So Much Catching Up!

I have fallen way off the blog wagon. Way off. I'll attempt to breeze through the last month or so without killing off the best bits and pieces with haste. We stayed in Chiang Mai for four days- our longest stint anywhere since Vang Vieng. We took to the hills with unloaded bikes and made the most of our location at the foothills of Doi Inthanon National Park, climbing to the peak at Doi Pio and heading back toward town through lychee orchards. The mtn riding made evident the need to get the bikes tuned. We found a bike magician at Jackie's Bikes who replaced Dave's pedals, crank, chain and cassette and made some much needed realignments to both rigs for an amazing bargain.
Chiang Mai proper was a moted grid of western bars and bakeries bespeckled with towering wats and gilded statues of the Buddha. The constant rush of traffic was best avoided by ducking into the sois (back alleys) that crisscross the patchwork. I managed to find the tastiest and cheapest crop of mangoes at a stray stand down such an alley. If mangoes could dream, they would dream of tasting as good as these mangoes. Good golly. I spent a fair amount of my stay gorging on sticky fruit, machine cleaning my entire wardrobe (twice), gawking at the cost of used books, wrinkling my nose at the Starbucks, McDonald's, and 7-11s on every block (except to dash in and bask in the frigid AC...I'm weak), and reading up on the intensifying battle in Bangkok. By the time we left CM the army had overrun the Red Shirt barricades with tanks, shot a leader in the head (mid interview) and arrested hordes of others. Aside from a red flagged barricade on a street corner and smashed ATMs and telephone booths the day after the government's siege, we didn't see a hint of unrest or hear any concern from locals. A curfew was imposed the morning we left town, so we left at ten minutes after it lifted and left without a hitch.
We made our way to Pai in one 135k push. It wasn't planned or necessarily desired, but we made due after finding little accommodation and no vacancies. The first 50k out of the city were mellow. We found ourselves beginning the ascent just before noon with a very fortunate blanket of clouds protecting us from the mid-day heat. The grade was sustained but relatively mellow. A few showers kept things cool and a jovial band of firemen let us fill up our water bottles mid-way to the summit. From the top we refueld with fried rice and watched with mixed awe and concern at Dave's calf muscles twitching with fatigue. The ride down was seriously steep, windy and hot, but it shot us 8k from town. We limped directly to a guesthouse on the river and passed out.