I spent quite a bit of time in Chiang Mai, which was weird because I found it boring. It was the Pretoria of Thailand. One of the reasons I found it so boring, was that it seemed like the suburbs. It did not have any oomph. I guess if one had friends there it would be more interesting. I had done everything there, going to a waterfall, meeting Rainn Wilson at a night market, and excessively partying – there did not seem to be too much else to do.
One day, I woke up after a massive night of partying. Hungover, I remembered hearing about a national park nearby, Doi Inthanon national park. Being bored and not having anything else to do I decided to head there.
I hired a scooter and raced there heading up to what I thought was the main part of the national park… It is the highest mountain in the all of Thailand, and more than that was underwhelming. Sadly, at the cloudy mountaintop there was only a military base.
I messed around over there for a bit and then drove around the park with no plan.Whilst driving, I found a nice group of tourists that had taken a tour of the park. It was quite weird because they were asking if I had seen all of these cool waterfalls and pagodas etc. They were smoking crack. There was nothing that interesting here1. The day was not a complete waste though, there was a really pretty Israeli girl. We chatted a bit and while we got on well I did not get any of her details. I left and resigned myself to never seeing her again2.
Thinking why the hell did I pay so much to see a cloudy mountaintop. I drove back down. This was intense, 10/10 would not recommend. It had rained while I was preoccupied with chatting her up. Thus, the roads were slick and now it was getting dark. At this point, I was not experienced and did not know how to control my scooter in these conditions. The conditions were rough, it was getting dark, the roads were slick and worst of all I did not know how to brake properly. The one thing I did know was if I pressed the brakes too hard, I would start to slide. This was also not very helpful as the roads were super windy. Let’s just say things were a bit dire, and there may have been yellow, white and brown lines heading down the mountain that day.
Looking back at I can laugh but that day while heading down the mountain, the speedometer did not go below 40 km/hr. Against all the odds, I made it to the bottom safe and sound and perhaps a bit lighter. I had successfully pushed my boundaries. It was the first of many times and somehow, I always came out on top 🙂
Spoiler alert:
