Part 1: around Chaing Mai
It all started with the worst-ever conceived flight connection that forced me to sleep 2 consecutive nights on the unforgiving floor of Doha and Bangkok airports respectively. I had to play the bad boy, when I seized that airline blanket, which helped me hit the floor and sleep like a baby. Thank God I am not a practising Christian. No sense of guilt. Fresh as a rose, I hit Bangkok town in the morning. And I already have lost count of the date. Good sign. Pity that then I also lost a lung breathing for 90 min in a local bus stuck at walking speed into proper Asian traffic (heavy fuels – hopeless drivers –endless variety of characters on the road – first world war vehicles driven at 21st century speeds). A feast of fine and not so fine particulate and aromatics compounds delivered right into your nostrils.
The story then involved some crazy experiences, dictated by my crooked taste for extreme backpacking. Disciplining myself to get up at dawn (a virtuous competition with the Sun himself – it was a draw in the end). Needless to say travelling alone (or better travelling with Yourself) is amazing. Pure freedom, right mindset, chance encounters, short and unfrequent showers :-). Even if sometimes I caught myself having internal quarrels, as when regretting having booked a domestic flight which locked me to a plan. Nevermind, this did not stop the crazy experiences coming. You just need to be nuts enough. There’s minimum threshold above which chance encounters start to happen and you feel blessed as if an invisible hand was moving you.
Why getting a collective taxi to the highest mountain in the region when you can cycle? With 2 Euros, I got myself the best bicycle ever fabricated and baptized myself “king of the road for a day” (maybe that was premature, as on the way up all those motorized mopeds taught me a lesson. My avenge was sweet but fast on the way down). Obviously ignoring all recommendations of starting my ascent before 8am, found myself midway along the steep hill at the hottest time in the day with no food in my stomach. Then the sugar crisis and the 5km left from the next sign of civilization. My eyes and my legs were suddenly failing me, but not my nerves and sinews. It was a near-mystic experience – an unconventional definition of fun, but I finally got to my lunch spot and devoured a bunch of bananas, made love with a fresh papaya –which was yielding like butter under the skillful carving operated by my faithful pocket knife. Remarkable. Human-motor was full again and ready to climb up to the very top of Doi Southep peak (including 2 km walking into a forest in which I was absolutely the only one. For a moment I managed to convince myself that those woods were infested by tigers and subsequently ended up into some philosophical thinking on how all the money in the world could have not saved me from an attack and I had to rely entirely on my knife. Not fun).Then the way back. Now try to imagine 20 km of scenic downhill and a nerd on a 3000$ bicycle with nothing to lose (except maybe his life). Yes, you need to imagine it, because I was so fast you could not see me. Moment of glory when overtaking a collective taxi (yes, they load people on open pickup trucks here in Thailand) around a very steep bend. The truck was packed with north-european ladies who got instantaneously wet. Not talking of perspiration.
The call of the Wild presented itself to me the next day, when, after meeting with a Russian fellow adventurer and quickly ruling out from our plan the hypothesis of organized tours, headed out towards the unknown riding mopeds at full speed. The scenic route that followed was as beautiful as it was empty..to the point that we were feeling even more privileged and wondering..where the hell is everybody? How come there’s nobody fed-up of looking at fucking wooden temples in Chaing Mai..nobody out here..maybe all those fucking tourists are stuck into organized shows. Yuppyyyy! Back to the big town in the evening’s peak hour and –alas- found where everybody was….Asian traffic will never cease to amaze me. In a bad way, of course.
But this was just an entrèe, compared to what I put myself into the following day.
(to be continued)