Thailand: Mae Sot Loop: Day 3 Destination: Tak

For many Villages around here, life evolves on the river. Not only does it allow transport in the wet season when roads are unpassable it is also a valuable source of food and income for the locals.

The next morning Angry Bird missed his appointed meet time and we found out from the local coppers that he had to be carried off to bed as he was incapable of walking and speech. Investigating further I found the man as naked as the day he was born, curled up in the foetal position and comatose. It truly was a site for sore eyes, but to his credit he shook off what would otherwise have been a horrible hangover with a simple request for a bacon and egg burger. Now we couldn’t find his wish, but we did manage to find him some of that Thai magic …. Moon Ping (satay pork) and a shady energy drink that works wonders – it’s called M150. Sounds like a rocket fuel and that’s exactly what it does, Turbo charges the consumer. A riding mate of mine here put me onto it and I don’t want to know what’s in it but I’ll take the energy hit every time. Fuelled up we hit the road for Tak with the intention of visiting a cave and waterfall too.

Family and friends in a street parade to farewell the newly ordained Monks on their journey of spirituality.

The newly ordained Monks are whisked away on the river to begin life as a Monk.

But first of all we had to find Snail who got up early  to witness a Monk Ordination parade in the local village. It took us a little mucking around but we finally found her with a beaming smile. It seems the whole village turned out for the Ordination, a parade of sorts and had family breakfast together before the young ordained were bundle off in boats and whisked up the river to an undisclosed temple to begin the life of a monk. I was concerned as outsiders we wouldn’t be welcome but it seems it was a case of more the merrier and Snail was welcomed with open arms in true Thai traditional fashion.

The open road Beckons on a Smokey morning but were just chuffed to be alive and living the dream.

Our first destination was Mae Usu cave. Plugged into the GPS, with Angry Bird leading the way we roared off towards our next destination about an hour down the road.  There was our first mistake for the day - letting Angry Bird lead the way or more specific none of us plugging the destination into our own phones so we knew where we were and blindly following a meanderthal who was still recovering from the passions of last night’s hang thong psychedelic trip probably wasn’t the smartest move on all our behaves. Needless to say the boys got lost and overshot the turn off by about 30km. Snail saved our geographical embarrassment from spiralling out of control further with a timely message. That loosely translated to ‘I’m at the cave where the hell are you muppets’?

Myanmar in the distance the border is the Moe River

Here’s a useful point I’ll share with you, when using Google maps be sure to situationally orientate yourself to your location/destination. You can be literally 100m away from your location and overshoot the turn and the bloody thing will not recognise you can pull over and do a u turn in a driveway or similar so will keep you travelling in the wrong direction until a designated road or route for you to turn around on becomes available and sometimes that detour can be a bloody long way

USU cave, is pretty big as far as caves go. it’s formed by erosion and the power of water when a river cut through the mountain forming a limestone cave with huge stalactites and stalagmites throughout the cave.

We eventually reached Mae USU cave and found Snail. Entering the cave system you follow a river bed and have to wade the river in places, so if you don’t have your trusty crocs or similar on then your riding boots are going to take a bath.  Angry Bird and Tom weren’t keen for wet feet so sat this one out. Snail and I explored a very large limestone cave that was literally formed when a river pushed through the side of the mountain. The ceiling had collapsed in one place letting shafts of light filter into the cave which was pretty chilled. But sadly made it difficult to get good pics without a tripod. On the way out we ran into a bunch of young monks who were keen to pose for pictures with the crazy farangs on the motorcycles.

If you look closely, you can see the me, I climbed up here to try and give you some perspective as to the magnitude of this cave.

Cave done we pushed towards Tak on the very relaxed route 105 without a care in the world. Stopping briefly at rather commercialised waterfall that was uninspiring for a quick dip. Arriving late afternoon in Tak, we found ourselves a den for the night to have a much-deserved nanna nap. Later that evening we gorged ourselves at a restaurant on the Ping River. Damn the food was divine and the beer exquisitely cold and refreshing, we just kept putting it away like a pack of starving Chinamen. You probably can’t say that these days with the world being so politically correct, but you know what, the Meanderthal blogs never got that memo, so we’ll wrap it up with a jolly good day was had by all old chap.

Dinner on the Ping River in Tak, the view the ambience, the food, the ice cold beer and of course the company. A perfect way to end a perfect day.