After meeting the rest of our group, we discovered that we would be the only ones on that particular tour. Everyone else had opted for some version of an off-road mountain biking experience, with the guys going for an intermediate ride, and the women or couples opting for the easy off-road ride.
We gathered our equipment and divided into trucks; we were all going to start off at the same place, about 45 minutes away. As we climbed the mountain, the heat of Chiang Mai fell away. In the truck, Kinsey and I met our guide, Louis, a short compact Thai in his mid-20s who was addicted to extreme sports. He told us he used to work for the leading zipline company in Chiang Mai, but was transferred to Pattaya, a city in southern Thailand, to help build another zipline course. Louis said the first time he had to climb the tree to help build the platform he was shaking from fear. Eventually, he missed his family and wanted to return to Chiang Mai, but the company wouldn’t transfer him, so he had to look for different work. As the day went on, I became more and more impressed with Louis--you get to know people much better when they are with you as a private guide. Though he was younger, Louis was thoughtful, serious, hard-working, and surprisingly conservative.
At the drop-off site, the groups divided--the off-roaders received extra instruction, while Kinsey, Louis, and I picked out bikes and made some test runs. Chiang Mai Mountain Biking was owned by an ex-pat American, a big burly guy probably in his 50s, who didn’t look like much of a biker and cracked feeble jokes. He did, however, run a pretty class-act company. The bikes were all good solid mountain bikes in great condition (not the riding on the rims, rusting heaps in China) and they had the tours fully supported by trucks, if necessary.
We took off, so to speak, as we had two small uphill sections before we could start the downhill. Puffing with exertion, I questioned the sanity of Lance Armstrong and wondered why anyone would pay to take the difficult uphill tours.
Nevertheless, once we started downhill, it was lovely. The only workout we got was in our hands, which had to brake constantly. The air was cool, the mountain was beautiful, there was very little traffic, and the ride was great.
The tour included a stop at a Hmong village, not something I particularly wanted to do, but I didn’t ask to bypass it. Apparently, the Thai government had given this tribe some land to live on. They did some small-scale farming and set up a street of shops for tourists, selling many of the types of trinkets we had already seen in China. There was a steady stream of tourists, most on hill tribe tours.
After a quick stop, we were back on the mountain, wending our way down to the temple. Temples, or wats, are everywhere in Thailand and it would be easy to get wat overload. So I researched a bit and Wat Suan Dok was recommended as a good stop…full of gold leaf, a Buddha relic (part of his shoulder bone) and some good history. I had read the basic story about the temple, and Louis filled in the rest.
Long ago, one of the kings of Thailand came into possession of a relic of the Buddha. The relic was miraculously duplicated into two pieces: one went to the south part of Thailand and one piece stayed in the northern part. The king wanted to house the relic in a temple, so they devised a method to determine the most auspicious place for the temple to be built. The king placed the relic in a container and put it on the back of a white elephant. The elephant was taken to one of the gates of the city, where it mysteriously trumpeted three times. The king took this as a good sign, and the elephant was left to wander where it would. It went out of the gate and headed to a mountain, where it then trumpeted again three times. The king and his court were all following the elephant, which then went up the mountain until it came to a spot where it walked clockwise in a circle three times, trumpeted again three times, and lay down. The king took this as a sign that the temple should be built at this spot, and that was how the Wat Suan Dok temple came to be built.
The temple itself was beautiful and covered in gold leaf with many expensive trappings. I thought this a bit ironic, as the Buddha’s teachings advocate moderation, and he himself eschewed wealth. Louis pointed out many of the traditions: Buddhists walk clockwise around certain aspects of the temple three times, in order to honor the elephant’s sign. There are bells you can ring which mean you will return to the temple again--a Thai equivalent to the Trevi fountain, I suppose.
And there was also a custom of shaking long sticks in a cup, casting them out onto the floor, and then choosing one. Each stick had a number. You see which number you have chosen and then look on the wall. Each number had a corresponding passage written about it. I think it was like a fortune of some kind. This activity was popular with young girls, Louis told us, and indeed there were many young girls doing it.
The temple was full of activity, and I could see that it was a temple with some importance to the Thai people. There were many visiting monks and Louis told us that monks who dress in the bright orange and yellow robe colors are monks who like to live in the city and live with some “luxury.” Monks in dark browns, blacks, or darker duller oranges, live the more austere life without luxury, although I pointed out that even the non-luxury monks had digital cameras. He also told us that monks cannot touch money. There were money trees in the courtyards where people could donate to the monks, but the nuns were the ones who actually handled all of the money. In the mornings, there is also a tradition of people bringing food to the monks as well.
Back down the stairs, Kinsey bought a small white elephant to commemorate the temple at Doi Suthep and we headed for the bikes and the last ride back. The road down was on a new, smooth two lane highway, although traffic was light, and we started to descend back into the heat of the day. As we sailed down, Louis was in the front, Kinsey in the middle, and I was in the back. Suddenly, Kinsey lost control, her front wheel jerked sharply to the right, and she tumbled over the bike, rolling onto her back with the bicycle on top of her. I quickly braked to a stop, as did two other people on motorbikes, who had seen her accident. Louis turned the bend, not noticing what had happened.
After making sure everyone and everything was off the road, I stopped to assess the damage. Kinsey was in pain and I first had fears about a broken leg or something, but it turned out to be scrapes on different parts of her body--the left knee got it the worst, with smaller scrapes on the right elbow, and left shoulder. Louis returned and whipped out his first aid kit to do repairs. After swabbings of alcohol and iodine and some leg bandaging, I noticed that Kinsey looked very pale--she tends to go into shock--so Louis pulled out a tiny bottle of some foul smelling berries. We made her lie down for a few minutes until she felt better and then I coaxed her to get back on the bike and finish the ride since there would be no pedaling involved. We told her to go very slowly., but she was reluctant. Perhaps it wasn’t good parenting on my part--Louis could have easily called the van--but I was afraid she’d never want to bike downhill again if we didn’t get her to try again. Not having had a lot of spills growing up, she doesn’t brush off accidents as easily. Finally, Kinsey agreed, and we rode into town for lunch, and then back to the office.
By then, the big shock of her fall had evaporated, and she was more or less just a walking wounded person. We met up with the off-roaders who were also just returning. I tipped Louis something that I hoped was generous, and we took the truck ride back to Rachamankha Flora House.
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