This stage of “transition” will be much welcome for our group. It will allow us to relax a litlle bit after 4 days of intense running. After a pretty night in a great guesthouse with a magnificent scenery on the mountains at the border with Myanmar, I hope the batteries will be fully reloaded. With a great and quick trail run (another beautiful day with another nice atmopshere in this place also called “Little Switzerland”) this will be a perfect recovery day.

Here we are in the “extreme” Northern Thailand in a wild hilly less-touristic sometime-dangerous area due to its proximity with Myanmar. Here as often the mountains have defined the borders between two countries. Anyway sometimes the border is not clearly defined. There are still areas of friction and many military camps to avoid one country annexing a part of the land of its neighbour. Here the green mountains succeed to each other. Thais enjoy going there in winter to taste the freshness and beauty of the place. In this part of Thailand temperatures can drop down to 5 ° C at night in November and December.

We will begin our day by running in a deep valley alongside the foothill of a high and steep mountain range. In this great atmosphere looked down by green mountains, we will follow the Myanmar border to the north. After 15k we will go up to reach the Chinese village of Ban Luang. The further we will move on our journey, the closer we will go to the border with Myanmar. We will finally end up crossing it on a few hundred meters before reaching Nor Lae. Previously we will have ran in a jungle atmosphere on a nice trail at the foot of Doi Ang Khang, the highest summit in this area (2000m). We will looked down the valley in a series of small ascents and descents in wild landscapes.

We will hope to reach Nor Lae in the early afternoon to enjoy this peacefully village and save much energy before tackling the next crazy stage.