12 Day North Thailand Motorcycle Tour “Golden Triangle”

We’ll pick you up at the airport or your hotel in Chiang Mai. 

After a nice 30 min. drive,  we arrive at our base camp 30 kms north of Chiang Mai city.

Time for a little sightseeing and relax in our resort before the riding starts in the morning.

After checking out the riding gear and the bikes we’ll go for a ride in the mountain area around our home. You’ll get used to the bike and we have the chance to modify small things, like handlebar position e.g. on your bike.

After breakfast we set off up into the mountains again, this time heading southwest out of Chiang Mai. Our first stop is at an elephant camp by a river for a refreshing drink and maybe a snack. A little later we turn off the tarmac and take a trail to a tribal village and then on to our lunch stop at a roadside restaurant in Doi Inthanon National Park. It’s then an enjoyable twisty tarmac ride to the top of Doi Inthanon, Thailand’s highest mountain at 2565 m. On a clear day the views from the top are spectacular. After taking the road back down, we head offroad again for our last section on some great trails, our first river crossing and our comfortable hotel in Mae Cham.

Today is a long day in the saddle, as we ride over 100 km of trails to Pai, a small town famous for it’s hot springs, and for being one of Thailand’s best beauty spots. This is trail riding at it’s purest and most enjoyable, and we have a number of options depending on local conditions and rider ability.

And because the riding around here is so good, we spend today riding around Pai. The town is surrounded by the scenic Huai Nam Dang National Park, which stretches to the Burmese border to the north and west. We take in a visit to the largest cave in southeast Asia, with it’s magnificent stalagmites and stalactites, and have the opportunity to visit some beautiful waterfalls, gorges and mountain trails.

Another great day’s offroading, through Huai Nam Dang National park, where we stay in a resort hotel. Again, we have a choice of routes, all with great riding and beautiful scenery. For example the mountain trails of Doi Chiang Dao

Just after breakfast we will visit the Chiang Dao elephant trainings center. We will see their bath in the river and after they show how they used the elephants for logging. After the show we do another off road loop which brings us back to our base camp early afternoon

For the first two hours we ride through dense forest area with a lot of river crossings.. After lunch at a the hot springs we continue to Chiang Rai on road. We will stay in the heart of the city close to the night bazaar.

After 2 hours  ride we arrive at the Golden Triangle, which is famous to most Westerners for its former opium production. Here we have time to take a riverboat ride on the mighty Mekong river and visit a market in Laos. Another 40 minutes riding brings us to our comfortable city hotel in Mae Sai, the border town to Burma.

After breakfast we have an opportunity to cross the bridge into Burma and visit the market at Tachilek.

Today we are riding on very twisty small tarmac roads always along the Burmese border. After lunch we go to the famous Doi Mae Salong, a village high in the mountains. Mae Salong (now known as Santikharee) was founded in 1962 by Kuomintang Chinese and became famous as a centre for exiled Chinese. It’s quite a shock to see Chinese faces and Chinese style buildings in the hills of the northern Thailand!

The local market is dominated by Chinese goods. Then an endless winding tarmac road brings us to Thaton, where we will stay in a riverside resort.

We will take the road to Doi Ang Khang. Breathtaking scenery hot spring and waterfall along the way and one of the most beautiful research garden from the Kings project.  We arrive back in our base camp by late afternoon. Another evening in our base camp with lovely Thai food and a cold beer at the campfire.

The hardest day of the tour – transfer to the airport for your flight home!