The Adventures Continue in the North of Thailand

Hello friends, family, and other readers of the blog which details my famous adventures throughout Southeast Asia. I have just returned back to Pai after a 2 day trekking adventure into the northern Thai wilderness. More on that later, but first lasts back up a few days so I can properly detail all of my prior, yet undocumented adventures. Going back on a daily basis, I can't think of a single day that I have gotten here that I haven't done something new or different and exciting. It's like a daily smorgasbord of new experiences. Having slightly lost track of days (I know today is Monday), I believe that it was Friday in which I rode an elephant bareback in a river. Between getting sprayed with water, thrown off bucking bronco style, and being lifted into the air via the trunk, it was certainly a worthwhile, though sore (you think that riding a horse is bad, just imagine how your anus feels after 2 hours on an elephant! - I can now relate to prison inmates more intimately) experience. Here are some of the photo evidence.


I go from dry to wet after a millisecond after this picture was taken

The elephant (Noh - the 48 year old beast) is helping to cool me off


Yeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaahhhhh-Hahhhhh! Now I got the hang of this!

So, that was elephant riding. Saturday was a well deserved lazy day - I signed up for my trek - hang out in a hammock for 3 straight hours in the afternoon, went to the Pai Hot Springs and Spa, ate an actual hamburger from an actual American restaurateur, and got an early night sleep.

And Sunday morning the trek began. Drove an hour north to Sappong with a group of 2 UK girls, a Canadian guy, a young Austrian couple, and an older German gentleman. Our guide Somesack (at least that is how it is spelt phonetically) took us trekking 18 kilometers over mountains, through rivers (not over them - literally wading through them), inside deep jungle bush, past farmland, and finally up and down another mountain or three over the course of 6 hours on Day 1. We were graciously welcomed by a kindly Lua hill tribe village who cooked for us, and gave us a cold hard floor to sleep on in an electricity-less hut surrounded by dogs, pigs, and chickens outside - of both the adult and baby variety. It was all in good fun, and thank god that I am physically fit - the same couldn't be said about our older German gentleman who clearly did not know what he was getting himself into. On day two (which coincidentally also happens to be today) we trekked all the way back to our starting location using a different route - which coincidentally also happened to be probably half the distance as day 1 and minus the mountain routes - hmmm - why didn't we just go that way yesterday I thought.

Upon arriving back in Sappong, a giant cave, complete with all the cavely essentials that you require a cave to have - hidden passageways, those dangly rock formulas which have a proper scientific name which currently escapes me, bats, Buddhist monks, abandoned coffins, about a hundred vacationing Thais, ancient drawings, and an underground river awaited us - in which we took Bamboo rafts all the way through. While the trek was fun, the cave at the end was clearly the highlight of trek.

Trailside View
Walking past girl herding water buffalo

Outside where I slept last night

On a raft approaching the exit to the cave

Playing dead next to a cave coffin alongside two Thai girls


Now, I have just returned to Pai - completely filthy, smelly, dirty, gross, and in desperate need of a hot shower but without a guesthouse at around 6 PM. In the 2.5 weeks that I have been here, I would say that I have quickly adapted to the backpacker culture. Despite the state that I am in, the first place, a lovely little village of bungalows surrounding a garden asked 1200 baht for a room. Considering that many of the places in Pai are around 200 to 400 baht, I walked away to seek cheaper shelter elsewhere... only to find that the next three less expensive, though also lovely, places were already full. Then realizing that I needed a shower and place to unload my pack, I realized that turning down a super-nice place to stay because it cost a whooping $36/night was insane. So, I turned around and checked back in.

So, now I have one last night in Pai - prior to taking an early morning minibus tomorrow back to Chiang Mai - where I have a 1 PM flight all the way down south to Phuket to spend the final 2 weeks of my travels island hopping around the Andaman Sea. I have a 5 star Hilton, booked using points, waiting for me - I half-way considered waiting to shower until I arrived there - walking in past startled couples and hotel employees - only to go to my room to shower and shave to return to the lobby to thankful individuals - but I figured another night sans shower was not worth 3 minutes of glee.

Till next time...