Off To The Salt Mines...

Yesterday afternoon ended with my boss rushing into the Nan Hospital, expecting to find me in the Emergency Room, after receiving a panicked phone call to the school about a foreign teacher being in a traffic accident.

Taking the "Air Blade" out for a first ride

Luckily, I wasn't there. In fact, I hadn't been in an accident, nor had I been injured in any way; neither had any of the other foreign teachers I'd just spent the weekend with. (Not to mention there isn't traffic in Nan Province anyway). The panicked phone call to Prakop was in response to a flat back tire on my rented motorbike - which I'd rented for the long holiday weekend to drive up into the mountains on an epic end-of-year camping trip with the rest of the Nan Farang Bicycle Club. Yep, this past weekend I went "camping" AND drove a motorbike in Asia... There's a first time for everything.

Our unofficial motley social club set off early Friday morning: 3 Americans, 1 Brit, 4 Flemish-speaking Belgians, 1 Dane, and 1 South African on 6 motorbikes, headed toward Pua, a small town an hour northeast of Muang (City) Nan. The drive out of the city was instantly gorgeous; we coasted through fields and fields of green rice paddies, climbed hills of lush banana-trees, and at the top, gazed out an incredible mountaintop views. As our friend Kristoffer, who lives in and we picked up in Pua, later said: "I was just having a Julie Andrews moment the whole away..." Literally, the hills were alive with the sound of music.

After grabbing lunch in Pua (at a roadside shack that served the BIGGEST and most delicious pad-see-ew noodles I've ever had), we powered onward toward Doi Phu Kha, a large national forest in Nan with the highest mountain in the region. Many hilltribe communities - who make up some 10 percent of Nan's population, and who live very remote and traditional lifestyles - live in and around Doi Phu Kha, and their villages and bamboo huts line the roads that cut up through the mountain. We stopped occasionally to hike a path or see a viewpoint.

View from Doi Phu Kha mountain

By sunset, we finally reached the Boklua View Resort in Bo Klua, a town even further outside Doi Phu Kha Park,  whose name literally means "salt mine" (a staple the town is known for). The resort is built into the side of a mountain, and the views were spectacular. Unable to secure (or afford) one of the resort cabins, we asked about the "tent" option, and within moments we were taken to the hillside in front of the cabins where 5 camping tents were neatly pitched in a row. We shoved our backpacks into the tents, sat down at the resort patio bar, ordered a few beers.... and stayed there until about 12 a.m.

Luxurious resort accomodation

The next morning, battling mild sunburn and Blend 285 Thai whisky hangovers, we piled onto our motorbikes and headed for some sightseeing around the town. Further up the mountain, we found a cheap homestay to sleep in, and after setting down our stuff and convincing the owner that, of course, we could fit more than 2 people into those small bamboo box on stilts, we set off for the namesake Bo Klua salt mines. After following a series of wrong directions - (unfortunately, it's very Thai to just affirmatively point off in one direction and give an arbitrary number of kilometers instead of saying "I don't understand you") - we found them. "Them" being a single mud hut room full of wells of salt and as steamy as a sauna. We checked out the gift shop, trying to understand how this place became so well advertised, but soon decided that the waterfalls would be a more satisfying sight.

This time, our directions were slightly more clear. Our only misstep was following a sign up a steep rocky dirt hill instead of the normal road after it... but within minutes a Thai man in a cowboy hat was bumper-butting my motorbike with his, yelling "Hey! You! You! Welcome! Nam dtok, over there!" With his helpful guidance, we reached the entrance to the waterfall.

A short hike later, our group reached the falls themselves - along with a big open swimming hole. The water was absolutely frigid, but the idea of coming all that way and being at a waterfall in Thailand and conveniently having my swimsuit handy meant that I had to dive in. We swam until the pins and needles turned to numbness; then dried off in the still-hot afternoon sun and spent the rest of the time sitting and talking on surrounding rocks. 3 of our 9 club members were technically guest members: a Belgian couple who were visitor friends of our friend Benjamin, and Helen, a girl we'd met at the bus station the day before who was traveling through Nan and wanted in on our adventure. It was fun to have new additions to the gang, and I have to say, the group chemistry was dy-nam-ic all weekend long.

When the sun started to set, we made our way back to the homestay, where the host family was setting up the front yard with large speakers, light strands, and a long table set with the standard Thai blue plastic patio chairs. One of the (presumably) daughters, Ning, came over to us to offer food, and to ask us if we liked music and if it was alright if they had a party going on until 10 or so. Ohh Ning, you have no idea how alright it was.

It didn't take long after sunset for the old Thai men to arrive at the house with their whisky... the spicy pork and fried rice platters to come out.... the outdated-but-never-tiresome American pop songs to play on repeat over the speakers. It also wasn't long before we'd all been asked to join the party - and join we did. We started a full on dance party in the middle of the lawn, twirling around old Thai men and small Thai kids alike - the men giving us shots of whisky, the kids challenging us to hula-hoop contests (and always winning). When I grew exhausted from our increasingly intense and hilarious dance party, I sat down with some of the Thai woman and rambled off every word or phrase I knew in Thai, which inevitably makes you besties-4-life with your audience, regardless of whether you make any real communicative sense. The women were soon were putting babies on my lap, photographing me with extended relatives, and feeding me. Standard.

Six peas in a pod

The next morning, we downed our 'free breakfast' of instant coffee, hot water, and boiled peppered rice, and left the salt-mined Bo Klua for Nan city. We took the opposite way down the mountain as we'd come. The drive was again stunning, but also long, hot, and full of steep construction zones when we'd have to drive several kilometers over loose gravel and guardrail-less winding dirt roads. It wasn't so bad, especially for my first weekend ever driving a motorbike - but it took a serious toll on my bike tires. By the time we reached the flat ground of Nan city, my inner back tire had completely blown and was drooping out of my deflated outer tire.

We pulled over to the side of a road, and although it was in a quiet back area of town, within 30 seconds two women were at our side pointing to my back tire and looking around for help. They were followed by a third man on motorbike who gestured for me to follow him on my broken bike to a nearby garage. There was a lot of back and forth at the first garage, which couldn't fix my tire; so a fourth man took me on his motorbike to fetch a mechanic from a different garage. As the mechanic assessed the damage, two more sunhat-clad ladies had come out of their houses, to offer us food and ask us endless questions in broken Thai-English. They confirmed that we were American and worked at Bandon Sriserm School, then called yet another woman out to meet (or just stare at) us. While we sat on a house stoop dodging all the Thai questions we couldn't understand, one of my 6th graders biked by and shouted, "Hello Ajaan Caitlin!" The whole gang shouted after the poor kid and made him turn around, yelling in Thai, "Speak English to your teacher! Speak English!" Sadly, said student is possibly the worst English speaker in all of 6th grade... so he just stopped, smiled, and was of no help to the women.

When I eventually got back to my room and charged and turned on my cell phone, I saw I had a missed call from Aj. Prakop and called back. She said the school had received a phone call earlier saying a Sriserm foreign teacher was in an accident. Unable to get ahold of me, she went to the site where the caller had said the accident was - a temple right near, but behind a wall from where we were then sitting waiting for a standard tire replacement. Seeing nothing at the site, she and Aj. Anne had rushed to the hospital to ask about an injured foreigner. The hospital staff assured her that no foreigners had been to the hospital that day, and so Prakop returned home until I called and straightened our stories out.

All in all, it was a weekend that epitomized everything I love about Nan: stunning scenery, friendly people, delicious food, and a gossip highway more efficient than any you'd ever find in a big, salt-mine-less city. I'm lucky to call it home - for just another 8 days, then not until I'm back in June!