Rainy season is winding down here, so we took advantage of that fact to ride the 500cc motorcycle to Pai. It’s a 3.5 hour drive that takes me 5 hours, because I have to stop and rest three times for half an hour. Very difficult riding, hairpin turns galore. Spectacular scenery. It’s sort of like being on the set of a King Kong movie, but the dramatic drop-offs are as real as the danger.

Pai is a little town that has been promoted into a hippy mecca. Twenty-five year-olds abound. There are other towns closer to Chiang Mai, namely Mae Chaem which probably resemble what Pai was thirty years ago, before the rush to play hippy and all the money that could be made satisfying that impulse took over. But we went to Mae Chaem and Mae Sariang last week. This week we finish the northern part of the four day ride from Chiang Mai known as the Mae Song Hong Loop. This being retired and tempted by scenic motorcycle rides is not a bad life.

After Pai, the road really gets spectacular. Usually we ride another four hours onward to Mae Hong Son, but this time I decided to make our life easier and simply to to Lod Cave, which is located where the dramatic forested hills seem to reach their peak. It’s like driving through a Dr. Seuss painting.

With this shorter day, we could relax more and return to our already-booked room in Pai. We would also be closer to our Chiang Mai home, instead of eight or nine hours away the next morning.

Wipa had never been in a cave before! Lod Cave is very large and historically significant, for they found the teak log coffins of neolithic era people inside it. As this is rainy season (witness the recent near-fatal expedition of fourteen boys in a wet cave in Chiang Rai) we had to enter the cave on bamboo rafts. They hire mountain people from a nearby village to act as guides. Older women are in charge of holding kerosene lanterns and men from the village pole the rafts.

I had never before been in a cave that hadn’t been adulterated with electric lighting! It was a much better experience than the usual colored lights and signs warning you not to touch anything. This being Thailand, they usually place Buddha statues in caves. None here!

And the lady with the lantern had two jobs, to help me walk on an uneven surface and dodge stalactites, as well as administering the typical cave guides speech, “and there is the formation many people think resembles a giant frog” Wipa laughed and took pictures with her cell phone. She had absolutely no cynicism about this at all. I had a lot more fun seeing this with fresh eyes.

As I age, I’m going to remember that I have more fun when I try to do less. We got back to our room in Pai by mid-afternoon in time for my customary nap.