Life Behind The Thunderdome: 03/27/13

On top of the first climb, between Chiang Klam and Song Kwae on a minor road (nr. 1097). We hadn't at all expected an uphill like that, but guess it made "the wall" much easier going the following day.

Same same as above. The little yellow dot on the road is Stine.

Small Hmong village we passed on top of the crest, stopped for a deep fried banana snack and some small talk with the locals.

Second climb of the day, just outside Song Kwae, was fairly easy compared to the one we faced earlier on.

The downhill we are about to enjoy, leads down to Ban Pha Lak.

Ban Pha Lak is a nice village located in a valley at the feet of a mountain.
It's kind of a surreal scenery up there, a chunk of flat land with some limestone hills in the middle (reminding a lot of southern Thailand) all of it surrounded by some strange shaped mountains in the background. It was amazing to ride through!
We knew we would not find accommodation or a police station there, so we aimed for the hospital which was a couple of kilometres out of town.
A teacher from the village attended us and showed us around the place that looked completely abandoned. Of course in such small towns, the rumours spread fast, so once our welcome guide left, two more people came by and felt like sorting us out, better than the person before: the first one, a man on a scooter, showed us the toilets all over again, opened the kitchen and told us to help ourselves with water from the fridge. He also offered us a room inside the hospital, but we turned the offer down not to be too demanding.
The third visitor, topping up, was a woman working as a massage therapist at the hospital. She told us to pack up our tent quickly, cause there was no way we where gonna sleep under a roof at the open air, a storm was coming and the temperature was gonna drop to 20 degrees - so cold!! She quickly opened up her massage workshop and sorted us out in there, we had water, toilet, beds and even couches and table to turn our evening into a really comfy experience! What to say..those Thai, they did it again!
The room was filled with big insects, but the mosquitoes, as usual where the only annoying ones, so we ended up using the tent anyway.
For some reason, nights during a bicycle trip just fly by, so after what seemed like 4 hours of sleep, but really it was 10,we where awake and ready to go.

The valley where Ban Pha Lak is located.

We drove a bit around "town", well actually it was little more than one road, but you get the idea.

Our mansion for the night.

Tent is up, shower done and food consumed: time for an episode of The Wire in our new living room.

Mikis new best friend, among with the big Huntsman-spider that was living in the kitchen!

This morning we had to face the range, which we referred to in the past days as "the wall".
"The wall" translated for everybody to understand, is a 8+6km climb to the top of the mountain: the first 8km was more like a warm up, something close to a hard European climb, would guess between 6 and 10% steepness.
The fun part where the remaining 6km, which shifted between 10 and 14%. There was no other way, we had to go up, though once on the top, we both thought perhaps we climbed harder ones on this trip.
The feeling of going up such hills is really confusing to me, because the challenge and concentration is swiped away by a laugh: it' s seriously disturbing looking at the road going up and makes me feel like i lost the feeling of tridimensional view. What i have in front of me is a road painted on a wall...It goes straight up!...I mean who designed it?...Don't they know about switchbacks to keep the percentage of the road low?...I really don't get it and i just have a laugh! It just goes straight up!
The rest of the day...Nothing to worry about, we rode along the crest of the mountain, had great views from both sides and finally made it to Chiang Kham, where we spent the night at a very nice horror hotel...

Early morning start, for once, packed and ready to go at 7.30, the fog is still hanging low and the temperature is noticeable cooler than during the day,making it very pleasant to ride.

On top of The Wall, don't get fooled, i just got back up on my bike after doing some very hard pushing..

Going down into the next valley.

Views from The Wall. The place makes you feel like you are surrounded by mountains and nothing else -crazy feeling.

Actually the funniest hill came the following day. It dropped us down to a stream, then up again; if a bridge had been built between the 2 hills, it would have been no more than 300 meters long, instead, we went down a hill, that gave me the feeling that the bicycle was tilting forward, hit a flat spot crossing a small stream (felt like going over a step) and up again, this time feeling like tilting backwards on something that looked like 16% steepness! Total length, about a kilometre.

Going north from Chiang Kham-Wiang Kaen. We couldn't find any journals on crazy guy on a bike about this bit, so didn't really know what to expect. Turned out to be one of the best rides on this trip, riding along the big mountain of Phu Chi Fa.

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Here it is, the craziest uphill we ever tried, hard to capture in a picture, but damn was it steep!! Luckily it was only about 2 km long and we could see the top all along, knowing that the madness would end soon.

We didn't make it to far this day about 70km, still a good average considering the mountains, at least now we where back along the Mekong river once again, which meant no more hills for a while!
2 days after Ban Pha Lak, crossing even more mountains, we found our self riding through flat farm land and a thick fog, that opened up later in the morning, so we could enjoy the great views of the river. Feeling like the worst was behind us, we took a relaxing day on the bikes, stopped for coffee at the chaotic border town of Chiang Khong and rode along the river, trying to avoid the busy main road as much as possible.
We spent the night in Chiang Seng an old city of the Siamese empire full of ruins and a laid back feeling to it.
We really liked it but the call for the city was stronger and after the night we proceeded to Chiang Rai, terrible mistake.

RUN!!! Khum Luang Hotel, don't get fooled by the nice picture, this was the worst (and only) dumb we ever stayed at! Not even worth the 5 euros we paid. It was so bad, that even a group of young Thai kids left the premises laughing when they saw the 10 euros bungalows..Lets just say, if you slept in a place where you were scared of weather the toilet would eat you while being a sleep, you probably been to the Khum Luang Hotel.