Day T12: Bai Nai? Bai Pai!

January 31, 2025

I woke up to the most gorgeous 360 view.

The location of these chalets was absolutely prime! It's called Head Above Clouds for a reason. Rocking into this place late last night in the pitch dark, you would never know how beautiful the view would be in the morning. The woman at the food center at the roadside, more like a makeshift convenience store, used a translator app last night to sell me on the place. "Do you need a place to sleep? Why not here. It's got gorgeous 360 degree views of all the mountains and only cost 500 baht. I'll give you the VIP villa room." Who could turn down an offer like that.

It was also apparent that nobody comes up here during peak season, and this was truly the road less traveled. It made all the effort worthwhile to pick this route and commit to it. There were several times, believe me, when I thought of backing out and heading back to Chiang Mai. But persistence paid off. This route was nothing short of spectacular despite all the steep climbs.

The view was so beautiful and I was soaking up the sun despite the freezing cold last night. The winds were howling and it got below 10 degrees. Locals were all bundled up in hoodie jackets but here I was in Tshirts and shorts of course. Despite all that and the fact I lost $2000 in the markets last night, I was not bothered by it and just enjoyed the biking and everything about this transformative trip.

The loss happened due to futures trading and my not understanding about first notice date. The way this works, the broker will close your positions a day *before* first notice date which is a month before contract expiration. The position was closed at the worst timing hence the realized loss. Watching this happen was painful but it was regarded as tuition fee. I can trade stocks and options with ease but futures are by far the most difficult. Given time I will master these too.

With much discussion on ChatGPT about all this, I resolved to be more conservative with futures and thus resort to scalping methods. This means when you make a profit target, say $100-150, then you cut the position and don't get greedy for more. This also ties into the warmup goals for me to make $500 doing this.

The reason for all this stricter risk management is simply realizing that I could spend an entire day on the bike in these hinterlands spending only 700 baht, or around $20 and yet lose $2000 in the markets the same day. In this perspective, it is staggering. That's literally 100 days of biking while spending this much. Absolutely mind blowing to think of it like this. Then again, money in the markets needs to be mentally seperated from money that I actually use on a trip. But this really changes the game.

Trying to not let this affect my trip, I went on down to the food place and ordered a whole bunch of buns for breakfast, as well as various other snacks and drinks. The woman running the place gave me free strawberries as well. It was around 10am and with 85km to Pai, mostly downhill, I figured the ride wouldn't be as difficult as yesterday.

That turned out to be true more or less, but the fast paced downhills and screaming around curves was short lived. Every time the hills bottomed out, another steep climb would resume. This went on and on for countless times. It was quite exhausting especially when the temperature started to climb quickly. This whole thing reminded me of shorting stocks in the markets. The goal is you *want* things to go down, in this case the hills on the bike or the price of the stock. But there all these uphill counter-rallies that are super annoying and yet they have to be ridden out. It was good to know that on the biking today for every 100 meters of uphill there would be 200 meters of downhill so it was making the right trend overall.

The highlight involved a coffee shop with a bench facing a ravine overlooking a ridge. This view was magnificent, and the owner insisted I sit there. I could see the outline of the ridge where the road would eventually follow. That coffee stop was so nice I wish it would never end. It reminded me of a past trip, I think in 2015, where I did the Mae Hong Song loop (the real one) and enjoyed a coffee like this. But now, this one was even better!

Sure enough, the road followed that ridge and eventually descended a little to a crossroads town where I had a proper lunch stop. Some locals got out of a pickup truck and introduced themselves to me.

At that point the road started to widen out and it was 56km to Pai after the turnoff. But there was yet more climbing. More and more people kept on giving the thumbs up. There was even a driver in a truck who held a bottle of water up and insisted I take it. The couple just smiled and laughed then drove off. No doubt they thought I was mad, but the water was greatly appreciated.

The road kept on trending down with all these counter up-trends but eventually I was on the home stretch to Pai. Around 5km out a young woman from England was walking in the middle of nowhere and she picked up a puppy. She explained that she wanted to take the puppy home but it was too far to walk. How I wish I had a motorbike and I could have picked them both up, but what can you do on a bicycle. I wished her a good day and she had to leave the dog behind. Why she was out there walking around in the middle of nowhere, who knows, but at least it meant it wasn't much further to Pai.

After the main turnoff, holy moly, an explosion of foreigners appeared. Even the stops about 2-3km out had quite a few of them. There was also a sawngtaew full of people who just came back from 'tipsy tubing'. Think Vang Vieng all over again but apparently here in Pai it's limited to just Tuesday and Friday in the afternoons.

Once in Pai town I met up with Jen and another friend. She had just seen her partner off, well, for good at the Chiang Mai airport and had gotten back in a minivan. She introduced me to a new friend and we all hit it off great. Early I had told her that I wanted to get rid of this bike, i.e. sell it, and I had a contact ready in Chiang Mai to buy it. But just in case we could sell the Montague in Pai, even better.

The problem is that it was peak of the peak season and good luck finding any hotels or guesthouses. It was absolutely slam packed, and the cheapest thing I could find was $50 if it wasn't even sold out already. Jen had warned me about this earlier. We agreed the best course of action was to leave the bike at her friend's place then chat for hours with coffee and snacks. After that, her friend knew about a guesthouse I could stay for free since someone had paid for a long stay and just left town unexpected. So I got on the back of this guy's scooter and that was that.

We also did a quick walk around Pai first and I was astonished by how much the place had changed. It was completely unrecognizable. I don't know if it was the sheer number of younger farang or all the weed shops, or the vibes, or who knows what. But this place was absolutely buzzing and packed. Last time I remember it as just one street with a traffic light as you come in. Now it was a whole lot more. It all felt very disorienting especially having come in through the Samoeng backroads.

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