Thailand — April 2014

It's been a hell of a pleasant winter here in Chiang Mai — the coldest in many years. A lot of Thais, including Nut, were adversely affected by the cold — it affected me too but in the opposite way. I've totally enjoyed the uncharacteristically cool weather and can only hope for more of the same next season.

I'm a bit blue these days because it's almost time for Nut and I to say our farewells. I'll return to the states, visit family, then head north to Kachemak Country for the summer months. This is always a bittersweet time. We've been hanging together for four years now and I still feel lucky to have her in my life. There's excitement ahead and maybe even a few adventures but I'll be solo and I'll miss her.

I've been busy. Too busy to blog, almost too busy to answer emails. Mapping on OpenStreetMap (OSM) has become an obsession and takes up almost all my time. The deeper I get into it the more time I invest. I am still thrilled to be able to contribute to something I see as incredibly worthwhile and that fits so well with my own aptitudes and interests. At the same time, like all addictions, it has its down side: I sit in front of the computer for way too many hours every day. I take breaks for tennis, meals together with Nut, an occasional movie or TV show and sleep but otherwise stay busy with the mapping. Nut thinks I'm crazy. She asks, "Who pays you to do this?" Nobody, I say. She only shakes her head and walks away. And who knows? Maybe she's right.

Naturally, I've invested considerable energy working on Thailand because I live here eight months of the year. But lately I've been doing a lot of work on Alaska projects. As big as Alaska is and as interesting geographically there are very few people mapping it. Consequently, vast areas are empty of details and the highways and geographic features that are present often aren't very accurate. Yes, I know, many people use Google Maps and are happy with them. I was totally captivated by Google Earth for years. But Google controls the use of Google Maps and has a tight copyright grip on every aspect of them. This goes against my grain and is one reason I embrace the open source software movement. OpenStreetMap is, needless to say, a completely open source project and whomever wants to use the data we gather and organize can do so with no questions asked. I like that. I am quite sure that OSM will eventually come to replace proprietary maps, Garmin maps come to mind immediately, the way Wikipedia has replaced conventional encyclopedias, and for the very same reasons — rapid updates and solid factual knowledge supplied by an intelligent and highly motivated user community — and the data is completely free with no strings attached.

In the past few months I've mapped Adak Island, completely reworking the streets in Adak town and most of the gravel roads north of the city, enhanced the Denali, Parks, and Richardson highways as well as the Nenana River, enhanced portions of the Copper River, added hundreds of lakes and a canoe trail to the Swanson River area north of Soldotna, and spent a ton of time adding details to the southern Kenai Peninsula and the mountains across the bay from Homer. One of my first projects was fixing up and adding names to the roads in the City of Homer and out East End Road, a project that was mostly finished last year but which I still return to now and then.

I also spent a bit of time adding information to the Yasawa Island group in Fiji, a place I visited in 2009 and about which have some useful knowledge. Another favorite haunt is the Adirondacks in northern New York State. Hiking there in the 60s helped develop a love of wilderness areas that eventually resulted in my move to Alaska n 1983. So now I am mapping those mountains from my armchair, as it were, using aerial imagery and information gleaned from the Internet. Lately I've been adding hiking trails, lakes, streams and the locations of Adirondack shelters, called lean-tos, to the High Peaks Region and the Northville-Placid Trail. I will probably never backpack there again but I will always love that forested eastern country and enjoy adding to the map of it.

My mapping work will continue until I grow tired of it, or find something else to fascinate me and absorb my attention. I don't see that happening any time soon and there is just so much to do. Because I'll be in Alaska soon, I reckon I'll continue mapping there and might even talk myself into a trip over the Denali highway to witness in person once again the incredible majesty of the Alaska outback.
(Oct 15, 2014 : I made the Denali Highway trip in July. Read about that here.)

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This winter was busy for other reasons too. We had visitors, many visitors, some from Homer, some friends of friends and one from Oregon, my son Tuli, who came over for two weeks in February. And of course, I bought a new motorcycle last August so we made quite a few tours around the country. I didn't blog about all of them because frankly I don't think writing about yet another motorcycle trip makes very interesting reading for most people. But I do want to include some photos of a few of the more memorable moments of 2014.

Homer friends Tracy and Olga came to Chiang Mai in early January. As always, I suggested renting a scooter so they could get around. But Tracy has a bike in Homer and immediately opted to rent a CB500X like mine. We did some great rides with them and took them to a few of our favorite restaurants where they caught me up with Homer events and gossip. Here we are riding the Samoeng Loop. DC was nearby and he joined us at the Wawee Coffee shop on Route 1096.

Me and Nut with Homer friends DC, Tracy and Olga

Later in the week, intrepid world traveler and Alaska neighbors Sally-O and her son Alex stopped in Chiang Mai for a few days. They were on a big trip — to India, Laos, Cambodia, New Zealand and god knows where else. That gal gets around.

Sally-O and Alex visit Chiang Mai

We, Nut, Daniel and I, took a trip to coffee country later in January visiting the Doi Chang and Wawi districts north of here. The weather was cold in the mornings (7°C, 38°F) and Nut was beside herself trying to stay warm. I caught this photo of her actually sitting in the sun, possibly for the first time in her life, and drinking coffee too. She's not a coffee drinker and hates being in the sun. The cold weather must have made her a little crazy.

Nut catching some rays — Ban Doi Chang

Nut checking out the "cherry blossoms" along the road to Ban Wawi

View of tea plantations and poinsettias — Ban Lao Lee

And then Tuli arrived. Years ago, just after he had graduated from high school, I had this fantasy of someday making a trip together. It never happened. The years flew by and he's a grown man now with a child of his own. It had often occurred to me that Thailand would make an ideal getaway vacation and a way to fulfill that travel fantasy, so when I floated the idea of a visit to Thailand, he jumped at it. He loves Thai food and has been hearing about Thailand from me for years, so ... We were able to set him up with an apartment in our building for the whole two weeks he was here. It was very convenient, and being Thailand, very cheap.

I knew we'd want to travel on motorcycles and Tuli had never ridden one before. I wanted to start him off slow — riding Nut's Click and after a while, when I was sure he was ready, maybe move him up to a Honda PCX. Well, he loved riding right away. Being the car and driving enthusiast he is I knew he'd like motorcycling but he really liked it. The Click was definitely too small for his 6'4' frame so the next day we rented a Honda CBR250. That bike too was derided as being "too damn small" and he started pushing to rent a bike like mine.

Whoa! I said, my fatherly instincts taking over. "That's too much bike for a beginner. I don't want you to get killed over here!" But he had already ridden my bike, loved it, and thought he could handle it. After a lot of hemming and hawing I finally let myself relax about the idea and, as it turned out, his riding went extremely well. As we were saddling up for a trip to Nan I said to him, "Now, don't feel you have to keep up with me. Ride your own ride. Don't take any chances, etc., etc."

Long story short: before too many miles he was passing me. He took to motorcycling like a duck to water. We did quite a bit of riding that week. We had company for part of it, Homer friends Phil and Al, and our good neighbor Daniel.

Tuli and me at Lake Phayao

On the road to Nan 

Coffee break with Danny, Phil and Al — R101 Pua

Tuli on the CB500X at Nan

We had a ball. I think it's fair to say Tuli loved Thailand and that he'll want to come back. I hope he does.

I was gonna waffle on about tennis because I have lucked into a coaching situation there that is pretty damn cool, but I'll save that for another post. Right now I'm packing for my return and for what should turn out to be an interesting side trip, a 12-day visit to Austria, where I'll ride a bit of the famous Danube Bike Path. I start in Passau, Germany, on the 12th and will bike, as in ride a bicycle, about 230 miles to Vienna over a period of 8 days. I booked the entire trip though a tour outfit called Eurobike. They will put me up in 4-star hotels along the way and schlepp my luggage so I can travel light, as light as a 240 lb, 70 year-old geezer can be, on the bike. I picked this trip for several reasons but perhaps the most important of those were that I'll be following the Danube downstream and, unless rivers can flow uphill, my journey should be all downhill. Plus, the prevailing wind is from west to east so, if I'm lucky, any wind should be at my back. My 1600 mile bike trip in New Zealand 10 years ago made me promise myself never to attempt to ride a heavily loaded bike again, and especially not in hilly terrain.

I'll let you now how that trip turns out.

Motorcycling in northern Thailand - Mae Hong Son Loop

We've been doing a bit of traveling during the past few weeks. The weather is sublime, the roads beckoning to be driven, the scenery begging for oohs and aahs from those lucky enough to be seeing it from the seat of a motorcycle. The dry season is well under way now and this beautiful part of the world is at it's prime.

Nut and I wanted to revisit a well known national park, Thung Bua Tong, southwest of here to see the gorgeous sunflower fields while the blooms were at their peak. We just missed them when we visited there in 2011, arriving after most of the flowers were finished. We decided to ride the famous Mae Hong Son loop as long as we were over that way. We did this trip with an American expat couple we met a few months ago, Bruce and Kathleen. They ride a big Honda Forza, a 300cc automatic cruiser that looks a bit like a scooter on steroids. Its huge seat makes riding 2-up easy and comfy.

We made the 600 km circuit in clockwise fashion: Chiangmai to Mae Hong Son to Pai and back to Chiangmai. The first leg took us from Chiang Mai to Doi Inthanaon and Mae Chaem where we stopped for lunch. The ride up and over Doi Inthanon's spine is always fun and up at that altitude, always cool. We turned off onto the 1192 just before the summit. If you click on the photo below to view it full size you can see the royal pagodas near Inthanon's 8,000 ft summit, the highest in Thailand. Also just discernible in the lower left is Mae Pan Waterfall.

View north to Doi Inthanon from R 1192

The highways beyond Mae Chaem, the 1088 north and the 1263 west to Khun Yuam, are choppy and in some places severely potholed. Although the surroundings are beautiful I couldn't really take my eyes off the road. That's the one drawback about motorcycle touring. It's a bad idea to allow yourself to be distracted in any way, scenery or whatever, and when the roads are bad it's even more important to keep completely focused.

We overnighted in Khun Yuam at a place that's been around for many years, the Ban Farang Guesthouse. The accommodations were adequate but the bungalows tiny with barely enough room for the bed and a TV stand. There are several new guesthouses being built and once they're up and running the choice of hotels will be improved significantly. After a fantastic, farang style breakfast and excellent lattes at the Peekmail Restaurant on R 108 just south of the town center, we were off to see the sunflowers.

Sunflower fields at Thung Bua Tong National Park

Bruce and Kathleen and their Forza

We took a short ride up the มส 4009 beyond the park and I was again struck by the beauty of Thailand's rice fields. Late November is harvest time for rice. The harvesting is still mostly done by hand and we saw many fields with people wielding short hand scythes or gathering sheaves of cut rice stalks which were then carried to the roadside. In some fields we saw workers hand threshing the rice from the stalks by beating the sheaves on a collection mat. It must be hot, dusty work.

Rural homestead - Route มส 4009

On the way back we stopped at an overlook that offered a view of the sunflowers and mountains to the south that I just had to grab.

After gawking at the flower studded hills we headed back to Khun Yuam to pick up the 108 for the short hop north to Mae Hong Son. I drove this stretch of highway years ago during my first visit to Thailand but had forgotten how beautiful it was and what great motorcycling it offered. We cruised right along through the jaw dropping scenery only stopping for coffee about midway, and for this quick snapshot of the heavily forested mountains east of the highway.

The tourist season is underway presently and accommodations in Mae Hong Son were spotty. We hunted around for a while looking for an affordable room (i.e., under $25/night) and ended up staying at a resort that was adequate but nothing special. Of course I was busy in the evenings adding details to the OSM map of northern Thailand. Although this town and Pai, our next stop, are immensely popular tourist destinations there is no aerial imagery coverage with which to help sketch in their roads and residential streets. If I wanted to expand the map I would have to drive every street in town with GPS and camera. I was planning to do that but after a full day on the bike just couldn't summon up the energy. Some other day maybe.

Next day we were off early on our way to Pai. Again, I had quite forgotten how spectacular the mountain scenery is along this stretch of the loop.

The road just traveled - below us the 1095 winds its way upward

Another beautiful day with my beautiful girl

Bruce & Kathleen

 We arrived in Pai towards afternoon and were lucky to get two bungalows at my favorite guesthouse there, Ta Yai. We had time to visit Pai Canyon and the Chinese village west of the town, where we also ate dinner. Pai was crowded with tourists, both Thai and farangs. I made one solo mapping run and was impressed by the sheer number of guest houses, resorts and cafes lining every highway and byway. Even a few short years ago, it was hard to find a decent coffee shop that served quality espressos. Now, they're literally everywhere up north, and not only in Pai. Thailand has a burgeoning coffee growing industry and the delicious, mountain-grown Arabica is driving the spread of these cafes.

At the "Chinese Village" outside of Pai

Next day we were off to Chiang Mai. Although this section of the loop is also very scenic, it's heavily used during the tourist season and that makes it not as much fun. The road is bumpy and has some hellacious switchbacks to negotiate. Numerous mini-vans and other tourist traffic, not to mention hordes of crazy motorcyclists day tripping out of Chiang Mai, increase the risk of an accident. I was glad to leave the hills behind as we jetted along to Pankred Coffee where we lunched and coffee-ed up for the rest of the ride home on the mellow 3009.

Thus ended another fantastic ride in Thailand's Lanna Kingdom.

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Addenda:

GPX files :
Day 1 - Chiang Mai to Khun Yuam - 1009, 1152, 1088, 1263
(Note: We had to double back on the 1263 for a short distance to visit the park before going north to Mae Hong Son. I've included two gpx files below, one with the side trip, the other is the direct route to Mae Hong Son along R 108.)
Day 2 - Khun Yuam to Mae Hong Son (direct) - Route 108
Day 2 - Khun Yuam to Mae Hong Son plus Thung Bua Tong sidetrip
Day 3 - Mae Hong Son to Pai - R 1095
Day 4 - Pai to Chiang Mai - R 1095, 3009

Click on the file link and select Download from beneath the cleverly hidden "More" menu (those three blue dots), at the top right of the resulting page, browse to a folder or your desktop where you want to place the file and click on the Save button. You can open them with Google Earth or any other application that can display GPX files.

Recent photographs : Wat Phrabhuthabat Si Roi

I recently posted a few of the photos that appear in this post on Facebook but I wanted to include them here as part of a story of how they came to be. Then too, they can be viewed in a larger size and higher quality here than on Facebook, which compresses them severely to fit on its Timeline.

Most of these were taken a couple of weeks ago on what turned out to be a longish ride to a hilltop temple. Nut enjoys visiting temples she's heard about but never had a chance to visit. Often she'll say to me from the "back seat" as we pass a sign about a Wat Something-Or-Other, "Oh, that's the road to Wat Something-Or-Other. I've always wanted to see that one. Can we go?"

Now, I will admit that my first thought is often, what, another temple? But before that thought is vocalized and knowing that she has led me to other sights and scenes I wouldn't have enjoyed otherwise, I usually say, "Sure, honey. Let's take a look." That's how we ended up at the temple with the almost unpronounceable name of Wat Phrabhuthabat Si Roi. (prah-boo-ta-baat'-see-roy) We were on our way home from a coffee ride, driving along Route 3009 (I blogged about that road earlier here), when she pointed to a small concrete lane off to the right, a road that went west and up, and up, and then up some more, to the temple that was situated, as are many of these wats, near the top of a heavily wooded mountain. (The Wat is at 1000 m. or 3400 ft above sea level — coordinates: N19.01658 E98.76222). It was cool and cloudy and the thick jungle had trapped some mist at the higher altitudes which lent a somewhat ominous look to the narrow lane that day. Throw in a few hairpin turns with near 20% grades and I found myself driving with all my senses focused on the narrow road ahead. I ogled the scenery afterward, on the way back down ;-)

It was well worth the side trip because this wat is spectacular! Not surprisingly, people drive long distances and come from all over Thailand to see it. We chatted with a woman and her daughter who had flown from Bangkok, rented a car, and then drove the 50 or so kilometers from their Chiang Mai hotel just to see this wat.

The Wat Phrabhuthabat Si Roi

Ceiling detail

As with all photographs in this blog, you may click on them to open in a new window where they will display in a much larger size.

We looked around for quite a while taking pictures and making notes for the mapping I would inevitably do back at home. By the time we left it was starting to get dark. I lingered along the road back to get some pictures in the fading light. The clouds were gorgeous and the sun was setting, ideal conditions for some dramatic photos. The road is lined with rain forest and jungle except for a few spots that open out onto the nicely tended farm fields and orchards which you see below.

Farm and orchards

View east toward Ping River Valley from an elevation of 2500 ft

The CB500X on the road to the Wat

Farms in the jungle

Another view east to the Ping River Valley

My favorite - the Ping River Valley again

The following are from another visit to the same Wat. We took our friend and neighbor, Daniel, along for the ride this time. Again, on the way home and just before the sun dropped behind the mountains I got this nice shot.

Rice and sun - Ping River Valley

Here's Nut and Daniel patiently waiting for me to finish up my photographic shenanigans.

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Addenda:

GPX file : Route 3009 and the road to the Wathe road to the Wat

Click on the file link and select Download from beneath the cleverly hidden "More" menu (those three blue dots), at the top right of the resulting page, browse to a folder or your desktop where you want to place the file and click on the Save button. You can open them with Google Earth or any other application that can display GPX files.

Here's a screenshot to help you locate the area we visited. The actual road to the wat is only about 12 miles in length but seems a lot longer because it's so narrow and curvy:

OSM Mapping in Thailand

I ran across an interesting dilemma during a rural ride the other day that highlights one of the problems with mapping in Thailand, a country that has an alphabet and language as unlike English as any you're likely to encounter, and whose rural inhabitants seldom use route numbers or even maps for that matter. Being an American, a map lover, and something of a detail freak I want the work I do and the descriptors ("tags" in OSM parlance) of the data I gather to be accurate regardless of whether or not Thais use those route numbers. This means that issues like the one I'm about to describe drive me crazy.

For some reason I enjoy adding mile marker locations to the OSM (Open Street Map) of Thailand. I've even developed a "tagging preset" for use inside the JOSM editor (an OSM map editor) that allows me to add data about them in a consistent manner. Maybe this fascination comes from my earlier use of USGS Topographical maps which had carefully located benchmarks inscribed on the maps of my favorite haunt in those days, New York State's Adirondack Mountains. We don't see such markers very often in the states but here in Thailand they're fairly common and I enjoy discovering and mapping them, especially when they add or correct information about route numbers in the OSM.

Mile marker — Thailand R 1157

At any rate, we were driving on Thailand 1157 north of Lampang. I was taking photos of various points of interest for addition to the OSM later when I spotted a concrete mile marker on an intersecting road. I pulled over to snap a photo. To my surprise there was not one but two mile markers, one on either side of the pavement, and they designated the highway with two different route numbers.

Rural road: ลป 4010 Rural road: ลป 4015

I recently learned from some other mappers that Thailand has been changing route numbers on its road system for some time and I apparently happened upon one of those changes that is either in process and not completed or just plain forgotten about. Notice that the marker for ลป 4010 seems to be newer. Well, there was also a nice, new, unambiguous sign directly in front of the ลป 4010 marker that designates the highway as ลป 4015. Thus the highway is tagged as a tertiary highway with the designation ลป 4015.

As an aside FYI, the notation ลป 4010 implies (Rural Highway) Lampang 4010 where the "ลป" is an approximate abbreviation for Lampang,  the province within which the road lies. The intersection is in the center of this OSM screen: intersection 1157 and ลป 4015. You may also view it in Google Earth by plugging in these coordinates: N18.47403 E99.46708. The prefix ชม (for CM) appears on all rural highways in Chiang Mai Province.

There are many cases in which it is virtually impossible to transliterate Thai into English and vice-versa. The repercussions of this fact permeate all mapping, all reading actually, in Thailand. Here's an example. The small city I live in, Chang Phuak, is a suburb of Chiang Mai whose name can be spelled several ways. In Thai it is ช้างเผือก. (Note the absence of spaces.) Transliterating first syllable is fairly straightforward: the ช้ represents a sound we can approximate with "ch", the ง with "ng" while the า is a vowel marker that indicates an "ah" sound which produces the English equivalent chang. The two syllables (เผือก) comprising the second part are tricky and illustrates what I'm talking about. The character ผ would translate as a "pah" sound if it were unmodified. But it is not. The little "hat" which, along with the "เ", is a Thai vowel marker and represents a sound we simply do not have in English. Not even close. I can (very) roughly approximate it by using the phoneme "eiuuw" as when a teenager expresses dislike for something icky.

As if that isn't bad enough, there is a common convention when transliterating Thai to English that places an "h" after certain consonants to indicate a hard sound. The Ph in Phuak indicates that the "p" is sounded plosively, like the "p" in pound. If pronounced with a soft "ph" as in philosophy it would be incorrect. So, after all that we end up with p-eiuuw-ak! How does one represent that sound in English?

Consequently there are many ways to spell Chang Phuak: Chang Phuak, Chang Phuek, Chang Phueak, Chang Puak, and variations. In addition, there are no spaces between Thai words (ช้างเผือก) so another Thai-like spelling has it Changphuak, etc. Anyway, the upshot of all this is that if you're a speaker of English searching for a place name in Thailand, for example on your GPS receiver, you're probably not going to find it. And Google Translate, so efficient at translating German, French and Spanish, absolutely mangles even the simplest Thai. Would-be mappers surely have their work cut out for them.

Here's another story involving mile markers. We took a wonderful ride to the east the other day to the Kiew Ko Ma Reservoir over some small but scenic rural roads. I had earlier added the reservoir to OSM by tediously tracing the Bing imagery using over 4,000 points for its amoeba-like outline and wanted to see it in the flesh, so to speak. We first drove to Doi Saket and then took rural route ชม 4074 over the spine of the Khun Tan mountain range (GE screen shot below) whereupon we entered the province of Lampang. It's slow going on the narrow, curvy road but there are waterfalls aplenty and the forest is cool, dark, and beautiful.

Chiang Mai Rural Route ชม 4074

Nut and the CB500X on ลป 4329

Google Earth view SW toward Chiang Mai over the 4879 ft pass
Our GPS track is in blue - highest peak about 6000 ft

After the pass, the road continues but there are no route signs. Someone early on designated this highway ลป 4329, then changed it to unclassified. I changed it back but now am having second thoughts. Although paved for its entire length, this is a truly rural road — there are several places where it fords streams! — but it is unmarked. Designating it with that number would be pure guesswork on my part.

Lampang Rural Route ลป 4329 (or not?)

We did eventually see a few ancient mile markers but the lettering on them was mostly unreadable and offered no clue as to the designation of the road. The marker below, left is  typical of what we saw. However, the one on the right has the Thai characters รพช (in English: RPC) embossed in the cement.

Unreadable mile marker รพช marker

Nut made a few calls to relatives and from them we learned this stands for Rengrat Pattana Chonabot, (เร่งรัดพัฒนาชนบท) and designates rural projects that were instigated by the king for the benefit of the local people during a 1960s push for rapid rural development, in general called pattana chonabot. The roads were never intended to be high speed thoroughfares but rather to provide basic infrastructure to help Thailand become more competitive in the global marketplace. Another area that was impacted by royal projects in this vein is irrigation. Rice is a very thirsty crop, so Thailand has literally thousands of dams, reservoirs and power projects. Maybe the Kiew Ko Ma Dam is part of a pattana chonabat imperative?

Nut astride the CB500X at the Kiew Ko Ma Dam

We visited the reservoir and drove home on Thailand Route 1252, a sorry excuse for a major highway. The pavement is good in spots, broken and potholed in others. But again, the reward was in the scenery. Here is a shot looking northwest as the sun was going low in the sky.

View from R 1252 near dusk

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Addenda:

GPX files of these trips : Lampang Loop | Kiew Ko Ma Reservoir

Right click on the file link and select Save As from the menu that appears, browse to a folder or your desktop to download the file(s). You can open them with Google Earth or any other application that can read GPX files.

The Thai phrase เร่งรัด พัฒนา ชนบท literally means "rapid rural development". It's abbreviated รพช as discussed above. I inserted the spaces for easier reading ;-)

OSM map of Kiew Ko Ma Reservoir (opens in your browser)


<presets xmlns="http://josm.openstreetmap.de/tagging-preset-1.0">
  <item name="Milemarker" type="node">
    <label text="Tagging for a Milestone" />
   <text key="description:en" text="Description" default="Kilometer Zero Milestone" delete_if_empty="true" />
    <key key="highway" value="milestone" />
    <text key="ref" text="ref" default="" delete_if_empty="true"  />
   <text key="distance" text="Distance" default="" delete_if_empty="true" />
   <text key="inscription:en" text="Inscription" default="" delete_if_empty="true" />
   <text key="inscription:th" text="(Thai?) " default="" delete_if_empty="true" />
    <key key="source" value="GPS;geolocated photo;Bing" />
  </item>
</presets>