Today we took a 50 baht paddled boat ride across the lake to Wat Tilok Aram, a Buddhist shrine and pilgrimage site on an islet in the middle of the lake. The days in the north are pretty hot but temperatures soon plummet when the sun drops which was a good time to visit Phayao’s night market, the best one so far.
Phayao was the best town out of the four for me, it had a relaxed vibe but enough going on and a fantastic lakefront. Uttaradit and Phrae were just two very uninspiring Thai towns but Nan had a good feel and plenty to see and do.
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Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson
After almost three weeks on the road, it was time to turn south for the 1,000-kilometer-plus drive back to Hua Hin. The worst stretch of road in both directions was between Nakhon Pathom and Petchaburi in terms of asshole driver density, road conditions, and traffic - everything north of NP was a breeze to drive. The biggest and most common road hazard was slow-moving vehicles hogging the passing lane, this happened everywhere and accidents were evident. Went through a fair few police roadblocks but was waved on every time.
All told it was a relatively cheap trip due to the low-cost camping and non-touristy food places. The total fuel bill was just under 6,000 baht for 2,500 kilometers all up. One of the largest expenses was drinking as we both enjoy a decent drop of wine when out in nature. Only in Thailand does a bottle of wine cost more than a meal for two and a night's accommodation and in some places it was very hard to come by!
It also highlighted the advantages of Hua Hin over other provincial Thai towns - there is so much variety and selection of food, drinks, and shopping here that other non-touristy places simply don’t have. However, you’ll pay a premium for that luxury and we found restaurants and eating out much cheaper in the non-touristy north.
We purposely avoided camping at weekends to stay away from the hi-sos and road warriors and it paid off, this I think applies to the whole of Thailand now: if you want peace and quiet, don't go anywhere at the weekends!
One clear disadvantage to life up there was the crop burning which is rife in the north with fires prevalent everywhere. You could count 10-12 large field fires pretty much every day, all day long in Phayao, Phrae, and Uttaradit. This results in brown smog at sunset and a layer of smoke shrouding the valleys in the mornings making visibility and air quality atrocious. It was less prevalent in the mountains where there is less agriculture and human activity but the amount of clearing was noticeable, every square meter of land is being slowly consumed. Despite all of its “talk”, the government is clearly doing nothing to tackle this problem, probably because most of the farms supply its biggest ‘donor’ and the country’s largest monopoly. Profit comes first in Thailand.
What was also evident was that after ten years of military government, there were brown “national park” signs absolutely everywhere, whether you were in, near, or miles away from the closest actual national park. This was presumably done in an effort to skinny more money out of the people or crackdown on 'sanuk' … we paid little attention to them and I was only tapped once for 100 THB ‘farang tax’ on the whole trip. We purposely avoided national parks for that reason … and all of their stupid rules, laws, and restrictions which would have killed any form of enjoyment from camping. None of the campsites had dual pricing and most charged 100 baht per head.
The next camping trip will be to the west, in the mountains of Tak, Lamphun, and Mae Hong Son, but we'll have to wait till after the hot season for that.
Who is the happier man, he who has braved the storm of life and lived or he who has stayed securely on shore and merely existed? - Hunter S Thompson
