Look right

Now I know why all the cars in Burma have the steering wheel on the right even though they drive on the right.  They are acquiring used cars in Thailand where they do drive on the left.  I am now "on vacation" in Chiang Mai, a very pleasant city in northern Thailand.  There are, of course, several temples to see here (they call a temple a wat in Thailand), but mostly Chiang Mai is a center for outdoor activities:  elephant riding, visiting tigers, trekking to native villages, zip lining.  So I am enjoying my favorite outdoor activity:  sitting poolside in my resort hotel and reading books.  My main goal for the week is to not kill myself crossing the street.  So every time I step off a curb, I say out loud, "look right," like a toddler who has to narrate his activities.  Then I sneak a glance back to the left because I can't quite believe that everyone drives on the wrong side of the road.

On Tuesday I tore myself away from the pool long enough to take a bike ride to the sights of Chiang Mai.  I thought I should at least take one day to see the city and orient myself.  Again, my main goal was not to kill myself while riding on the left.  Thailand has more cars than the other places I have been in Southeast Asia, so it was a bit tricky.

My tour was with a company called Mountain Biking Chiang Mai.  It turns out that the tallest mountain in Thailand, over 7,500 feet, is outside of town.  This company drives everyone to the top, drops them off with their bikes, and picks up the pieces at the bottom.  So everyone is getting knee pads and helmets and gloves.  We ask what we need for the city tour and they say, try to stay awake.  Hmm ... even the company was not excited about my tour.  There were just two of us, a Dutch man and me, with the guide.  The Dutch man thought the tour included local villages and the guide was bored with temples, so after a few perfunctory stops at temples in town, we went off script and on a lovely ride outside of town to a lake.

It turns out that the guide, Jay, is a sponsored rider in biking events.  Last week there was a race up the mountain, and he won it, riding forty five kilometers with 6,500 feet of elevation gain in two and a half hours.  Interestingly, the race was not publicized outside of the biking world, so the bikers had to ride around cars and buses on the single road up the mountain.  Eventually, the cars and buses got stopped by the bike traffic and tourists who had gone up for the view got stuck in a jam for hours.  Just another day in Thailand.

Like my son, Steve, Jay trains before work every day and again after work, since the ride he took with us was hardly a workout for him.  Unlike my son, Steve, Jay has no discernible personality, so while the ride was lovely, there wasn't much guiding.  Jay is 28 and unmarried, in large part because, in his own words, his bike is his girlfriend.  She's probably talks as much as he does.  No complaints.  It was a nice ride in rolling countryside on a hot, sunny day to a lake.  We ate lunch at the lake in a restaurant where the tables are in individual cabanas on the water.  And I took my obligatory Claremonster Racing in Thailand picture in front of the Buddha for people who were born on a Monday (which I was).  I also realized that although I rode in both places, I forgot to take pictures of Claremonster Racing in Laos and Claremonster Racing in Myanmar.  I'm debating between going back and Photoshop.