12-28-13 Local Misadventures

12-28-13 Our journey continued with us leaving Mae Sariang, but only for the day. On our itinerary were visits to different local villages. Little did we know, we would come across...

broken bridges,

Can we ford that?

(Think Oregon Trail)

barren, sandy/gravelly roads,

rivers in the middle of roads, (and yes, we did drive through that!)

beautiful wooden villages on hills,

roads that I'd skid on with my bad motorbike skills,

roadside houses where little children waved at us,

valley-like areas,

wow, houses balancing seemingly-precariously above rivers,

on stilts, no less!

:)

Jess and I took a boat trip to see the border of Myanmar!

I loved the scenery, but thought I should throw myself in there once in a while haha

Can you imagine living by this river? Impressive!

There's Myanmar! So close I could swim to it...

:)

The long-tail boat we rode.

Unfortunately, we didn't see much, except another small village.

It was pretty though :)

I just loved being there and wished I could take it with me...

On our ride back, we saw green

tons of mountains,

Ummm... this is what I get for trying to take pictures while driving fast.

But it looked like this for the entire ride back.

Trees!

GREEN

Can you imagine having these roads to yourself?

I keep trying to talk in these videos, but I don't think you can ever hear anything lol

Water buffalo

Would take a motorbike past here again...

Jess

Me with red eyes because I was EXHAUSTED from the wind

blowing in and bending over my motorbike for hours!

Us

Trying another video...

This night, we made it back on time. We ate at our hostel :)

Banana in coconut milk. And I still wonder why I gained weight... haha

Unlike 12-27-13, when we rode in the dark and I heard strange and terrifying jingling noises behind me in the forest, but ended up in a restaurant that had a live band... today, 12-28-13, I lost a part of my heart to the mountains--the charming little villages, the winding roads leading through fields full of crops, the bumpy, sandy roads belonging to us if only for a moment, the thrill of dabbling in motocross as we sped up and down a mountain dodging potholes and taking on hairpin turns (I've never had so much fun on a bike as I did then!), the forests ever alive around us, the blasts of cool, fresh air filling my lungs... I really do recommend taking a motorbike through the mountains. Those words cannot even begin to describe how truly amazing the entire journey so far has been...