Motorbiking Pai: Sunrise to Sunset

On my last full day in Pai, Kait and Judith and I decided to catch the sunrise, so we were up and out at 5:30 a.m. We headed south on the main road, then turned west on the country road that led to the waterfall, where we had seen an abandoned bamboo platform the day before.

These bamboo shelters are all over Thai farmland. This one turned out to be a bit more permanent, with an outhouse and a water keeper. But it was clearly deserted.

We sat there listening to the birds wake and call to each other and watched the sky lighten over the mountains until the sun appeared out of the clouds, glowing orange. 

It was gorgeous.

Then we got on our bikes to find some coffee. But on the way back we passed this sign, which we had seen the day before.

And we were intrigued. ("What the hell is a landcrack?" "It's the fruit- it's so good it's like crack." "Try our fresh red sorrel juice- it's highly addictive!" etc) So we wandered across the road to a farm where the farmer makes red sorrel juice (?) from young tamarinds:

It was delicious, actually. Very sweet, but really good. It would make a mean sangria. He and his wife also brought us fresh fruit from their garden, including bananas, potatoes, peanuts, two kinds of mango, tamarinds, papaya, and even a little bottle of sweet sorrel wine, which we killed, even though it was about half past seven in the morning.

This was barely half of it. 

He also found this beautiful caterpillar and brought it over to amuse us:

And held his massive, majestic, evil-looking rooster. He offered to let us hold it for a photo op, but none of us took him up on it seeing as it looked like the devil incarnate.

But still, what the hell is a landcrack? We wandered up the hill to find out.

Turns out it's a fault.

See that wood in the lower left corner? That's a railing. Take note, Pai Canyon. 

This guy's backyard first split in 2008 and again in 2009 and 2011. He can no longer farm because of it, so he makes a living from the garden and the land crack as a tourist attraction. He seems to be doing OK at at; when we came back along the road later that day to go to the waterfall again the place was full of people drinking his fresh red sorrel juice.

We left him a healthy donation and went to get a cup of coffee at the coffee shop with the flowers growing on the roof- I posted a photo of it last time. It's called Coffee in Love, which makes no sense and is so, so Thai.

Here's Judith sitting on the deck looking pensive and pretending she hasn't just eaten a piece of blueberry cheesecake at 8 in the morning.

After that, we went home for a nap. The owners of our guesthouse asked where we went so early. They must have thought we were nuts- we either left our bungalows at 2 in the afternoon (after my birthday) or 5:30 in the morning.

We went back out that afternoon for a swim in the waterfall, and then Kait decided she wanted to go to the bat cave about an hour away from town towards Mae Hong Son. She had heard from someone that the bats all leave the cave in a rush at nightfall (which I actually saw in Kao Yai National Park, and it was fabulous, but I haven't gotten to writing about that yet...), so we headed out at about 5.

The road was fantastic- just as winding and sinuous as the one into town from Chiang Mai. It was a lot of fun on a motorbike. (Sorry Mom.)

 And the scenery was beautiful.

But it took us a long time to get there, because of the hairpin curves and such. We saw the sun setting from the tops of the mountains.

And when we finally got to the cave, it was pretty much dark. And it turned out that we were almost two hours late for the bat exodus. So we turned around and headed back. In absolute darkness. On one of the most infamously winding roads in Thailand.

And that's how I learned to drive a motorbike in the dark.

(Again, sorry Mom.)