Adventures in the Rain

What unfolded today was one of the more unique experiences of my life. We set out for Mae Hong Son around 1pm scheduled to arrive around 4pm. We didn't make it until 6:30pm. Here's what happened...

The first 30 minutes of the ride we had clear sunny skies. Then out of nowhere, a torrential down pour moves in. I have never seen rain like this. We pulled out bikes under a Boddhi Tree, unhooked all our gear, and ran to a small shack off the side of the road to keep dry. This shack sucked! After a few minutes we realized we are getting just as wet under the shack as we would outside in direct rain fall. So we ended up finding a deserted, shut down fire station further up the road where we could finally keep dry.

After an hour of waiting we made our way back out onto the wet snaking roads. About 30 minutes in, both our bodies and all our gear were soaked though. Aside from being wet, cold, and at this rate hours away from our destination, we had no idea of two major obstacles ahead of us.

The first was a flooded road with water up to 2 1/2 ft deep. We trudged though the thick, muddy water on our bikes with our feet and shins completely submerged. The next was just up the road where a massive land slide knocked several trees, big rocks, and tons of mud onto the road. Keep in mind its still dumping rain, and now harder than before! We park our bikes and I made my way over to the site to help break up the mess and clear the road. Richy watched.... After, I was making my way back up the hill towards Richy and the bikes, and another landslide begins just 30ft beside me. This one was carrying mud, rocks, and lots of bamboo. For a brief second I thought, "So this is how my trip ends," but then bamboo gets caught and jams the rest of the slide just before wrecking the road. Once a small space was cleared, we kept moving in search of another shack to keep dry.

It turns out we weren't the only ones with this notion. We came to a small, deserted hillside market shack where there were several other bikers and few village people. As we sat and waited, waves of local villagers emerged from the forest. Dozens of them! The men were all armed with machete's and other blades while carrying 10ft to 15ft bamboo stalks, and the women all carried kids and huge bags of produce on their backs. These were some hardcore villagers! Some stopped to talk with us and others smiled and kept moving on to their village. Once the rain stopped, we rode for about 1 1/2 hours on slick, wet, winding roads.

And just to top it all off, when we got to our guest house, the entire city had a black out for the next hour.

So that sums up my adventure in the rain. Hopefully our ride back to Pai tomorrow is very, VERY different.