Today is the day where the route we taking is the one that initiate this trip: Highway 1095 to Mae Hon Son. We have been anticipating this day since the day we arrived in Thailand. Why this route, most might ask. Cos this highway consist a total of 1864 curves that pose great challenges even to veteran riders/drivers. Once these turns are conquered, a sticker indicating the completion of these curves is obtainable at the Mae Hon Son Tourist Office.
The route that inspired this trip
So we moved out from Chiang Mai Railway Station area and headed off to highway 1095 via Highway 107. After filling up our tanks and taking a short break (including taking Vitamin B pills), we start off with the ride of the day.
The "Miracle" Pills LOL
How will I describe the ride on Highway 1095? Exciting, Fun, Crazy, Balls-Dropping, Breathtaking, and more feelings that can't be described with just words. Try imagine negotiating 180deg corners with 45deg elevation angle with 1st gear, with the occasional vehicles going opposite direction eating into our lane at unsafe speed. That's the kind of close encounters we have at the beginning of the journey. Halfway to Pai (about 1/4 of distance to Mae Hon Son), we stopped by to take a break and also to take some shots as the scenery is simply beautiful.
Stopping By For Break and Photo Shooting
Nice Right?
We continued on and negotiate corners after corners, quite a challenge on our concentration and our wrists as well.. with me and AKG had to relak them during straights haha. After 2 hours plus of corner negotiating, we arrived on the outskirts of Pai where we stopped for refuel. The petrol kiosk happened to be situated on a very good spot where we took some excellent scenery shots.
At the Petrol Kiosk
Then we moved on to Pai where we take our lunch break to get more energy to carry on with the rest of the journey. At Pai, we have conquered 762 corners so there's 1102 more to go. In the town of Pai, while I was having my stomach full, I'm also having my eyes full as I see pretty Thai girls riding past us LOL.
The Town of Pai
Once we are done, we continued on and we stopped again at one of the high points along the highway to take some scenic shots again. When you see AKG's flickr photostream when he had uploaded them, you will know why we chose to stop and take photos. Nothing compares to being there to see the real deal, it IS SIMPLY BREATHTAKING!
You really have to be there to really "feel" the scenery
After this we continued on to the last part of the route to our final destination: Mae Hon Son. This part of the journey is not easy, not that the road condition is bad or traffic is heavy, it's the setting sun that blinded us on certain part of the route. The road after Pai had uber beautiful scenery and almost zero traffic, but when we are blinded, literally blinded, by the sun, we can't see shit ahead of us and we have to jam our brakes whenever that happen just to make sure we don't go off course or go off the edge of the road and down the mountain.
Before long, we finally saw a big structure saying "Welcome to Mae Hon Son, Thailand" and we knew we had made it! Once we reached the town, first thing we did is to locate the Tourism Authority Office so that we can go get our conquest stickers on the following day.
We are finally here!
We've checked in a reasonably priced hotel with good and free internet access and AKG suggested that since we had spent so many days travel around the country and now we had reached our inspired location, we should go into "tourist mode" and stay for another day just to tour around the area haha.
So tomorrow we will be riding around the area, visiting the caves and waterfalls on our bikes, without helmets as usual LOL.
1 comment:
Bravo!! So when taking me to the corners?
Post a Comment