The mountain is calling!!

We said goodbye to Chiang Rai and continued north. The goal was Pu Chi Fah, a mountain on the border with Laos.

As we later learned, it was not a completely safe area. The way there took us through magnificent landscapes and exciting uphill and downhill rides, which our scooters struggled with. The scooters only managed to reach a speed of about 30 km/h on a gradient of 18%. It was a lot of fun!

Before we found our accommodation, we drove to the summit of Pu Chi Fah to have a look around. The goal was to set off the next morning, still in the darkness, so that we could experience a beautiful sunrise on the summit.

Afterwards, we took care of finding a suitable accommodation for this. We decided on a small wooden hut on a slope, in a complex where we were the only guests. Quite eerie! In the evening, we had a small meal, went back to the accommodation, wrote a blog post, and went to sleep. The alarm clock was already set for 4.30 am.

The next morning started with a "small" shock. After that, we were instantly wide awake!! When we opened our door, there was a large, four-legged animal in the darkness that we could not identify immediately, so we closed the door quickly. After waiting for a while, the animal was gone, and we went to our scooters to finally reach Pu Chi Fah. As soon as we reached the scooter, 4 stray dogs besieged us, panting and running towards us from the darkness, surrounding us. We were scared! Especially Jessy thought her last minute had come - :). Brave as he is, Thimo, after taking a deep breath, unlocked the scooter locks and off we went. Jessy was still rooted to the spot, watching the commotion.

When we arrived at Pu Chi Fah, we parked our scooters and walked up the steep 1 km. Suddenly, there was panting behind us... again!!! Dogs... and the same ones. Jessy was especially terrified again and held Thimo's hand tighter and tighter. After a while, it turned out that the dogs wanted to accompany us rather than eat us. But who could have guessed that in the darkest darkness??? Definitely a shocker!!

Well, we made it to the top and were rewarded for the steep climb! Unfortunately, it was a bit hazy, but still an impressive view. We were the first tourists to arrive, followed by a horde of Chinese. Slowly but surely, the sun started to appear, and we enjoyed it.

Afterwards, all we had to do was get out of this ghost village quickly. We had planned to drive the entire 300 km back to Chiang Mai in one go. We were up early and wide awake, so it shouldn't be a big problem, we thought. Off we went, and once again, we had great roads to ride on. After about 4 hours, fatigue overwhelmed us, and we had to look for a suitable place to sleep. A free one, of course. We found one, even though we sometimes felt like animals in a cage being displayed. Thai people kept passing by and watching what the "foreigners" were doing in this small wooden hut. But it was sorely needed and felt good!

We raced the 300 km back to Chiang Mai in 8 hours of pure driving time and couldn't wait to finally arrive, shower, and relax our butts. We rewarded ourselves with burgers, pizza, and fries, satisfying our first hunger attack.