Travelling to Sap Pong/Pang Mapha

---

Friday 5 February

Leo at the lake once more, misty and cold at 7.00am. You have to admire his dedication. Paula enjoys a sneaky extra half hour sleep before bringing Leo a steaming hot mug of tea. Day begun! Time to pack, were checking out at eleven am. Two mugs of tea later, Leo exhausts his bait mix,casts out for the final time and scores - big time! Beautiful Fish biggest of the trip, it took both Paula and Leo's joint efforts and five minutes hard work to land.Job done we finished packing to rendezvous with our travelling companions at reception to check out and continue our journey, now in reverse to Pang Mapha, leaving with rice cookies and good luck ribbons from our auspicious hosts. The great navigators we are took us twenty minutes to get out of Pai heading in the right direction. We stopped at a sight seeing spot close to the highest Mountain in the region, foolishly decided to walk the last 2Km to the top, two thirds up this continuous slog, someone sensibly asked , why are we doing this? It's misty and nothing to gain view wise, (that person would be Marilyn) so we all agreed lets quit while ahead and returned to the car, hot and a little tired but not nearly as tired had we continued to the summit. Continuing on, we planned to visit a cave which was enroute, unfortunately it was right by a Police check point so Leo, driving, missed it completely, which meant we arrived at our Lovely Inn/Hotel early. The Sap Pong River Inn is delightful, lots of little chalet style rooms all traditionally constructed of wood/bamboo and brick, with thatched and tiled roofs, set in the hill side by the fast running clear clean river. Our bathroom is open to the sky, our bed is hand made carved of solid hard wood, covered with several layers of eiderdowns and blankets, much appreciated, as the roof has struts which are open to the elements! Thankfully, rainy monsoon season is well past and due to the relatively cool Mountain temperatures, no mosquitos to contend with. All the rest of the furniture is hand made and funky and we have a verandah which looks directly down to the river, Magic! Nothing much of note in Pang Mapha itself, we had lunch after checking in. One of our main objectives here is to undertake a natural forest trek, so we strolled a few hundred yards along the main road to a Travel and Tour office, managed by a local guy named 'Toy'. Using Marilyn's honed bargaining skills we negotiated a full day trip , half trek, half sightseeing, plus a pick up following day. All arranged, we retired to our rooms/river chalets to blog, relax, and anticipate an evening meal together, before retiring at a reasonable hour. Despite the Al Fresco element, we had a warm and comfortable night's sleep.

---