North of Chiang Mai up towards the Burmese border there are a series of valleys with a bunch of villages – some small and a handful bordering on what we might call a town.  There is a road that winds through the valleys and connects them all back to the main highways north and south of Chiang Mai, and the guide books often refer to this as the Mae Hong Son Loop.

The road loops through the little villages and most travelers will break the trip into a few places, stopping in the villages of Pai, and Mae Hong Son, and if you want to allocate the extra time you can add in any number of places along the way.  Our rough outline has us going to Pai, Soppong, Mae Hong Son, Mae Sariang, and then back to Chiang Mai.

Once you know what you want to do, then the next step is to figure out the transportation. You could ride the local bus (AKA the chicken bus), and there are minivans going constantly between the main points (Pai, Mae Hong Son, Chiang Mai) but we want to be able to take our time and stop along the way at points we find interesting, so we have decided to rent a car and drive. This is actually a bit of a big deal for us as we have never driven here in Thailand before. Some of the traffic can look a little hectic, and they drive on the wrong side of the road, so that will all take some getting used to.

Tee has hooked us up with a Toyota Avenza for the next few days, and it is time for me to try my skills at driving on the left! I was a little worried about getting out of the city because this is where all the crazy traffic is, but all goes well and it is on to the highway to Pai.

Pai is a small town / village in the north that historically been quite popular with backpackers and hippies.  The lore is that the lax attitude to the ganja is what attracts them here, and the vibrant night life makes this an ideal stop on the Banana Pancake Trail. Coupled with that, a recent Chinese movie had some scenes shot here, and the town has now also become popular with the Chinese tourist, so Chinese mainlanders and hippies – makes for quite a mix!

The highway takes a very windy route through the mountains, crossing valleys, and snaking up and down the sides of ridges for most of the approximate 130 kilometers. The highway boats of having 762 curves and that along with things like potholes and livestock (ie cows!) in the road turns what should be an easy hour and a half drive into a 3 hour action ride.

The scenery holds up it’s end of the bargain though and there are amazing views everywhere along the road that on a map can often look like a plate of tossed noodles! The trip is otherwise uneventful, and by the time we arrive in Pai I am feeling fairly comfortable with this whole driving on the wrong side of the car business.

We are staying at a nice little boutique resort just outside of the city that is located in the middle of a number of rice fields. The setting is very tranquil, and before the first night is even over, there is talk of us maybe staying here for an extra night.

After a short 10 minute walk into the city we have a wander through the streets to see what the food offerings are like, and to see the young backpackers with their dreadlocks starting to fill up the pubs for the evening. After a nice relaxing dinner we walk through the street market for a bit of dessert before heading back to our room in the oasis for the night.

We have been out walking around the old city a bit and for the most part things are the same as last year here in Chiang Mai.  A few of the shops have changed – a restaurant or two have new names, a massage shop has closed and two new ones have opened, but pretty typical of what would go on from year to year.  There is not much sign of anything different as a result of the change in political power aside from the occasional sighting of an army officer and more frequent patrols from the local police (who are now reporting through to the military government).

Other changes are more noticeable to us – our friends Tee and Ian will be moving out to their place in Mae Rim at some point, and as we found out some people change jobs.  Our friend Riam who we have used as a driver / tour guide ever since we first came to Chiang Mai with the kids, and who we have recommended to a number of people, had a bit of a surprise for us this year when we called her.

Being in the tourism industry can be difficult anywhere, but in Thailand the typical feast (high season) and famine (low season) cycle adds it is own challenges, and then when you couple that with political instability some people just stop coming.  The result is that for some the ability to make enough cash during the high season is just not enough to last out the low season.  Almost every year that we have been here Riam has been telling us that low season in particular has been getting more and more difficult to get any reasonable amount of customers, and this year has been the worst – she told us she had not had a customer since Laurie’s sister was here at the end of February! A few months ago she decided to put her tourism job on the back burner and took all her savings to start a small brick factory on her land out in Mae Rim.  Which leads us to today’s adventure…

When we called Riam to schedule a day trip she told us she does not do that anymore, that she was working in her factory.  She still wanted to get together and offered to take us around on the weekend, so when she arrived and we talked about where we wanted to go, I of course wanted to see the factory.

Most of the people here work very hard, often 6-7 days a week with little or no vacation time, but some are really trying to get above the base working class and create some opportunity for themselves.  Riam is one of those people. Some time ago when things were going very well they bought a small piece of land outside the city to have some fruit trees and just some extra space – I would say it is probably an acre or 1.5 acres.  When the tourism went into it’s big dip her and her husband decided to get a small business loan and buy some equipment to manufacture bricks.  They have a small staff of Burmese workers who work along side them as they produce about 1500 bricks per day that they sell to local suppliers.  After some initial startup bugs, they have a pretty good system going now and are currently selling their bricks almost as fast as they make them. They still work 6 days a week, but if they continue to ramp up production and get the process refined they hope to be able to be able to let the staff take over more, and Riam says she would maybe be able to return to the tour business if things start to recover there.

It was interesting to see the ‘factory’ – which is really mostly manual labor with a bit of machinery for pressing the actual bricks – and to see what they have done with the land since the last time we were there.  Hopefully their hard work will pay off!

After visiting the brick-works we decided to go for a small hike at the Mae Sa waterfall.  It turns out that their land is about a 5 minute walk from the river and the base of the falls so rather than driving back out we are able to just walk over and then spend the next hour or so walking up to a few of the 12 tiers of falls that are there.

To round out the day we head down to Baan Tawai, an area south of the city where there are lots of markets for wooden goods – furniture, carvings, artwork. etc. Unfortunately it is Sunday so none of the actual woodcarvers are working as it would have been interesting to see that.  Some of the work that they produce is incredibly intricate, and they have a ton of talent.

Tomorrow will likely be a bit of a slow, hang about day. We need to get some arrangements made for our next adventure which will be a trip to the north west corner of Thailand on the Mae Hong Son loop.