Advertisement
Published: October 16th 2007
Pai Landscape
Cruisin' around on our motorbikes.We are just about at the finish line for our South East Asian adventures and it's been a really interesting experience. After the rendezvous in Bangkok with the guys we headed north to Chang Mai. Here we started gathering essentials for our journey to the lands of Europe and christmas gifts for the family seeing as we will be broke when we get home. This town was supposed to be relaxed and chilled out and it was.....until.....some punk ass jacked Russ's camera. Yeah it blew....we had just picked up some laundry and were walking back to our guesthouse, one hand was full of laundry and the other with his camera and planner where he kept all his important things. We were only about 60 ft. from our guesthouse when these two teenage guys pulled up behind us on a motorscooter and tried to rip everything from his hands. In the process they succeeded in grabbing the camera but only managed to knock the planner out of his hands and onto the ground. We instantly flipped into ass kicking mode and took off barefoot down the rainy alley. While going around a corner they spun out into a wall next to a
Mho Paeng Waterfall
Trying to not fall into the river local 5 on 5 basketball game which caused us to smell blood and run harder. Since we were professionals at charades we managed to communicate, "those mother F*#$ers just stole our camera!" and all ten guys aided in the chase down the alley. After sprinting four blocks we ended up on the main street and they were gone. All the locals wanted us to go to the police station to file a report even though all we could remember was two thai teenagers on a red motorscooter. If you have ever seen the TV show COPS than you know the running theme that every time someone goes to the police station they are either shirtless, wearing a wife beater or have no shoes. After we calmed down we realized we were wearing wife beaters and had no shoes, we could just hear the theme song playing in our heads...."bad boys, bad boys, whatcha' gonna do...whatcha' gonna do when they come for you." We then asked them to take us back to our guesthouse so we could at least get our shoes.
After leaving that debaucle behind we headed up north to the town of Pai.
It was a
low key traveller hangout near the thai border with Myanmar. We rented motorscooters and drove all around exploring hill tribe villages and waterfalls. We met up with some Canadian girls that we had previously talked to on the bus from Koh Tao. We all decided to do a jungle trek and whitewater rafting together. Now let's preface this story with the fact that yes we booked a trek through a "company," but it amounted to nothing more than a guide with a back pack full of fried rice and a couple of local Thai teens that wanted to practice their english. They loaded us in the back of a pickup truck, at which point our guide let us know a few interest tidbits of information:
1) We were going to be close enough to the Burmese border that when the Thai and Burmese are fighting you can actually hear the gunshots.
2) There are F-ing tigers in the jungle...oh, but don't worry they are scared of humans and when they hear us they run away...we were hoping that our guide was giving the farangs a hard time, but who knows.
3) He had no machete or gun
Ready to Rock
... do they serve an orthopedic function? in case we did get attacked by whatever else he was trying to scare us with. SWEET! sign us up.
Before we got to hiking they took everyone to get special mud shoes which basically looked like a plastic version the orthopedics your grandparents wear, but they have cleats on the bottom. Since Russ has tuna boats for feet he had to use his crosstrainers. This made for an interesting trek. It started off pretty intense...for the first hour it was all uphill, and in the mud. After an hour we stopped for a break, at which point the Canadian girls, who taught yoga, showed us some yoga stretchs. I think it was called the human pretzel or something like that...we can hear some of you chuckling right now...yeah, we get it...we are gay for doing yoga....but seriously though, the Floating Lotus was mindblowing. Anyway, we continued for a few hours until we took a break to eat lunch (fried rice) in a hilltribe village. After a while, we pressed on so we wouldn't reach the village we were sleeping at too late in the day. After about an hour our guide noticed that he didn't quite recognize the
Danger! Danger!
These are the deadliest snakes in the world...according to our guide. trail we were on so he had us hike back up the mountain we had just come down to take another trail. This trail was so over grown that you had to keep your mouth shut so you didn't end up eating the leaves and grass. At this point, Russ made that joke...dude that would suck if you stepped on a snake, to which the guide nonchalantly replied..."oh, it happens all of the time." We were fresh out of tournaquets and joints so we just hoped that there were no cobras out there (See Full Moon Blog). After a few hours the daily thunder storm came and soaked us to the bone while also turning the trail into a giant mud slip n' slide. After being somewhat afraid that we would be bitten by snakes, attacked by god knows what or just get lost and never find our way out, we arrived in the village we were to stay at. In all the trek was somewhere between 15 and 20kms (around 10 miles) and took 6 hours since it was through a pretty mountainous area. Once we arrived at what was to be our home for the night we discovered
that our beds were simply straw mats on a bamboo floor draped with mosquito nets. It was pretty obvious that we were not getting much sleep and all of the roosters and cows making noise outside our door didn't help either. Covered in mud one of the girls said well, whatever I just need a good shower that offers a little bit of privacy. Russ started laughing and said ummmmm, yeeaaah, it's something like that...it turned out to be two 50 gallon drums full of water with a couple of buckets behind our hut. The most awkward part was that the "toilet" was right next to it so when you were "in" the shower or "in" the toilet you never had to leave the conversation going on "in" the hut. Needless to say, two americans, two canadians, two english and two belgians became really close that night. After a sleepless night, we were awoken before the sun came up and pretended to sleep until breakfast was ready. We then piled 14 of us (we gained a few for the rafting) in the back of a pick up and headed out for the rafting adventure.
Rafting was definitely a great
Trekkin'
Ok time to move your ass please...(Thep's catch phrase) time and you wouldn't believe how serious it can get especially when your guide's name is Chicken. During a battle for the pole position, Ryan had no qualms about taking his oar and pushing off the other raft, sending them into the sticks on the river bend. How does the saying go...if you ain't rubbin'...you ain't racin'? They got us back when their guide hooked the English guy's lifejacket and ripped him off the raft backward during another battle for the lead. We had a full day of raft racing, climbing waterfalls, mud bathing in a little hot springs and cliff jumping. By the end of the day we had traveled 47Kms down the river and were basically at the Burmese border. Once we got back to Pai, we slept for 12 hours and caught a bus then a plane back to Bangkok to round out our Southeast Asian adventure.
After being here for nearly three months we have put together a top 5 do's and don't's of travelling in this area.
DO's:
5)
DO take a little time out of your day prior to arrival to practice your charades...it's the universal language
4) When asking
Deep in the Bush
yeah that's right... for directions,
DO consult a number of people before jumping to conclusions...People tend to say yes to whatever it is they don't know. Either that or they will make something up.
3) Just because that cute thai "girl" is being very friendly to you...
DO beware that they have surgeries for pretty much everything over here...even the adams apple.
2)
DO carry small change and/or an extra roll of papes at all times for the public toilets because a number one will cost you $.30 and a number two will cost you $.70...you can never be to sure what you just ate.
1) A few months prior to departing,
DO incorporate a few extra sets of squats into your gym routine because having a hammy give out in the john can have disastrous consequences.
DONT's:
5) Yes, the buckets are delicious, but
DON'T have too many red bulls otherwise you will not sleep for a week...word on the street is that, what they put in them wouldn't exactly be legal back home.
4)
DON'T assume that traffic operates in the same fashion every where...there is no wrong side of the road and street signs
Spirit Well Cave
The picture doesn't capture the immensity of this place. are just for decoration.
3)
DON'T get overly hostile when negotiating...yes they are ripping you off, but do the math...it is probably about $.75 cents they just SCREWED you out of.
2) When the tuk-tuk driver asks if you want to go to a ping pong show,
DON'T assume he is taking you to a local table tennis exhibition.
1) Even though it often has more pressure than your shower,
DON'T rinse off with the spray gun next to the toilet...you will regret it.
All in all Southeast Asia has held some of our craziest experiences but has been the most fun thus far. In a land where people are known only by stage names such as Mr. Date, Mr. Yeah, Mr. Deed, Mr. Franchise, Mr. Beam, Mr. Dan, Mr. Chart, since you can't pronounce their real names, we have found that you can still meet some real genuine people. However, we are ready for a change and look forward to some western culture. There are definitely things we didn't do that we hope we can see one day like Laos, Burma, elephant riding and exploring the islands off of the west coast of Thailand. But,
Home Sweet Hill Tribe
Everyone wiped out and muddy after our trek... another thing we have figured out is that no matter how much time you have in an area there is always something you can't see, there is just too much out there to do. See you guys for now and we will talk to you from Paris...Bonjour!
Ok...so we wrote all this in Bangkok but have a 6 hour layover here in Sri Lanka so we decided to finish this thing, plus we wanted to add Sri Lanka to our blogged countries haha. We took off from Bangkok at 9pm and arrived here 3 hours later at 10:55pm...we were supposed to leave at 4am but just found out we won't be leaving until 6:30am, but they gave us a free soda for the inconvenience...We are staying awake so we can go comatose for our 12 hour flight...what day or time will it be when we arrive? who knows...all we know is we have gotten quite used to long nights. Talk to you from Europe!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.138s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 14; qc: 46; dbt: 0.0788s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
John Richardson
non-member comment
Gettin real!!!
Wow...what an adventure. You guys are really doing the do's of gettin' real. I am so proud of you Ryan!!! Just remember. "What a long strange trip it's been" can carry you soooo far in knowing what is really "real" including the hallucinatory parts!!! Cutlure shock can equal culture shift (yours). Go get it!!!