Utterly Delightful

This is how decisions are made on vacation: the three of us (we are now officially three, as we have adopted Dani) got to breakfast having no idea what we were going to do today. Someone (me) said "I heard riding motorbikes through the mountains is a great way to see Chiang Mai." and everyone else said "Cool, let's do that today." We asked the guy at the hostel, he made a phone call and within 10 minutes we were driving down the street on scooters. And that was it.

The funny thing is that there is no questionnaire, there is no "have you ever driven a scooter before?", no legal forms or talk of insurance or liability and no one asks if you know how to drive on the left side of the road. And there certainly is no talk about if you have a driver's license or not (Dani doesn't, by the way). If you have the Baht, they give you the bike. And speaking of Baht, it cost us less than $7USD to rent the bikes for 24 hours. And that is apparently double what they cost in some other places.

So we set off with a destination in mind but without a map, zipping into traffic, zig-zagging through the streets trying to find our way out of the city. At the point where we got on the highway, it occurred to me just how monumentally stupid it really is that they do just hand over motorized vehicles to foreigners who have no idea what they're doing or where they're going.... but I wasn't going to complain.

Fortunately, the place we were looking for is pretty well marked so we were able to follow signs pretty easily for it. We got out of the city and hit the mountains and immediately the tranquility of it all started to hit us. There was green everywhere and the actual smell of fresh air. The roads up the mountain road are winding and lovely and it was so relaxing to ride through them with the fresh air on your face.

We made a few stops along the way at spots where the view was particularly nice, but we finally made it to our destination: Wat Doi Suthep, a temple situated on top of a mountain. It was a bit of a climb to get there but the view was totally worth it. I have to admit I'm getting to the point of "you've seen one temple, you've seen them all" but it was definitely worth the trip.

After that, we decided the rest of the day was going to be a 'go where the road takes you' kind of day. And we did. We would get to an intersection and look at each other and ask "right or left?", someone would randomly pick one and that is the way we went. We wound up and up the mountain, deeper and deeper in. Just being in the midst of the mountains, having the freedom of our own transportation and not being bound to anyone else's schedule and being able to go wherever we wanted, being surrounded by green, hearing birds chirp and smelling nature was enough for us. But, as a bonus, we also came upon the summer palace of the king and queen (which we poked around) as well as a small village of native Hmong people. So cool. And then, forced to start making our way back out by the approaching darkness (considering we were on dirt roads in the middle of nowhere with no streetlights, it seemed prudent), we just happened to notice a tiny little hut set into the side of the mountain. We got out just too look at it and then realized it was a coffee farm. Where they actually grow and package the coffee. Right there. We couldn't NOT buy it in such a setting... can you say "Christmas present"?

We came back to the hostel fully intending to just have dinner and then head back out to the night market (the scooters were paid for and so much fun, it seemed like shame to just let them sit) but we ended up talking to some other people here and found the hours slipping by. By the end of the night, we were about ten at a big table, talking, laughing, trading travel stories. Even better than the market.

It was an awesome day. Nothing spectacularly exciting, nothing spectacularly historic or monumental or educational. But full of the freedom of travel, the fun of meeting new people, the experience of doing something new, the knowledge that at this very moment in time I am exactly where I want to be and I'm doing exactly what I want to be doing. It doesn't get much better than that.