M&C: Tha Ton

We arrived in Tha Ton by bus and walked to our beautiful guest house where we had booked two nights. The roads looked peaceful and quiet and we really wanted to get scooters again, thinking that we might also drive a scooter up to Doi Mae Salong, a nearby mountain town. We walked around town (not more than a kilometer in total) and not only couldn’t find a scooter to rent but also learned that the boat to Chiang Rai wasn’t running because the river was too low. This boat ride was one of the main reasons we had come this way, so that was very disappointing news. Back at our guest house, we finally found someone who managed to drudge up a two-wheeled vehicle for us to ride, a four-speed 120CC Honda motorcycle. Neither of us had ever ridden a motorcycle with gears before, but Chandler was down to try and pretty quickly figured it out enough to make the thing move.

The town of Tha Ton is so small that it took less than 5 minutes to get to the principal (really, only) attraction, a sequence of monasteries, temples, and large Buddha statues that ascend in nine tiers into the hills above the town. The road was so steep that Michelle had to get off the motorcycle sometimes just so we could make it up the hill. At the top we found a gorgeous--but also a little weird--temple with strange pastel-y colors and a whole museumful of people, gods, animals, and symbols from Chinese and Hindu mythology that we hadn’t seen anywhere else. They gave the place a bit of a cluttered, oppressive feel that we hadn’t experienced at any of the other ultra-tidy, focused-feeling temples.

Having struggled so much on the motorbike, we took a songthaew up to Doi Mae Salong the next morning. The town is perched along a very narrow mountain ridge and is comprised of a mix of Chinese people who fled across the border during the Chinese Civil War and people from various hill tribes, most notably the Karen people. As such, it has a completely non-Thai feel that is very different from anywhere else we’ve been.

We had very tasty Chinese food for lunch with some people we had met at our guest house the previous night: spicy noodles, fall-off-the-bone pork, and some amazing dried mushrooms. But after that, we were kind of at a loss for what to actually do. We had done a little research, but didn’t realize that the town was actually quite spread out and there was nowhere to rent a scooter and no public transportation. Plus, the last songthaew back to Tha Ton left at 3PM, so we didn’t have time to walk anywhere.

One of the women we had eaten lunch with was Thai. When she heard our plight, she asked around to help us find someone with a car to hire for the afternoon. She asked one person who directed her to another who directed her to another until we found a woman with a store by the main road who was willing to help us. This new woman spoke no English (same as our Thai), but we thought the other woman had told her what we wanted, so we just had to trust it. For about 45 minutes, we sat in front of her store while, it seemed to us, she just stopped anyone she knew who was driving by and asked them if they’d be willing to drive two falangs around town for a couple hours and then back to Tha Ton. Eventually, someone said he’d be willing to do it, and we negotiated a price with the help of a third woman who actually spoke quite good English. The whole process took about an hour, by which time the last public songthaew back to Tha Ton had left, so we were totally in their hands.

Fortunately, the communication had gone through. We went first to a large tea plantation several kilometers outside of the main town, where we wandered through the tea plants and sampled some of the product. Then, we drove to a beautiful temple with amazing views. There was a monk and a lay woman in the temple who let the three of us enter. The monk and the woman made Chandler bow to the Buddha statue alongside our driver, but in general seemed very pleased to have us there. It turned out this was a very special temple that was only open once or twice per year, and even then very few people were permitted inside. Our driver had certainly never been inside before and seemed really excited about it, taking pictures right along with us after the monk gave us permission to do so. From there, we took a winding back road through the mountains to Tha Ton, stopping briefly to look at the view as well as some very cool, well-constructed, and tidy traditional housing, including huts built into the side of the hill, hobbit-style.

All in all, we had a great afternoon, salvaging what could have been a total loss day into a pretty fun little trip. Next up: Chiang Rai, via bus instead of boat :(