No Reservations
This story was published in Nikkei Asia here.
Despite being only a stone's throw from the border, I was pretty sure that the lakeside village was still in Thailand, which left me at a loss as to why everything looked and sounded so foreign. Even the name, Baan Rak Thai, translated as “the village that loves Thailand”, implying that the place itself had some kind of separate nationality.
A bit of online sleuthing soon revealed the intriguing answer: what I had stumbled upon was actually a bizarre, living relic of the Chinese Civil War. As Mao Zedong’s forces swept towards victory in the late 1940s, the Chinese Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang, were forced to retreat to Taiwan. But what was much less well-known, at least to me, was that a small contingent of them - known as the Lost Army - also got cut off in the rugged southwest of China. They were then forced to retreat over the border with Burma and eventually also crossed a second frontier to arrive here in Northern Thailand. At this point they decided that enough was enough and made it their new home, trading in their rifles for hoes and taking up tea cultivation. They created a culturally-distinct enclave that their descendants keep alive to this day, as the Chinese signs, tea houses and red lanterns all around me now proudly paid testament to.
My arrival here was purely by chance, an accidental discovery that was, I felt, a ringing endorsement of my new policy of traveling with no reservations. Admittedly I’d adopted this modus operandi by necessity rather than choice, having repeatedly postponed my festive season travel planning until the season itself had already arrived. With all airline and bus seats full, my only option for escape from Bangkok had been to depart under my own steam, so I strapped my bags onto the back of my motorcycle and hit the highway out of the city, with only the distinctly vague “northern Thailand” as my destination and not a single night’s hotel booking to my name. But at least I’d saved myself the countless hours that normally would have been spent weighing up alternative itineraries and getting bogged down in endless reviews.
A couple of days’ riding later, somewhere north of Chiang Mai, the name “Pai” on a road sign rang a bell. I remembered reading about this remote tropical hilltop Shangri La in an old magazine some time back and so quickly decided that I would now go to spend a couple of nights there. No doubt it was once exactly as described in the article I’d recalled - right before it was published that is. What I instead now rode into was a buzzing hive of foreign backpackers, overflowing with bubble-tea shops and hipster cafes touting the “Pai High”, courtesy of Thailand's recent relaxation of restrictions on cannabis use. Its teeming streets were the polar opposite of what I was looking for but, thankfully, with no reservations pinning me down I was free to just gun the throttle and continue on through and right out the other side.
I resolved to now just take the smallest, most scenic roads I could find in the hope of ending up somewhere delightful that no other foreigner had yet written about. I motored on through hills, forests and rice paddies until the road eventually petered out at the Burmese border just before sunset, presenting me with exactly what I’d been looking for: the glorious enigma that is Baan Rak Thai, a place I never would have found in any guidebook.
After a couple of delightful days there, I continued on and reached a national park, with promises of peace, quiet, and fresh mountain air. But as I followed the narrow road in, I discovered that most of the rest of Thailand had already had the same idea. Every camping spot was jam-packed with tents pitched guy rope to guy rope, new neighbours sharing snacks or engaging in impromptu games of badminton. This blatantly violated the sacred pact of camping as far as I was concerned - the sacrifice of standard essentials such as running water and a comfy bed in return for peace, solitude, and an absolute zero risk of unplanned group activities. Thankfully, I managed to find a small cottage to bed down in for the night instead.
I set out early the next morning to ensure that I finally got some alone time watching the sun rise from the highest peak in the park (and in fact in the whole of Thailand), Doi Inthanon. I should note at this point that its summit rises to only 2,500 metres, making it rather modest by conventional mountaineering standards, and that there is also a road going all the way up to the top. Nevertheless, I was still feeling quite adventurous as I loaded my bike up in the dark at 4 a.m. Snaking upwards through the jungle, I caught glimpses of red lights through the trees ahead and presumed I was approaching a temple or a ranger station. But as I rounded the next corner, I instead found myself at the end of a huge traffic jam, tail lights twinkling like misplaced Christmas baubles all the way up the mountain.
Cursing, I weaved my way skyward through the gridlock to arrive at the top half an hour later, shuddering in now overly fresh mountain air. Determined to still find a peaceful spot to watch the break of dawn, I headed down a promising little path that looked like it could lead to a decent vantage point. As the first light started to penetrate the morning mist, I also heard a waterfall up ahead - things were really starting to look up. However, once again, my senses had deceived me: the mist revealed itself to be cooking smoke and the falling water to be the sound of sizzling. My quaint little path led not to a secluded viewpoint but rather to a clearing where a couple of dozen improvised stalls were merrily hawking an eclectic assortment of Thai treats to hungry fellow pilgrims, from pork belly stew to curried fish custard.
I stood shivering, out of ideas and almost of curses, then heard someone calling out to me. I turned round to politely refuse whatever delicacy they were proffering but instead found a portly middle-aged lady waving me over from behind her charcoal grill, miming that I should come to warm my shaking hands over it. I felt my heart already beginning to melt at her kindness.
My new friend offered an infectious laugh as she helped me toast my palms and I repaid her charity by helping to cajole potential customers to eat at her stall. I got chatting with a few of them and remarked what fine spirits everyone was in despite the foul weather and the near-zero visibility meaning that we’d all schlepped up there in vain. People were joking about our common predicament as they snacked, chatted, and savoured the rare experience of actually feeling cold in Thailand. A decent percentage of them had decided to mark such a special occasion by dressing up in furry animal "onesies" - I spotted cats, dogs, pandas, crocodiles, and even a unicorn. As the only foreigner up there, I was requested to guest star in a number of group selfies and soon forgot about the amazing view and glorious solitude I'd been anticipating, instead finding myself revelling in the kind of spontaneous group activities that I would normally run a mile from.
That’s not to say that I didn’t also discover downsides to my complete lack of planning for the trip. For example, a fruitless search for a hotel room on Christmas Day led to me eventually being billeted in what looked suspiciously like a storeroom. Then a foray down a side road in search of some photogenic Shan villages turned into a six-hour odyssey as the road morphed into a dried-up riverbed and got me lost deep in the jungle, requiring some friendly local hunters to get me back on the right track.
But as I dropped off my bike in Chiang Mai to be trucked home at the end of my adventure and boarded the sleeper train back to Bangkok myself, I concluded that the upsides of no reservations still far outweighed the downsides. The real unspoiled gems were not going to jump out of Google or a guidebook; instead they had to be discovered through serendipity. And my preconceptions about places - and even my own preferences - were clearly wildly unreliable, meaning I needed to go see for myself if something was really my cup of tea. The beauty of no reservations was that, if it was, then I was free to stay as long as I fancied and, if it wasn’t, well then I could just move straight on. Such an approach also meant that I spent much more time doing rather than planning or anticipating, so I was actually enjoying the here and now.
As I walked down the line of bunks in the train carriage, it dawned on me that Thailand is quite the perfect place for this kind of serendipitous travel, thanks to its inherent flexibility and sociability - a verdict that was immediately confirmed by the warm greeting I received from the smiling Thai couple lodged next to me. I climbed into my berth and snuggled up to watch the world glide by outside my window. Then, as a hand appeared through my curtain offering me a piece of dried mango, I realised I might even come around to the idea of communal camping too.
