| Mae Salong redux |
| Let me first just say that I apologize to anyone who was getting a little “nervous”as to our whereabouts. I know it has taken us too long to catch you all up on our latest movements but know that it was more to do with the technology at our disposal than the desire to do so. Hopefully we’ll make up for our lack of communication with a barrage of consecutives posts that will assure you that we are safe and having the time of our lives.
It’s been another eventful week, full of “learning”experiences. We are having a lot of those it seems!
Last you really heard from us, we were getting on a boat to travel down the Mekong (O.K, so as I write that I do realize why you guys might have been a tad worried) but we skipped over our whole motorbike journey so I thought I might fill that in a bit.
We first had grand plans to do a 4-5 day motorcycle tour through Northern Thailand but a spanner was thrown in the works when we couldn’t find an automatic bike anywhere in all of Chang Rai and so we were forced to rent a manual motorbike. Having once tried (unsuccessfully)to teach JB how drive a stickshift car, I had an inkling that this might be biting off a little more than we could chew but we didn’t hace a choice and besides, it couldn’t be THAT hard could it? Uhhhh.. The mountain roads that led to our first destination were the steepest we’d encountered so far (and we’d driven on steep roads) and would’ve been difficult for even the most experienced driver but for a beginner they were just laughable. Talk about hill starts! But, we persevered and made it to Mae Salong by mid-afternoon. As you can see, the countryside was beautiful and worth the drive.
 Mae Salong:
  Once we were settled, we set off on a hike up to a beautiful chedi perched on top of a mountain that overlooked the village.
We found out that the chedi was built specifically to house some of the King’s mother’s ashes when she dies; not a bad spot to be laid to rest.
  We were feverishly chasing the setting sun as we climbed up the mountain and as we reached the top, the sun had just begun to drop below the horizon.
  One of the main reasons we had wanted to go to Mae Salong was because we’d heard that we could do horse trekking through the mountains. Well, we learned that the word “horse”(along with words like “resort”, “spa” and “toilet”) are certainly used very loosely in Thailand because the animals that showed up the next day for our trek were what are also commonly known as “ponies”. We felt bad just getting on the little guys let alone going on an all day mountain trek. Not only that, but our poor guide didn’t have a “horse” and had to the lead us on foot the whole way. We wanted to cancel and just give the guy our money but we didn’t want to offend or confuse the guy so we went through with it. Well, we certainly gave the village some entertainment that day. It seems that everyone we passed that day was laughing at the big, dumb foreigners on the pokey little ponies. Heck, I don’t blame them. Finally, we felt so bad for the horses that we got off and walked them the last few kilometers home. I think that’s when we got the most looks.
 After that experience, we gladly jumped back on the motorbike and headed back to Chang Rai.
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