Exploring the outskirts of Chiang Mai; why I love getting lost
Wandering the mountain roads in-between Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai with Luffy leading the way lol
Nestled in a valley roughly 310m above sea level, Chiang Mai is a gem that offers winding roads, breathtaking landscapes and a freedom that calls to the soul of every rider. Interspersed among its rolling hills and towering mountains are various cascading waterfalls and flowing rivers, guaranteeing a geography that inspires as much as it soothes. It was among such nature that I decided to spend my time there, riding around without any plans. I left my GPS behind, letting the landscape take me along on a meandering journey of discovery through the cool, undulating mountain passes.
I love travelling like this—without any plans, lists or structure—and the wanderer in me says that it’s really the only way to do so. After all, what’s the purpose of travelling if not to make space for new discoveries and open one’s eye to wonders unseen? There is a kind of unravelling that happens when we go with the flow, the knots of control we exert in our lives coming undone, thread by thin thread. It feels like a loosening tightness or perhaps a sigh of relief when we take off our tight pants at the end of the work day and sink into our sofa. It can be a confronting feeling for many, but omg do I love it! There are no restraints on me to do things in a certain way. I get to explore, flex, dance and laugh through my discoveries—exactly the way I like it. Double bonus that I got to do it on a motorbike!
What more could one ask for in life; the bike and me riding tandem on the winds of discovery, getting lost to find ourselves once again?
Michael Faudet wrote in Dirty, Pretty Things, “Lost is a lovely place to find yourself”, and I couldn’t agree more with him. Being lost, by definition, puts us on a journey, an in-between space, where we are neither lost nor found but moving towards it. There is tentative anticipation for something yet to come; a discovery, a reckoning or the unknown—we don’t know what we will find and neither do we want to know. Why? Because the whole point of the experience is the anticipation itself. It’s like the feeling of opening up a birthday present, not knowing and yet excited for what you will find.
I spent the week wandering around Chiang Mai on my trusty steed, looking forwards to whatever it will bring to me. There wasn’t any particular place I planned to visit except a Suki restaurant. Suki is a dish reminiscent of the Japanese sukiyaki but the Thai version is stir fried with glass noodles, cabbage, eggs and meat. Before I left on my trip, the Thai barista at my favourite cafe in Singapore told me that everyone who goes to Chiang Mai goes for the suki.
The yearning I saw in her eyes as she showed me the picture, was the only reason I visited this Suki restaurant; a yearning not so much for the dish itself perhaps, but for the familiar taste of home. There is a simple honesty about her that requires no embellishment. Even when she cleans the tables or takes our orders, she does it with open sincerity. And then I see the same humility in her yearning for the food back home, knowing that she is in-between spaces, thousands of miles away from her home.
Deeply moved by this thought, I ate the Suki that evening with as much honesty as I could muster; an outsider trying to discover what the taste of home in Thailand is, as I too sat thousands of miles away from mine.