i awoke early and was packed and ready to roll by 7:30 am, which was a little amazing as i had spent a night of whiskey drinking with david fl and the seo guy around some of chiangrai's nicer restaurants with included eye candy.

the sky was dark and gleam and there was a lite patter of rain, but no use analiasing the weather, i'm all for rolling the dice.

i dont know if it was the nitrogen in the air or i was still intoxicated from the seo guy's finest scotch but i was feeling a little adventurous

while scoping the gps, making my way through chiangrai to the old highway that leads to 118, i noticed i was stopped at the junction that leads to the south bank of the kok river, a executive decision was made against all common sense, i will try and find a track along the south bank of the kok to thaton



it may not sound to adventurous, but riding a suzuki drz400 with supermotard wheels, in the rain, by yourself, off road, along a track you have never ridden or never heard talk of and heading on dirt with only 40km worth of fuel in the tank and no breakfast aint to smart

all in all it turned out a fantastic day, it is amazing how you can be along way off the beaten track in thailand and there is always someone to offer assistance if needed, in my case it was a palong hilltribe village scrounging up some whiskey bottles of benzine to get me through to wawi




although i didnt get to follow the banks of the mae kok all the way to thaton i felt the ride was a success, it seemed according to the palong villagers the stretch of offroad about 7km leading upstream to mae salak
was very difficult riding, and as id stretched my ability as far as it would go to keep my bike upright in the easier sections i decided to play it safe and head south from this point to wawi get fuel and then down the main road to meet the asphalt road at mae salak



the kok river is a beautiful part of thailand every time i drop down out of the mountains on the hwy1369 into thaton the mae kok catch's my imagination, im trying to put together a canoe trip with the muppets from mae salak to chiangrai if anybody is interested feel free to join us

this is a suspension bridge that cross the mae kok. there is very little dirt road to travel on past the tarmac to get to this bridge, i would guess about 4km. its well worth a look and its a great 2hr ride down 1 bank and back along the other, any size adventure bike should be able to cross the bridge, the photo's where taken on a different day to my chiangrai to thaton trip, these photo's are from a more recent trip with the muppets.





these snake photo's are modeled by bigntall so the snake isn't as big as it looks its really only 4 feet long, there is a number of these pythons kept at the elephant camp on the north bank of the mae kok