Waterfalls, rafting, jungle, elephants, tarantulas, snakes

I’m in Bangkok at the moment, but let’s back track to Um Phang. A very remote town on the Burmese border, 150km south of Mae Sot, but that trip takes 5 to 7 hours. South there is the national park and some adjoining ones, meaning you have to go back to Mae Sot to leave, or do a 5 day trek…!

After my last bout of blogging, I eventually ended up booking a 3 day trek leaving the next morning with 5 people! Unfortunately it included a 3 hour elephant trek (not comfortable, and I don’t see it can be comfortable for the elephants either), but it looked like I didn’t have a choice if I wanted to go on the 3 day trek which included a overnight stay in a Karen (hilltribe) village. So I said yes. It was 6pm and the guy said I should stay at their ‘resort’ that night for free, with dinner and breakfast was included. I’d just had dinner!  One of the guys took me back to my guesthouse on a motorbike and waited for me to pack my stuff. Thankfully Napa only charged me for the previous night’s accommodation.

We left at 9am, with our guide Coco, a local Thai, and an English couple, two French girls and a guy from Slovakia.
Day 1 involved 4 hours of rafting through limestone cliffs and waterfalls with rainbows coming off them, hot springs, a picnic on the riverbank and 3 hours of trekking through the jungle to our campsite and national park headquarters.

We saw monkeys, a turtle, a monitor lizard, a large snake and a baby tarantula, all from a distance. Coco’s english was good and he taught us a lot about the environment.
Arriving at the campsite we swam in the river as our bath for the night, small fish biting the dead skin off our feet (eeew ;) ).
It rained in the evening, so they moved our tents under the picnic shelter. There were also (crouching) toilets, and our meal got cooked in a kitchen, so it wasn’t ‘wild’ camping.
We played  yahtzee until the light got turned off at 9.30. We lit candles, but huge insects then buzzed around them.

Day two started with a 20 minute walk to Nam Tok Thilawsu, the biggest and most beautiful waterfall in Thailand. It is very wide (up to 400m) and about 200m high, with various levels. This photo does not show the whole width.

We climbed up a few levels and swam under one of the highest parts. Water spray surrounding us, and waves in the water from the force of the waterfall. Awesome.
Then we climbed down a few levels where a good jumping point was. I think it would have been around 10 metres. I was too chicken but the rest of my group did it. I took photos and video of everyone, haha.

After lunch back at the campsite we walked for 2 or 3 hours to a Karen (hilltribe) village. There we swam at another waterfall before dinner.
Lots of animals (and people of course) in the village: a pet gibbon, puppies, pigs, chickens, cows, buffalo.

We ate by candlelight and again played yahtzee (not many insects here), some locals joined us playing a local string instrument and guitar, and brought rice whiskey (moonshine) to try (it was a lot nicer than the rice wine (tasted like tequila) I had in Vietnam!

Someone spotted a big tarantula right near where we were eating.
The next morning as I wandered around the village a bit, it was fun seeing the children playing games: football, hide and seek, and a game where you shoot rubber bands onto a target. Who needs videogames?!

We then had a three hour elephant ride to the end of our trek.
I regret not protesting louder and just walking with the guide. The seat really hurt (it’s a very bumpy ride on/in an uncomfortable basket, a leg and my back were bruised for days) and some of the elephants don’t seem to enjoy it.

But, there was one good thing about it, and that was that I was on top of a mamma elephant, with a 9 month old baby tagging along! Coco said this could make her unpredictable and dangerous as she might be protective of the baby (yeah, really needed to hear that just before getting on!!), but all was good, and it was great to watch the baby walking in front, behind, leaning on his mum’s side and stopping to let him drink three times.

At the end of our trek we crossed the big bamboo bridge I’d been on a few days ago, and by around 1pm we were back at the hotel having lunch. Took a sorngtaaou back to Mae Sot the same afternoon. This one luckily only took 4 hours, though wasn’t as fun as we didn’t stop for locals, it was just my fellow trekkers and I.