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Published: April 4th 2009
So...after my rant about how tourism ruins a country....i'm now going to blog to you about the tour we went on...
It's unavoidable really. Unless you want to walk around to see everything or pay 4-12 dollars for a tuktuk ride, you have to do a tour. We became 'package tourists' for the day.
We chose the elephant trek, white water rafting (which in an e-mail to dad was described as 'cruising down the river'...err...yeah, sorry about that dad, but you ddn;t worry as much did you?), and extreme sport one.
We were picked up -in an air conditioned van - and drove up to Phang Nha province (though in Thai pronunciation, thewordsruntogether and it sounds like PhaNGaaaa). Our tour guide Tarada aka Nok (meaning bird) told us the story of two lovers who's families wouldn't let them be together - class issues (anyone thinking this sounds familiar?...Romeo Romeo...). This was in the days of arranged marriages etc. They prayed to Buddha and said, 'please forgive us, and if there is a next life let us be together there forever' and so they took their love to the bridge that joins Phuket to the mainland and jumped from it. When the families found the bodies they were distraught but had them burned together in the temple - which was never done - and prayed that they would find happiness with one another in the next world. Now it is believed that if you take your love to the bridge, and travel over it holding your breath the whole way and thinking of your loved one, that your love will last forever. How sweet....well, it is now...the whole jumping off a bridge thing doesn't really appeal to me.
We got to Phang Nga where we visited monkey cave. You can buy food for the monkeys and feed them, and one of them climbed up and sat on the shoulder of one of the guys on our tour. We walked around, admiring the statues of Buddha in the cave, and then went on to the first stage of our adventure.
Buntu
The van oulled over on the side of the road, and we met three lovely creatures. Our mounts for the next half hour. We walked up onto a balcony and after taking our shoes off, we climbed onto Buntu, a young elephant. I think she was about 70 years old (in elephant years...) but i can;t really remember. Led by cries of 'Ooi!', 'Mahet!', and 'Hao!' she cliumbed over socks in a stream and up steep paths, to take us on a walk around the jungle. Halfway through, our guide climbed off and motioned me to sit where he had been, with my knees right bahind Buntu's ears. I did, and then I felt the owner moving each of her legs. I could feel the muscles bunching up under me each time she took a step. Later on Danilo climbed off the seat strapped on top and sat behind me, and together we marveleed at the lumbering grace of that beautiful creature. Our guide took Danilo's camera and snapped a lot of pictures, so we gave him a nice tip. You know how I love pictures! We got to feed Buntu a basket of Bananas afterwards too, and I narrowly missed being drooled on. Ugh. Elephant drool! Cute elephant though!
After that, it was off to our acmp, where we stowed our gear and got set for our next adventure.
Bumpy Water
White water rafting? In Phuket? But there are no rapids, are there?
Technically, no....but there are dams.
They dam the river, then let it loose as you cruse down in your rafts. It's quite well organised really.
We put on our helmets and lifejackets, they showed us how to hold the paddles, and what to do if you fall out...namely, just float. They scared us with tales of nonexistent waterfalls, and then we were off!
About 20 rafts at once, all full of excited chattering tourists, and some bored looking guides who splashed everyone for entertainment. We barrelled down the river, bumping into other rafts, splashing the opposition, and occasionally pausing to wait for the next deluge of water. At strategic intervals, photographers and videographers were placed, and so we have some video footage, and some photos of our little journey...at 100THB a picture...
It was a lot of fun, but only 5ks. We didn't go for the 9k one, but kind of regret not doing so. Ah well. Fun while it lasted. I would definitely do it again! You just hook your feet in, and try not to fall out...pretty basic stuff. Sometimes a raft would get wedged on a rock, then 4 raftes would come and slam into it....and one rafte we saw got filled up with water because other raftes had kind of pushed it down... (no...of course it wasn't us that tried to sink it...how could you say such a thing? ^_^). One group capsized, and were just swimming around in the ater watching us all pass. We only got stuck once, for about 2 minutes, so I thought we managed that trip quite well! Better than some of the next one at least...
Balancing Acts
Unsurprisingly, we were the only ones who had signed on for the Extreme Sport part. It didn't turn out to be that extreme, but was still something different. Fisrt was abseiling. We trekked through the jungle...on a well trodden path, for about 10 minutes, t get to a cliffside. They tied a rope to a tree, hooked it up to our harnesses, and then it was down down down, while a small waterfall thundered down by our side. My heart started to ound a bit as the adrenalin surged, but abseiling is always like that for me. I'll be nervous until i'm over the edge, and then you just have to get to the bottom. It's like flying. I'm nervous nervous nervous, but then relax because, well, you're already in the air, there's nothing you can do. Suspend your fear and disbelief and get on with it. It was probably only 15 metres or something to the bottom, then we waded to another part of the rver and clambered up the trail back to the truck and back to camp for the next balancing act.
Rope Bridge.
It SOUNDS like fun, and it is, at least until you're 30 metres from the starting platform, 20 metres off the cround, and still have about 30 metres to get to the other side. Near either end it was fine, but n the middle it got REALLY wobbly. There is a safety line up above that you're hooked into, a taut wire that you walk along, and then two more wires, one on each side, that you hold onto (for dear life) which in turn are connected to the wire you're walking along. You're always hokked up, so it's not like tightrope walking, but I still got scared everytime my feet wobbled. I would stop every 5 steps, have a mini panic attack, then talk myself back into it saying 'well, so what Nikky, yoiu're scared. That isn;t going to get you to the other side any faster. Turning around now only means you have the same distance to go to get back as you do to go forward so just MOVE.' And so it went, untill we got to the other end, ready for the...
Flying Fox!
This was cool. I let Danilo go first, reasoning that if he can do it...I can do it (better?). He whoop whooped his way along, and then it was my turn. I was glad the guy gave me a push though. As I said, i'm all nervouse until I get going. I laughed my way across, because it was fun. The wind whipped my hair back as I soared back across the river I had just crossed over, and the pulley thing made a funny bzzzzzzzzzzzz noise as it rolled along the rope, which made me laugh. I think the onlookers were disappointed that I didn't scream, but I really liked it!
After that we got a van back to the hotel, and just zonked out...a fun day with some challenges, but lots of memories!
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Jo Trouble
Jo McCarthy
Hi Nikky, I went to Thailand for Golden Week last year (kinda hard to believe it was a year ago), and loved it!! Are you going up to Chiang Mai?