ankle were attached to a bunjy jump. When he crawls out of the water the soles of his feet and the palms of his hands are bruised, which means I was right. The water was too shallow and his limbs were made of rubber.

Banana Man just chuckles, lights another Burmese cigar and hands out the moonshine.

‘Banana Man.’

The following morning it’s difficult to say goodbye to Pai. Cycling to the edge of town I enter manicured fields of garlic and soybeans and teakwood houses set amongst burbling streams and cylindrical haystacks.

135 km’s to the south east lies Thailand’s second largest city and the capital of the north, Chiang Mai.

Getting to Chiang Mai with panniers weighing over 20kilograms is going to take some initiative. The road I take was carved out haphazardly and without proper planning by the Japanese during World War Two. In those days the journey from Pai to Chiang Mai took three to seven days by horseback or elephant. It’s also the same route taken by former Kuomintang soldiers and their families when they fled China after the communist takeover in 1949. In 1949 it was still a mud track but in the 1980’s the Thai government widened and paved the road. However, even today taking a private van over these passes can be hair-raising and slow.

Having previously cycled 50 kilometer climbs to heights of over 5,000 meters in the West Indian Himalayas I can honestly say I’ve never encountered gradients as steep as the ones I experienced here. The steepness of these passes eliminates the possibility of using huge lorries to transport goods. It also eliminates the possibility of me reaching the tops without once again grabbing hold of a slow moving vehicle.

On one hairpin bend I climb out of my saddle at 2km per hour, perform a wheel spin and come to a dead halt, leaving nothing but tire tracks in the melting tarmac. As the power seeps from my legs my anger rises while I look for someone to blame. The Japanese, they built the bloody road.

Taking shelter from the heat on a grassy patch beside the road a scene from Bridge on the River Kwai comes to mind. Colonel Nicholson played by Sir Alec Guinness is sitting at a table with Colonel Saito. The Japanese design for the bridge is laced with flaws and Colonel Nicholson refuses to continue work unless it’s redesigned by his men. The Bridge on the River Kwai is only a few hundred kilometers from here and was built under Japanese command at around the same time this road was cut into this mountain. If Colonel Nicholson had been in charge of the plans for this road then I’d be in Chiang Mai by now.

Two days later I eventually arrive in Chiang Mai but I’m not going to tell you how.

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