Picking up our rental car from Chiang Mai Airport

The fact that my phone announced “the GPS signal has been lost” before we even left the rental car center should have been a harbinger for things to come. I wasn’t in a position to appropriately heed the foreshadowing because all of my attention was focused on determining what differences I’d need to anticipate in a country where they drive on the other side of the road than I’m accustomed to.

The first give away, that I would think would make rental car companies reconsider renting to foreigners, is when you get into the driver’s seat and notice that they have put the steering wheel in front of the passenger seat. True, this would work ideally if you were driving with someone who likes to call out all the things you should be doing, but in this case, it was all on me to navigate the difference

After walking around the car and getting into the correct seat, I began to explore the other peculiarities. My rear view mirror would have to be adjusted with my left hand; My driver’s side mirror was to my right; and the shifter was to my left. Fortunately, I had rented an automatic, but I still wondered if first gear would be in the top left or top right position on the stick shift for a car with a standard transmission.There was a moment of panic as I wondered if the gas and brake pedals were also reversed. Fortunately, they were not.

Before pulling away, I reached back to strap in my seat belt but it was nowhere to be found, since I was looking over my left shoulder to find it. I guess it only made practical sense to place it over the right shoulder, in this case, as that was the closest attachment to the car frame.

I pulled forward slowly to enter the road outside the car rental center and signaled my intention to turn right by turning on my windshield wipers. Apparently, the turn signals and the wipers are also reversed in Thailand. After making sure my windshield was clean, I used my right hand to activate the turn indicator.

I find the thing I have to concentrate on most, when driving in a country that uses the opposite side of the road then my own, is entering a road from a parking lot. Every instinct is to look left since, in my country, the closer oncoming traffic is coming from the left. Not only do you have to train yourself to look right first, but you also have to remember to look left before pulling into the opposite lane.

Driving to Doi Inthanon National Park

Once you get on the road, things become a lot easier. You basically just stay in your lane and drive straight until you have to make another turn. Occasionally, I’ll have to remember to move to the left hand lane in order to let faster cars pass, but you really have to be careful because, in Asia, that lane is primarily used for slower moving scooters and bus stops.

Things got a lot easier once we left town and got on the highway to Doi Inthanon national park. We’d left early because I wanted plenty of time to visit the temple on top of the world. It certainly has that feel since you are looking down on clouds from 8400 feet. It’s one of the few places in Thailand where you can need a jacket during the day. I was also surprised to see many plants from my native Oregon such as rhododendrons, hydrangeas, camellias, and even flowering cabbage plants.

By the time we finished exploring the park, I figured it was time to make our way towards our hotel. Google maps had indicated it was about a 2 hour drive even though it was only 36 miles. I failed to appreciate the significance of that time estimate before it was too late.

Driving our own Mae Hong Son Loop

I got to the town of Mae Win and made a left turn on what was supposed to be the highway to our hotel. Driving the one lane winding road through the highlands of northern Thailand helped me to understand why the time estimate was so much greater than I had anticipated though, mind you, Google maps had picked this route.

In the past, I’ve been given multiple choices and determined if the driving estimate was disproportionately long, it was likely to be on an unimproved road, but this is the first time Google maps suggested what was to be an unimproved road as the first choice. That selection gave me confidence that it was doable in the compact car we had rented.

First of all, it should be noted that Thai mountain roads don’t seem to have a maximum grade even when the road is paved. There were a few times before this point that I wondered whether the compact, even in its lowest gear, would make the hill before us. When I could, I wove back and forth to reduce the grade, something I learned in my years as a cyclist. I wondered if at some point I was going to have to back up some of the hills since reverse is the lowest gear ratio for a car. It would have been a ridiculous endeavor regardless as there was hardly room to turn the car around on the tiny roads.

Things took a turn for the worse when the road we’d been traveling turned to dirt. Had I known at the time that the journey ahead of me was an 11 mile jeep trail, I would certainly have turned around and driven the longer, but paved, secondary choice presented by Google.

At first, the road was just a normal dirt road, but I failed to appreciate that the only cars coming from the other direction were pick up trucks and motocross bikes. In fact, we scared a group of motocross bikers who almost ran into our car as we rounded a bend. They were probably as surprised as we were to see a compact rental car in the middle of their dirt bike trail. To be fair, I really hadn’t expected to see others on this road either given its condition.

We continued on despite the obvious warnings. During one of our last moments of sanity, we stopped an old man who was coming from the other direction on a scooter. We struggled to find any words we knew in common, which was tough because I only know “hello” and “thank you” in Thai, neither of which would have communicated enough information to ascertain whether we could complete the trip.

There’s no use showing anyone a map either. I’ve found that most people can’t read a map, even if it’s one of their own neighborhood, and he certainly couldn’t read the English words on my phone screen. Finally, I asked “Mae Hong Son?”, knowing it to be the biggest city in the general direction we were headed. The first flash of recognition crossed the man’s face and he began to nod rapidly and point in the direction we were headed.

While I actually knew that was the direction, what I needed to know was whether our compact rental car could make the journey. I pointed to my car and then pointed forward, but he continued to nod his head yes in the affirmative. Even now, I don’t know that he understood what I was asking, or maybe he was just happy to have found one word we both understood.

As we continued, the gullies running across the road began to get bigger, and I had to take my time to avoid bottoming out or getting the car stuck. At one point, I miscalculated and felt the car drop to one side with an uncomfortable thud. With a small amount of hope, I put the car in reverse, but let my foot off the gas as soon as I felt the tire spinning in its newly found resting spot.

I got out of the car and walked to the other side. More concerning than the tire in the ditch was the fact that the bottom of the car was touching the road. That meant that countering my getting out of the hole was the resistance against the ground. I found a large stick, placed it beneath the tire, and got back in to slowly motor the car out of the ditch. It actually worked and, in no time, we were on our way.

Of course, we should have turned around there, but we continued forward, again with confidence obtained from talking with a couple on a second motorbike. I should have trusted their wide eyes and not their words that assured me we could make it all the way through. “Just go slowly” the driver pantomimed though his discerning look at how little clearance my car had should have been the message I heard.

The jeep road continued on, and so did we. Many times I had to get out of the car to see what side of the drainage channel we wanted to end up once we came around a curve. At that point, we were pretty much all in since trying to navigate back along the road we came in on seemed no less difficult than the final 10 miles on the current road.

Google Maps gone Wrong

To add some comic relief to the situation, Google navigation continued to call out directions along the way, telling us things like “take a left in 200 meters”. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know how far 200 meters was; there was never any actual turn from the main dirt road that didn’t involve bushwhacking through a copse of trees.

I knew better, but I continued on despite knowing that we could make it all the way to the highway only to find a creek or river separating us from the other side. I began to consider what towing options (and costs) might be. There was certainly no way the car could have been extricated using a regular tow truck. They would have had to have sent a flatbed truck in so that it could get the clearance of having all four wheels off the road.

It turned out we didn’t have to go that far to meet our insurmountable obstacle. We came to a bend in the road, and it was filled with mud. After years of off road driving in my twenties, I know what mud means, especially something with the silty smooth look of soft serve ice cream. I yelled the words, “shit”. It was a pale gray soup just waiting to eat our car up to the doors.

I got out to survey the depth of the mud and was surprised that I didn’t sink in at all as I walked across it. There was one section that I’d need to make sure I kept my tires on lest I slip off into the viscous substance just waiting to kiss the bottom of the car.

A second walk through the mud confirmed that there was no depth to it, and I had only to keep forward motion with the car to make the crossing. I also scoured the area for things I could put beneath the tires if I did get stuck. Joan got out of the car in an effort to reduce the load, or maybe it was just a gesture of “this is all on you buddy”.

Strangely, getting through the mud was one of the easier accomplishments on the trip, though from past experience. I know where there’s one mud hole, there are more. We continued past the point of no return, knowing that, at that point, it would have gotten dark before we’d have gotten back to the beginning even if we had tried to return the way we came. So we continued, determined that we would figure it out somehow, whether it meant sleeping in the car or hiking the final couple miles to the hotel and calling a tow truck.

Four miles from the highway, we passed a pick up truck filled with teenage kids who, as soon as they saw us, jumped up to wave us off of continuing ahead. Though I couldn’t understand what they were saying, it seemed clear that the message they were practically screaming was a warning not to proceed. Where were they 10 miles ago, when we would have resignedly turned back, but now we were committed.

The car slowly bounced around as we descended the rutted jeep trail, continually wondering exactly what the kids’ concern was. True, the part they’d just come up, and we were headed down, was not built for a compact rental car with about four inches of clearance, but we went on undeterred, and Joan began the mileage countdown to the end.

I was confident at that point, anyway, that we could at least hike our way out of the situation. It was then that Joan shared that now she understood how those people die, you know the ones who get stuck up in the mountains and eventually walk off for help, perishing before they are found a few days or weeks later.

Getting back on the road

We reached the final switchback descent to the highway and were elated when we saw pavement. I still knew better than to celebrate until we actually had all four tires on it. When we reached the road, there was a bit of a step up to the paved surface, and I headed into it slowly and diagonally, looking to the left to make sure there was no oncoming traffic.

As all four tires made contact with the pavement, we celebrated our achievement with a high five. That was when we saw the car coming straight at us in our lane. A couple seconds of confusion preceded my swerving into the opposite lane, where I belonged. The collision was avoided by the fact that the other car had slowed down quickly or maybe it was my flapping windshield wipers which clearly communicated to the oncoming car that I was going to make the lane change.