I've had a bad day

Daniel Powter summed up my day in a song. Things just seemed to go from bad to worse. It started off good. The lovely host at the guesthouse in Mae Hong Son left us bread that we could toast and lots of jams and butter and fresh fruit and drinks. I couldn't complain about this but I did have a bit of a dodgy tummy. Thankfully, the unfortunate events that occurred today did not include any toilet dramas but I did have a painful stomach in the morning. To take my mind off it, Matt suggested I have a little drive of the bike. It started off good; I drove round the lake where there were minimal cars. My first turn didn't go so well. I over shot it and ended up pulling over next to a building instead. After Matt turned the bike round for me I was back on, this time heading up towards the main road of the town. I had to stop at a junction which was on a hill, then revved too much and ended up zooming across the road instead of turning. Luckily, the bike coming from the left wasn't too close and wasn't going very fast. I had to break quite hard to stop and immediately got off the bike, shaking uncontrollably. Matt had to hug me to calm me down as some tears had appeared as well. I chose not to drive again. 

Still quite shaken up, I sat comfortably on the back of the bike whilst Matt drove us up a hill to a temple just outside of the town. There were two white tomb like buildings which housed the remains of some important monks along with a couple of little temples and beautiful views out onto the town. It was a nice place and helped me stay calm after my traumatic experience. 

After that we aimed for a town called Khun Luam, stopping at a hot spring and waterfall on the way. The hot spring was quite interesting. There was a couple of big pools, like swimming pools, but you weren't allowed to swim in them as the water was so hot. However, there was a little stream area where you could put your feet in. It was like putting your feet in a very hot bath. I couldn't hold them under for more than a second but it was quite pleasant. The waterfall was a little further on and when we eventually found it there was barely even a trickle of water. Obviously rainy season hadn't hit properly yet so the waterfall was pretty none existent. 

Up more hills, before going to Khun Yuam, we wanted to see a proper waterfall so we came off the main road and onto a smaller one. It was in good condition but the map had 'caution: very steep' written on this road. It wasn't wrong. As it was a national park the road led up a huge mountain, turning this way and that. The views were amazing and the bike managed the steep inclines but after 11 kilometres the nice concrete road turned into a mud track. We revved up but got stuck in some deep tyre marks and the bike ended up toppling over with us still on it. Luckily, we'd been going super slow so neither of us were hurt and the only problem with the bike was lots of clay like mud was smeared all over one side. However, this shook Matt up a little bit and he didn't feel he could drive any further on the track. I completely understood and for our safety we turned back. This meant backtracking 11 kilometres downhill. After the fall we moved steadily, being over cautious maybe. However, either from the weight the bike was carrying or the steep decline or that Matt wasn't revving at all, the front brake conked out. We had to stop for ten minutes or so on the side of the road so the brake could stiffen up and work properly. Thankfully, it worked again but I chose to walk down the steep sections incase the heavy load made the brakes weaker. Eventually, we made it back onto the main road but Matt's spirits were low. I pretended to be a radio, singing lots of songs to cheer him up. For some unknown reason he enjoyed it (the singing was atrocious) and so I continued all the way to Khun Luam. 

We didn't reach Khun Luam until gone 2 so were both pretty hungry. At a cafe I chose pad Thai (they didn't have many options) which was okay and a good size. Matt's rice and mushroom dish was small and tasteless so he had to buy snacks from the seven eleven next door. Back on the road we decided we wanted to see this waterfall so would attempt to reach it from another way on bigger roads. There was also a sunflower farm on the way to it which we thought would be nice, neither of us thinking that maybe sunflowers aren't around at this time of year. Obviously, we had to climb up again but not as high. Unfortunately, it started to rain. We had waterproofs on which protected our bags but we still got soaked. The rain meant that everything took so much longer and we reached the sunflower place after well over an hour but could hardly see ahead due to fog so turned back and stopped at a visitor centre to shelter from the rain. This was my favourite part of the day. Some local men were all hanging out, some with beer, some with tea and one had lit a fire. They told us both to sit by the fire and they brought us free hot tea. Only one of them spoke a little English so we didn't have a clue what the others were trying to tell us. Matt gave the men some of his snacks he'd bought earlier as repayment for the tea and fire and we happily sat for well over half an hour trying to warm up and dry off. 

Of course the rain didn't seem to be stopping any time soon and we knew we had to get as far along our route as we could so tomorrow wouldn't be so bad. The men offered us a homestay which was hard to refuse but there was still a couple of hours of daylight left so we drove on. Within minutes we were drenched through again and Gemma radio reappeared to keep spirits up. After around an hour and a half the rain hadn't stopped and we were pretty cold. I got off the bike to ask at a shop if there was anywhere to stay nearby and the shop owner said he had rooms. Result! We went to look at them and didn't really look carefully but just thought that a hut on a hill would be really cool to sleep in. There was even a mosquito net and loads of blankets and pillows and a big mattress on the floor. At a later inspection we realised the roof had holes in it and ants were crawling all over everything. Not the best. The people offered to make us some food which we were grateful for. However, a few minutes later the son of the owner came out with two different pot noodle esque things and a kettle. Mine was more like porridge with plasticy egg and pork and Matt's was some small noodle pot. We were confused. And upset. We played some card games but were still cold as the people had shut up their shop and house so we were just sat outside. We went to bed only to find a cockroach in the mosquito net. I was having none of it as we were paying more for this poor excuse for a shed than we paid last night! The boy who gave us food (I wouldn't really call it food) had to remove the cockroach for us (I'd had to knock on the door so someone would get rid of it). We may sound a little pathetic but we didn't want to deal with a cockroach if we didn't have to. Instead we stood in a corner far away looking like two little squeamish girls. After the boy had gone we found some quite large eggs in the net which some creature had laid so left it tied up and sprayed ourselves with bug spray instead. I didn't really want to go to sleep because all I could think about were bugs crawling all over me. The day did not end well.