Long readsClockwise or counter-clockwise
ตามเข็มหรือทวนเข็ม
Ask six riders in a Chiang Mai bar and you get six answers and one fight.
What it is
Clockwise means north first: Chiang Mai up Route 107 and 1095 to Pai, on to Mae Hong Son, then south on 108 and home. Counter-clockwise reverses it — down 108 to Hot and Mae Sariang, up to Mae Hong Son, and back over the curve road last. Both are 600-odd kilometres. They are not the same ride.
The long version
The case for clockwise. You hit the hardest riding on day one, fresh, on a light bike, before the panniers have settled and before four days of hills have taken your forearms. Day one is short — Chiang Mai to Pai is the least distance of any leg — so a slow, cautious first afternoon costs nothing. Pai is a soft landing with food and a mechanic. And the long, straight, fast southern run on Route 108 comes at the end, when you want to be pointing at home rather than at a hairpin.
The case for counter-clockwise. The first day is Route 108 to Mae Sariang: wide, sealed, four to six lanes as far as Hot, and 265 kilometres of two-lane after it that never asks anything sudden. That is a long, cheap day for bedding in a rented bike, finding out what the brakes do, and discovering the rear tyre is ten years old while you are still near a town that can change it. You arrive at the curve road knowing the machine. Mae Hong Son comes on night two or three rather than night three or four, which matters if you want a morning there.
Where they actually differ. Clockwise puts your hardest descent — 1095 dropping into the Pai valley — early. Counter-clockwise puts it last, on tired arms, and on Route 1095 tired arms are a real argument. Against that: counter-clockwise gets the rental bike's unknowns out of the way on the forgiving road, which is the same argument pointed the other way.
Inference — the disagreement survives because both sides are right about different riders. A confident rider on a familiar bike should go clockwise and enjoy day one. A rider collecting an unknown rental should go counter-clockwise and spend day one finding out what they have got.
And then the season changes the answer, which is the part the bar argument usually misses. See the grid on /which-way/.
Runs with
- storyThe season picks the direction — The same question, answered month by month.
- legChiang Mai to Pai — Day one clockwise, day four counter-clockwise, and it is a different road each way.
- legMae Sariang to Hot — The long forgiving day that counter-clockwise puts first.
- roadRoute 1095 — The descent that the argument is really about.
- roadRoute 108 — The road that makes counter-clockwise a gentle start.
- kitRenting the bike — Whether you know the machine is half the argument.
- story1,864 curves — The other thing this road makes people argue about.
Named here by
- roadRoute 108 — The argument this road settles half of.
- kitRenting the bike — Whether you know the bike decides the direction.
- storyThe season picks the direction — The argument before the season is added to it.
Where each claim comes from
| Field | Tier | Source | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| default | inference | the two cases are this project's reasoning from the road's own measured shape; the road facts underneath them are cited | |
| text.what | cited | ทางหลวงแผ่นดินหมายเลข 108 — Wikipedia (th) | |
| names.said | tradition | ||
| text_th | inference | written in Thai by this project, not machine-translated |
Sources
- ทางหลวงแผ่นดินหมายเลข 108 — Wikipedia (th)
- ทางหลวงแผ่นดินหมายเลข 1095 — Wikipedia (th)
- Curve and distance measurements off the OSM polyline — This project
- OpenStreetMap — OpenStreetMap contributors
cited Cited — a named source, linked · harvested Harvested — fetched from an open dataset, with its licence · tradition Tradition — general knowledge of the tradition, hedged · inference Inference — this project's own reasoning from the above · field Field — someone stood there