Nan

Nan appears to be a prosperous city, not too big and not too crowded and lots of hotels, shops, restaurants and Wats (Temples). While B has a long afternoon sleep, I go window shopping. The good thing about being on a motorbike is that the choice of what to buy doesn’t exist. We cannot carry any more, so I cannot buy any thing. I wander around the town eyeing all the lovely goodies, especially the handmade traditional garments. They are of a heavy cotton/silk mix weave in either just black, white, red or a multitude of super-bright colours, mostly decorated with a fringe of red or white ‘tiny fluffy bobbles’. Some necklines are decorated with flattened silver button like discs. The necklines are a simple ‘V’ and no darts. The left-over threads from the weave/weft are plaited and dangle on the sides at every colour change. There are also exquisite Thai silk creations with crossover bodices on a long wrap-around full length skirt. The Thai people look beautiful wearing them, I think that Westerners just look silly. I treat myself to a beaded silver elephant charm bracelet, that’s not going to add too much weight to the bike load.

Shopping done I return to the guest house, note that B is still sleeping and help myself to coffee and a dilapidated copy of Lonely Planet Thailand. Nan used to be a separate country squashed between Burma, Laos and Siam. Its prosperity came from trading along the Nan river that stretches from North near China to south, modern Bangkok and the Sea. Dragon boats were used on the river to fight off invaders and nowadays are part of their festivals and daily training takes part on the river at sunset. I had noticed in my afternoon wanderings that the souvenir shops had decorative long boats in brass, wood, etc and the guesthouse had a wooden boat objet d’art on its mantelpiece. It’s sunset when B emerges from his slumber, so we jump on the bike and aim for the bridge over Nan river. There, in the rapidly setting sun we spot something on the water, moving towards us very fast. We hear a Thai version of ‘Heave Ho’, but by now it is so dark and visibility is zero. We will come again tomorrow a bit earlier.

Riding around Nan we notice that there are lots of Wats, in a variety of architectural styles and colours. We navigate by using the different colours as landmarks; “We passed the Turquoise Wat earlier, the Pink Wat was on our right just now, the Gold Wat is at the crossroads near our guest house.” At the entrance to the Gold Wat there is a real Dragon Boat. We count the seats, 72 oarsman can paddle this monster. It is so long that B is just a speck at the other end on the photo. The Gold Wat is stunning inside and out. We venture in to be greeted by a visual extravaganza of delicately painted murals depicting the entire history of Nan. The ancient farming community, the fighting dragon boats, fending off the invaders, european traders, modernisation and buddhism all intertwined. A mural of a ‘whispering couple ‘ was excavated in some ancient Wat and these are the faces that are on all the little painted people in the Wat and on the T-shirts in the market. Sometimes the couple are depicted smoking or drinking or hiding in a doorway or peeping out of a window, but they will be remembered forever.

There are 3 bridges over the River Nan so we ride in a figure of 8 up, down, across and round about searching for the launching place of the Dragon boats. A group of 30 teenagers jogged past us, military style, ‘left, Right, left Right” followed by a man on a bright yellow bicycle with the fattest tyres ever. We carry on with our search and meet up with them again coming from the opposite direction; they must have been running/ training for at least one hour. Then we see the yellow bicycle parked up by a blue tarpaulin on the bank of the river, under which is hiding a dragon boat. The teenagers are now donning life jackets and carrying a smaller version of the long boat into the river, barefoot over stones and vegetation. The single boat had about 10 oarsmen, and the double boat about 24, 12 a side. These kids had been jogging for an hour in the cooler afternoon sun (30 -34 degrees) and were now going to do at least an hours rowing. We found a simple bar/ restaurant on the concrete steps of the river bank and watched them row up and down, chanting in unison. When they stopped chanting the silence of the boat was incredible. There was no splashing, no sound at all of the gliding action of the boat and it was going very fast. What a war machine. They stopped at sunset and presumably still had to go home, eat supper, do homework, etc, etc and get to school the next day. And they do it every day. Amazing.

Our 3 day stay in Nan came to an end as B was feeling much better. There was a choice of about 4 roads to take to get around the big indentation of Thailand in the map before going East and meeting the Mekhong river again. We chose the shortest on a path direct to Uttaradit. We had done this route in 2006 on the original Tigerbike, not knowing then that the tarmac road ran out at the dam water’s edge. Back then we had met up with some Chinese missionaries who had phoned somebody, and miraculously a boat had arrived from the other side of the lake to ferry us across. Just to be sure, this time, we checked on Mr Google and ‘Ferry’ came up on the screen. En route to Nam Pat, where the ferry was, we crossed some more mountains and noted that the vegetation was getting drier and drier. The road to the ferry was curvy and steep and we saw wisps of smoke in the distance. Progress had indeed got to NamPat, where the ferry was now on standby and could carry a car. There was a community of fishermen’s floating houses on the lake, and a collection of people and cars waiting to cross. We were loaded onto a smaller ferry for bikes only and were glad to see the two inner tubes of a tractor tyre strapped to the guard rail as life bouyancy floats. The pleasant putt-putt of the engine got us safely to the other side where two chaps from Denmark ( MotoGuzzi 1000 and Stallion 400 ) were parked up. The boatman waited patiently while information about bikes and updated border crossings were swopped. Photos taken and we all went on our journeys, they North west and us going Southeast. The wisps of smoke were getting closer and bigger and around one corner we could see flames at the road edge. TIP one: if you cannot see the end of the fire, Don’t go through. The fire will suck all the oxygen out of your engine and you will stall. We could see the end of the fire, so went through. OK. We stopped to swig some coca cola and look back at the fire, commenting that the smoke was going straight up, not much wind. Just then a dirt devil of twigs and leaves swirled past us furiously gathering more dry loose grasses, before sacrifycing itself to the fire. TIP two: A fire feed itself, and makes its own wind. Don’t stand and stare, move on as quickly as you can. We did just that and made it into Uttaradit by early afternoon, finding a 300baht super clean hotel on the outskirts of town. Another goodnight’s sleep and B’s cold is disappearing fast.