There are 762 curves on the highway between Chiang Mai and Pai, Thailand, according to the postcards and stickers plastering walls of tourist shops in the sleepy valley town. Minibuses service the area daily, but as every backpacker worth his baggy fisherman pants will tell you, the best way to enjoy these hills is on your own time. Motorbikes can be rented for dollars a day all over northern Thailand, and it takes nearly no time or skill to learn to drive one. A motorbike offers more autonomy, more freedom, fewer carsick neighbors, and fewer time constrictions.
Motorbikes also have fewer wheels, though. Two, to be exact, both of which are critically necessary for navigating the steep Route 1095, and around curve number 581, (or it may have been 495, or 613 – I kept a poor count), my number was cut abruptly in half. The back end of my bike fishtailed as the rhythmic slap of busted rubber on pavement overpowered the purr of my motor. I slowed to a shaky halt in the nook of a steep curve as my travel companion Nia pulled up behind me, speechless. We had met only days before, but we certainly were both stuck in this now.
“This is not the best place for this to happen,” I managed, eyebrows raised. We’d stopped directly in the line of traffic, hidden by the hills until the last moment. Then again, nowhere on this mountain was the best place for this to happen.
It wasn’t the worst, though, as I was soon to find out. As we looked at each other in shock, phoneless, clueless, and stranded, a hero was already descending down the hills. With khakis and a deep tan in place of a heavenly glow, I didn’t initially recognize my guardian angel, but these things tend to take you by surprise.
“No English!” he called to us, in English. We waved our hands dramatically and made “oh stop” faces, hoping to reassure him, pretending he was just being modest about his linguistic abilities. Now was not the time for self-conscious communication. To keep him from having to bridge the language gap alone, we dove into fierce pantomime, pointing wildly to the rubber strip that had once been a tire with ridiculous explosion gestures and pout-lipped shrugs. Standing up from his crouched position, the man attempted urgently and nonverbally to tell us what we had known since the fishtailing had begun moments earlier. He paid little attention to our theatrics, but he had landed on the theme of the narrative – there was no way this bike could carry me 50 more kilometers through the mountains.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” we tried to confirm with our expressions. “What a pickle we seemed to have landed in.”
“You go Pai?” he asked after a moment.
“Yes! Pai!”
We responded a little too loudly, eager to have landed on a word we all understood. “Pai!” the two of us continued to shout like lunatics, and “Pai!” the man would always respond, thinly mirroring our enthusiasm, the way a kind neighbor might respond to someone else’s baby learning a new word. We are all in agreement.
We might have been content to rejoice over our shared goals for a while longer, but my champion was a man of action. I was overtly appreciative and supremely unhelpful throughout the proceedings, but no matter – he didn’t need me at all. A quick lift and a whir of ropes later, I was squatting alongside my bike in the back of the truck, humming up the hills as steadily as I had been only twenty minutes before.
For all the hype given to the motorbike journey’s grand scenery, no one really champions the view from the bed of a stranger’s pickup truck. It has its downsides, of course – the seat above the wheel is jutted and tiny, and your muscles might cramp after hours of clutching an unsteady motor vehicle through endless curves. You no longer have the freedom to pull over at any coffee shop or waterfall that piques your interest. However, the pickup truck method is not without its charms. In exchange for your autonomy, you get gratitude. Trade in your misplaced faith in your own independence, and receive a deeper faith in humanity’s altruism and hospitality. If you’re looking for a healthy dose of gratitude and faith in humanity along with your adventure, I can’t recommend it more highly.
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