Northern Trip (con't)

Ready to give'er!

Potentially the most beautiful place I've ever been...

On our second day on trip, we all loaded up into a few tranporter vans, and headed into the hills for a day of white water rafting on the Nam Wa River! We were split into 4 boats, given our paddles, PFDs and helmets, and were on the river without further ado. As soon as we hit the main current of the river, we encountered our first set of rapids, and were off, cruising down the river. ( I found out later that one of the girls from a boat behind us, fell in on one of the very first few sets of rapids, but was quickly pulled back in by the guy sitting next to her. 5555 So mai pen rai!) We went between sets of rapids ranging from class 1 to class 3, and intermittently some nice calm sections of river to gather ourselves and line up for the next set. We rafted until about noon, at which point we held up at a big, slow moving eddie and parked the boats for an hour or so. We had Khao men gai (rice with chicken) for lunch which was pretty dang good, but the best part, was that they let us go swimming in the river for a while. Nearly everyone went in, and we had a friggen BLAST! The ground dropped off quite quickly after getting a few feet from shore, so we were able to use one of the boats as a diving board. We tied one end to shore, and stuck the other end out into the river. We ran along the seats, and then flung ourselves into the water on the far end. Mud fights broke out, people were getting pushed in all over, and splashing wars were abundant. It was a damn good time.
The afternoon was a lot more chill than the morning. I think we only encountered one set of rapids, and the rest was calm river floating. Lacking the rapids though, gave you a chance to stop and look around, and realize where we really were. We were down at the bottom of a deep valley, with forested hills rising up on either side of us, and the river winding it way along ahead and behind us. For a while is rained on us lightly, with loud, thunder claps rolling off in the distance. The light drizzle was just enough to cool you down, and made you feel totally immersed into the natural beauty we were in. With the rain, came an almost total silence, it muted our surroundings, almost to let us just appreciate what we had around us. You could almost hear the sound of the earth itself gently creaking and revolving as we sat in awe at its splendour... It was completely surreal.

Our tugboat

Many among us eventually got pretty tuckered out near the end of the day, so I guess the guides called in a little boat to help tug us to the pick-up point. It was a pretty dinky boat, and I'm rather astonished that it was able to move us at all. But it got the job done and brought us back to land. As was to be expected, we loaded into the back of a big flat-deck truck with some railings "welded" to the sides. They might as well have glued them on, because a larger number of the welds were already broken, and the railing were pretty loose. Oh well, Thai Style eh? We made it back mostly unscathed, I think we only had 3 or 4 people fall out on one of the bigger bumps we hit, and they only got a few scratches and bruises. The day ended with us driving back to the hotel, going to a local supermarket to find ourselves dinner, and then pretty much heading off to bed.

The Crew!

In Laos!

Skipping forward to day 4 now, I realize that I totally goofed my previous post about the trip, because this is actually the day we went to Doi Tung... so same experience, just different day. My bad.
That afternoon however, we went to the Golden Triangle. A famous location in Thailand, where it borders Burma (Myanmar) to the north and west, and Laos to the east. We took a longboat ride up the Me Kong river a little ways to see slightly further into Burma, and then back down river to visit a small village in Laos for which you don't need a passport, or any paperwork at all, to visit. It was kinda neat, I can now say I visited Laos, but the "village" was just a market, with each neighbouring shop selling damn near the same thing as the shop adjacent to it. I ended up getting a badge of the Laos flag to put on my blazer and that was it.
Back to the hotel we went, to hit up the walking street for a few hours, and then hit the hay.

Just clearing some roads. I'm in the pink shirt. 

On the 20th, we spent a lot of the day driving to our next location. We took vans up and through the mountains to Pai. The journey there though was a pretty treacherous one. Actually... I was pretty certain I was going to die most at some point on that road. The first problem, was that they were Thai roads, so essentially there were more potholes then there was actually pavement. The second problem, was that we were driving through the mountains, so blind hair pin turns all over, steep climbs and steep dips. 3rd problem was Thai drivers. I'll put it nicely, they're insane. the 4th problem, our van was an automatic, so it would always shift gear part way round a turn or up a hill, and very nearly stall out. 5th problem, was that is started to pour. But not Canada pour, Thailand pour. That's a helluva lot more rain.
Those 5 major issues culminated into a dastardly set of circumstances that were absolutely terrifying. At one point on the way, we pulled up behind a bunch of stopped cars, only to realize that moments earlier, a patch of trees had fallen on the road, and were now blocking traffic. Being the gentlemen that we were, the few other guys in my car and I hopped out into the pouring rain, and helped hack up the trees with machetes (apparently everybody carries machetes around...) and then heave them down the mountain. It was actually a lot of fun :D
Eventually we all made it alive, maybe with a few years knocked off our life expectancy from all the stress, but alive none-the-less. We stopped at a beautiful lookout point along the way that oversees the entire mountain range below, and again at a pretty popular coffee shop, "Coffee In Love". Another gorgeous view, and one of the best fruit shakes I've had in a very long time.

GAH! THE VIEW IS AMAZING

That is all for today, another update will becoming your way in the near future!

Much Love,


Cole


P.S.  I was totally kidding about the people falling out of the truck on the rafting day btw... Don't worry!