Bikes, Buses, Boats, Beaches and Beer, on a Budget - Noddy's (mis)Adventures in Asia

UMPHANG TO MAE SOT, THA SON YANG AND KUN YUAM - POSSIBLY THE BEST RIDE IN THAILAND!

Obviously we made our way back via the same route through and over the mountains to Mae Sot, but having made good time, decided to push on north towards Mae Hon Song up highway 105. We made it an extra 100km to the tiny town of Tha Son Yang and after some amazing food, and a couple of large Chang’s, checked into Thasonyang Hill Resort for 400bt a night.

Not much else to report here, we got moving late the next morning after nearly 300km on the bike from Umphang the day before to get here and tore up the highway, with no particular destination in mind.

This section, coupled with the previous day’s journey from Mae Sot proved to be possibly the best riding I have seen in Asia - not so much the scenery, though that was great when I could actually glance my attention away from the road for a second – no, it was simply one of the most beautiful roads I have had the pleasure of biking on.

Between the day and a half’s riding there was over 400km of absolutely brilliant road, with the most incredible corners you could hope to encounter, nearly all of them allowing you to take perfect lines without backing off the throttle in the slightest. One of the few places I have been where a big bike really would have been incredible - for true riding enthusiast’s, this may very well be one of the best rides you’ll do in Thailand.

Aside from one section in the middle about 30km long, the whole stretch was almost brand new, perfectly sealed, ultra wide lanes, very few blind hairpin corners and traffic almost unheard of. It was just so fun and fast (relative to what I was riding!) it was unbelievable, hitting these corners at 90km, just imagining what I could do through here on a real bike.

90km may not sound like much and it’s not, but when you are 2 up on a 125 cc scooter with 2 months worth of luggage on board, at 45 degrees around one perfect corner after another, barely having to use the brakes, it feels pretty awesome. I never wanted it to end and have finally found somewhere I might consider taking a real bike back to, I can’t stress enough how awesome this road was.

It was as if designed for a biker to ‘have at’ instead of being a practical transportation surface from point A – B, it was a case of every corner we hit being my new favourite.

We had river and mountain views the whole way, passing through various little villages that looked lost in time, and unlike the Mekong which, although nice, seems to keep it's muddy brown complexion year-round, the rivers here were crystal clear.

You guy’s are lucky I have to write this all down, considering I am essentially very lazy, if we were sitting around the bar having beers, I wouldn’t be able to shut up about how great this ride was, even on the scooter.

The 30km rough section though was shit, real shit – I even stopped to double check the GPS to make sure we hadn’t accidentally crossed over back into Myanmar, as this was reminisce of the ultra horrible roads all throughout their country. It took me over an hour to cover about 28km, the road so fucken rough, it shook the screws in my helmet loose and my visor fell off!!

But fear not, the road works crew are on it and doing a great job, a lot of the prep work has been done and they are most definitely going hard to get it finished, a lot of work happening as we went by. At a guess, it shouldn’t be more than a couple of months before the last section is done and the whole highway is complete.

We ended up stopping in Kun Yuam, about 66 km south of Mae Hong Son, after pulling over for iced coffee late in the afternoon and realizing there is a massive waterfall in the area, Mae Surin, around 30km away. If you read my blog you will know that I rarely miss a waterfall and this will be no exception, we decided to stay the night here and check it out tomorrow before making the short journey up to MHS.

We are at BanFarang Guesthouse, another 400bt room, but nice enough, proper hot water unlike the last few days and good wifi. After heading out around 7.30pm for dinner and realizing that the whole town had pretty much shut down, we grabbed some road side bbq and then hit 7/11 for beer and mixers on the way home.

Some waterfall between Mae Sot and Tha Son Yang, actually looked like a great spot to hang out at, especially with more water in the wet season. There were a few little huts and benches to relax at and i can picture lots of local Thai's coming here to eat and relax for the day.

This was at Mae Ngao National Park, a really, really nice spot with basically nobody around except a few workers and 2 ladies selling us our lunch of noodle soup for 70bt. Would seriously consider coming back and camping here, look how clear and clean that water is.