Video currently uploading, it's time for a short report of the events.
This is a 3 days ride during rain season (end of rain season) 23rd-25th of September 2011. Alex "ThePoMoBro" and me decided to leave town for 3 days of riding. We didn't set a fixed plan but the idea was to ride west to the Wat Chan area (actually totally misspelled on the map, it's pronounced "wat djahn" like "temple Monday" in Thai). The second idea was to avoid as much road as possible.
So we left Santitam Friday around 11:30 for the 700yrs stadium and off road to Pong Yaeng then across the road to North Samoeng on the minor road / truck road.
Then we had some more large dusty roads until about 5pm when we started to climb up somewhere in the Samoeng Wildlife reserve. Around 6pm I stupidly slipped off the edge of the trail and the more I tried to get up the deeper I went down so it was towing time... We took the rope out and got the bike out in about 45minutes. Good exercise, first time we tried Alex's new 15m rope.
By the time we got the bike out it started to get dark and the trail was deteriorating faster than the sun went down. Very soon we were in the pitch black forest on trails that we couldn't even walk on (as it was so slippery) and checking the gps we realized we still had a long way uphill. After taking our headlamps out and a lot of sweat we got up, then went down and finally got to a small village. The question came do we want to stay here overnight or cruise all the way to Wat Chan. We encountered a bunch of guys drinking whiskey outside and asked them the condition of the trail to Wat Chan. They said it's okay no problem with our bikes, probably less than an hour. So we decided to ride another hour in the pitch black, but this time on a large dust truck road with loads of land slides...
We managed to get to Wat Chan by 9pm and found one small food place. We asked them about a place to stay and the guy called a resort 5 km further on the road to wait for us on the road as it was difficult to find (just a wooden sign saying Pine forest Royal Project in thai on the road). We made it to our little house around 9:30-10pm.
In the morning we left around 11am after some rice soup and a bill of 400baht for room and breakfast. As we didn't have any plans we had now 2 options, go south all the way to Mae Chaem or, as Alex suggested, go mapping new trails in that big green area between Pai and MHS. We opted for the 2nd option and off we went on the track from Wat Chan to MHS. Half way through we stopped at a village and asked a hunter (who need a translator Thai-Karen) if there were trails that went across the forest. He said there is a small single track that will get you close. So we decided to give it a go. We easily found the trail and checked the gps, not a single track near by
good feeling to be the first to get on a new single track. Over confident Alex slipped out of the trail and there was a second chance to test his new rope (no so much new anymore).
On the road we saw this kind of weird religious thing... chicken heads and legs hanging...
Talking religion, we found this church and asked a villager if this was tai yai but he said no it's karen (karen alphabet looks very similar to the burmese):
After a while on this track we got to a village without electricity and restaurant, so we didn't stop and just went through it following some muddy agricultural track. After about 20km on that track we were pretty close to the Mae Nam Pai (Pai river) but it was 4:30pm and we were more than over half of the fuel tank. We had to take a decision and we wisely (for once) decided to trace back and take another trail along the river all the way to Pai.
We had a nice fast ride to Pai and got there by about 6:30, had some food (loads of food, as we didn't stop to eat all day), a massage then bedtime... Too tired to go out and Pai sucks anyways, won't list the reasons here...
Sunday morning we had to adjust the chains as they were very loose, clean the bikes a bit and off we went, nothing special for Sunday, just the classic off road trail from top of the first hill down south. Lot of wet sand on the trail, but nothing causing any trouble except our mechanical issues. Alex's kick start was badly fucked up and I got sand or some crap in my front brake that made it very sticky and didn't react as it should.
So half way we decided to connect east to Pa Pae and take the road home. This was the only section of big road we did and would have avoided it we hadn't those mechanical issues.
Pictures taken by Alex.
