Emily and the Motor Bike: Together At Last

Posted by Emily

Well, yesterday was quite the exciting day as it involved renting motor bikes and finally finding a use for my gauze and bandage scissors! Just kidding Mom! Well, at least partially. See story below....

Near Chiang Mai, there is a lovely temple on a mountain with very little public transit that goes there. Both our guide book and the hostel where we are staying suggested that the best way to get there was to rent motor bikes. That way you can take your time and pull off the road whenever you want to check out waterfalls or other sites. I was very apprehensive about this at first, for very obvious safety reasons, but also because motor bikes just really scare me a lot because they are crazy, all over the road and seem to narrowly miss hitting me quite frequently. Nicki was also apprehensive at first, but since Alex was SO excited about the idea, we both agreed to try it. I with the least enthusiasm.

We rented the bikes through our hostel in the morning and the guys drove them right over for us and gave Alex a quick lesson on how to work them, which he then gave to us. We had automatic bikes so it was pretty simple. After getting all of our stuff together, we put on our helmets (there was no way I was getting one without a helmet!) and set off. It was pretty simple, but oops, after not too long we were in traffic. Pretty exciting. I think we did very well for having only 2 minutes of experience. We were somehow able to maneuver between lanes and find our way to the main road that we needed to be on.

Then it was a climb up the mountain, but luckily it wasn't too steep or too curvy, just a little. Once we got out of town there was much less traffic, which made the driving a lot easier. Our first stop was by a rocky, foresty river that turned into a small waterfall. There was also a nice view of the city. Very beautiful. Next stop was a little more troublesome as it involved driving down a large curb to get off the road and then driving over gravel that sloped down and then up. Nicki almost had a little trouble when she gunned it over the curve and went flying much too fast onto the gravel. This spot was further up the river and had a flatter rock area that Alex decided to climb onto. I walked onto it a little ways but not as far as him. He took quite a fall, not too surprisingly, because he was wearing flip flops and walking on slippery rock. (Interjection - a monk just sat down at the computer next to me. That seems quite strange!) I, on the other hand, was wearing shoes and still managed to slip, giving myself quite the scrape up the front of my shin (hence the gauze that I used to cover it for a little while last night. It was not a motor bike injury!)

The really fun part was trying to get the bikes back over the sloping gravel and the large curve. Nicki and I both managed to drop our bikes on their sides, but I won the grand prize for genius motor bike moves when I accidentally gunned the engine and the bike went flying forward, without me on it, and landing in the road on its side. It also managed to give me a nasty bruise on the back of my leg. I almost turned around at this point because I was quite shaken up but I decided to keep going.

We stopped to see another waterfall. Quite pretty and the stop was uneventful. Continued up the mountain to the temple. Saw the temple and got more lovely views of the city. Continued up the mountain to see a place but discovered that it closed at 3:30 pm so we couldn't visit. Took funny pictures on our bikes and then headed down the mountain. Also very uneventful except for the fact that EVERYONE was passing us because we were quite slow. Oh well.

The real fun began when we got back into the city and entered into rush hour traffic. Now, this wasn't just any rush hour traffic, this was crazy traffic as many of you would have experienced in the larger cities of developing countries. Lanes are kind of arbitrary and motor bikes zig back and forth between cars. Also, I didn't really know where we were going and Nicki and Alex were quite a ways in front of me. This resulted in me missing a turn and getting lost. Not the end of the world. I decided that I would pull over, park the bike and take a taxi back to the hostel. However, I was right on the edge of the old city where we were staying and this part of the city is surrounded by a canal, hence there was nowhere to pull over because there was water. I finally found a curved in lane, stopping and thinking that I would be able to drive across the road to park when the traffic thinned. Wrong. It was rush hour and traffic never thinned. I ended up having to restart my bike, merge back into traffic and take the next right turn that I could. I saw another bike parked on the sidewalk over there. I successfully merged and turned the corner, but still need to get my bike up onto the curb to park it. I guess I thought I had turned the bike off because I used to handle bars to try to life the bike over the curve, resulting in me gunning the gas again worse than the first time I did this on the mountain. This caused the bike to shoot forward again, knocking over a huge potted plant, spraying dirt everywhere and missing falling into the canal by about 3 feet. Woah. This pretty much did me in. I was about to start crying right there. I locked the bike up, took a taxi back to the hostel and forced Alex to go get the bike for me later because there was no way I was getting back on it!

So friends and family, there is no need to worry, I will not be getting on another one of those stupid things again. In fact, this experience has only served to reinforce my hatred of the little machines. I passed a very lovely day today thinking about how I wasn't on a motor bike! Also, I think that I was very lucky to only get a few bruises!

Alex just left on a bus headed for Bangkok to catch his flight tomorrow morning. Tomorrow Nicki and I head out for a 3 day trek through the jungle. Not quite sure what to expect but I'll give a full report when we return.