Towards Chiang Rai

After a few days of not writing, I always need to dig into my memory to remember what happened since my last post... We were in Ban Sa Iap, and left early because our plan was to ride almost 90km that day. It was a nice route, hilly but certainly feasible. However: there were no coffee shops on our way for the entire morning! What!? How could that happen!? Never mind though, we still have our nice Helinox chairs with us, and so this time we took a break at a nice spot in the fields, with water and cookies. During the break, we had a first thought of making it a shorter day, rather than the planned 90km. And then, as it always goes: just a short bit after our break, we found a nice coffee shop! So, yes, couldn't resist and stopped for that cup of black pleasure. We then more or less decided to shorten the ride for the day. On the one hand we felt like keeping it a bit shorter, and on the other hand we had found a nice place to stay. So we continued to Pong, our destination for the day. First, after arrival in Pong, we had lunch - a nice riverside lunch, at a small and simple restaurant with delicious food. Then we cycled to the chosen resort - which was FULL! (we have encountered this now several times on this trip, while we had almost never had that before). OK, the resort also had a coffee shop, so we considered our options over another cup of coffee. Just another 5km down the road we found another resort which looked nice. Yes, it was nice, there was a room, and it was in fact an even better location than the first choice. Hooray! The rest of the afternoon we took it easy. It had been another nice day on the road, we arrived quite early after "only" 66km, and had a relaxed afternoon. It is hard to describe the journey in words and even in pictures, it is the combination of scenery, temperature, road conditions, traffic, and the overall feeling that makes days like these nice.

Early morning departure from the Mountain Lodge

Rate this for cycling between 1 and 10!

Digging up our Helinox chairs for a mid morning break, we hadn't used these for a while

To then, not much later, stumble upon a nice coffee shop and stop again

Thai scenery

And more of that, it's so gorgeous

Beautiful and delicious lunch

View from the restaurant

We stayed at Nong Porn resort just outside of Pong, a pleasant place and above all, with magnificent views

The Thai love their kitsch... (in case you don't see this in the photo, the flowers are all plastic)

Sunset view from the resort's rooftop

A cycling plan without changes can’t be a good plan. Our first plan was to ride from Phrae via Phayao. We then changed that, to go via Chun. But, once we were in Pong, we realized we could also go via Chiang Kham instead, which looked like an even better option with a similar distance. So we modified the plan again, and planned to cycle via Chiang Kham - only to improve the route again while on our way, so we could roll on some very small roads towards Thoeng. This way, we had another really wonderful day, with fantastic cycling on a beautiful and pleasant cycling route. The "downside" (if you can call it that), by going far away from the beaten trail: no coffee on the way… Or, in fact, just when accepting that there would be no coffee stop and we started looking for a nice spot for a break: surprise! Suddenly, out of the blue, there was this very nice place with fresh coffee!

Ready to cycle this kind of roads any time!

Or this - especially with the downhill coming up

Someone had built this very creative little resort in the middle of nowhere. Only in Thailand...!

And to stay in the theme of "creativity": a giant panda welcoming us for a coffee! (OK, we checked it, we were only 200km+ away from China at this point)

More good cycling, with a little papaya orchard on the left

The route was more or less flat, but with a few good climbs on the way. With our "mountain training" of the past few weeks, we just "flew" up these climbs. When we got to Chiang Kham, around lunch, we had high expectations. The place had been recommended to us by a few people, we were expecting a charming, cozy old town. It was a disappointment; except for a nice Wat, there was nothing much worth visiting in Chiang Kham. We just had a khai soi lunch, a coffee, and on we went. Destination: Thoeng; we saw on the map that there were options to avoid the 1021, which seemed like a much bigger road than expected. It was a great choice to go the alternate route, the scenery was beautiful, it was great cycling, by the end of the day we had some roadworks but even that didn't spoil the fun. Another great day on the saddle (80km), and another very nice guest house to stay - Teak Villa Guest House. At the guest house we met a French girl who was also tour cycling, just for 10 days, nevertheless she was so far only the 4th cyclist we have met - in 6 weeks time! The first 2, a German couple, we met literally on our first day. So, after that, in six weeks of cycling, 2 other cyclists... I guess it clearly means we took the road less travelled...

A colourful temple on arrival in Chiang Kham

With a magnificent tree on the temple grounds

Another attractive and well-known temple, a teak wood Burmese style temple (like the one in Phrae, in Chiang Kham

Roadworks, properly announced

So yes, roadworks; this was actually one of the better parts, some of it was full of potholes, muddy, or very dusty

Never mind, the scenery was still great

Market in Thoeng

At Teak Villa Guest House, very nice, comfortable, super friendly!

It's located at the riverside, and then this is what you get at sunset

The last day for of riding this post: to Chiang Rai! Who follows the blog, might remember that Chiang Rai would possibly be our final destination. Read on to know whether it is the case or not! It was an easy day, 57km, as usual we found a route avoiding the main roads. It was indeed very nice for cycling, however - and we knew - there was 1 major climb. I say we knew, however we did not realize how major that climb would be. We thought it was 3 km of 8-10% gradient, which is hard work but we've done that before. However, it was indeed 8-10% for a little while, but then went up to 16% on average, for well over a km! And if that wasn't heavy enough, it was not gradual: within the climb there were some more and even more steep sections. I estimate it went up to 18-20% climbing at some stretches. This is super heavy, definitely on a loaded tour bike (let's say it weighs about 30kg in total). I made it all the way up, but it was a fight, and I had to stop 2 times for a short breath. Ellen had to push her bicycle for quite a bit - which also is not easy at all. We made it, afterwards it was a great thing, but during the climb it was extremely tough! The frustrating part is, once you roll down, it only takes a few minutes and you're back down. You've worked so hard to get up there, and all it takes is a few minutes of fun fast cycling, and that's it - you're back down! Anyway, the effort came with a reward: nice coffee, nice lunch, nice everything afterwards! All in all, it was an easy 57km day, and by early afternoon we arrived at our Chiang Rai resort. After 6 weeks of good but relatively simple accommodation, we have treated ourselves to a few days (started with 2, became 3) at a beautiful riverside boutique resort!

Departure in the morning, heavy traffic on the other side

Start of the horrendous climb

This photo somewhat shows the slope of the climb - extreme!

A shrine at the top

Luckily Buddha was looking over us as we pushed and puffed our way up

After the climb, back to lazy and comfortable cycling

With this scenery for coffee

And this scenery for lunch

Arrival at our heaven for the next days!

Our stay in Chiang Rai has one simple goal: to enjoy without cycling! We had good food, even Italian dinner at our hotel, good coffees, good massage, swimming pool time, we also put in 2 runs, and went to visit a few places. It is so weird to be surrounded by foreigners again (farangs in Thai), we have seen very few farangs for the past 6 weeks, and now suddenly they are everywhere! It is also so much more touristy than what we have been used to. For example, yesterday we went to visit the Blue Temple - one of the landmark places to visit. Well... it is just a super touristy circus, the Wat is nice but it just disappears in the entire circus madness. Well, we'll get used to it again; it'll be like that (and worse) in Chiang Mai the next couple of weeks. But first, we have to get to Chiang Mai. Let's see how that goes...