scooters and hotsprings!

I haven’t really told you about the time in Thailand when we rented scooters and went for the most terrifying and amazing adventure ever.  We were staying in Pai, a few hours and a savagely snaking highway north-east of Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand.  If you’re familiar with the town of Nelson, BC, picture it situated in the middle of the roasting Northern mountains in Thailand and you’ve got a pretty accurate picture of Pai.  The pace is slow, the cafes are excellent, and the hippies are strangely abundant.  Honestly, I didn’t even realize there were that many hippies anymore.  There are!

Everyone in Asia has a scooter.  On crowded roads, they’re much more efficient than a bulky car.  Scooters zip around cars and in and out of lanes of traffic like it ain’t no thing.  IT IS A THING.  I feel like scooters are enormously unsafe, given their driver's typically wild motoring habits and disinclination to follow any of the normal rules of the road.  These same traits that repel me (nickname: Mother Goose) attracted Jessica (nickname: Bonecruncher) and our good friend Nicole (nickname: Nicole).  

And so I was roped into passenger-ing on a scooter ride to some apparently nearby hot springs.  Just down the quiet highway and then off a side-road.  No big deal!  Note: whenever anything is no big deal?  DON’T DO IT because it TOTALLY IS A BIG DEAL.  The highway was fine – quiet, easy to avoid the large trucks going by.  The sideroad?  Oh my god.  Steep, bucking, pot-holed, dirt.  The hills went straight up and then straight down, gravel all the way.  We pushed our scooters up more than a few, passed en route by whole families piled onto one scooter, giggling at us.  Whatever, my intention is not to die on a scooter in remote Northern Thailand.  

Luckily, the pay-off was more than worth it.  When we finally found the hot springs, they were dead-quiet, just us and a flat pool of bath-tub warm water.  The water was crystal clear and shallow, the bottom lined with smooth pebbles.  It was absolutely spectacular.  Vines hung over our heads and we lounged in the water until we were more prune than lady.  Sometimes one just has to suck up the slightly dangerous factor and embrace the fact that you’re in Thailand, goddamit!  Get on the scooter and get in the hot springs.  It doesn’t get much better than this.  

I believe the technical term is 'bitchin'