I can’t believe I’m writing this, but welcome to the very last post of our travels! For our last couple of weeks, we met up with a close friend of mine and split our time between Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand, and Northern Thailand – road-tripping in the rainforest around Chiang Mai.
Koh Samui
A short ferry ride from Koh Phangam took us to last of our island getaways – Koh Samui. Koh Samui is the most developed of the three islands we visited – with lots of high-end accommodation, luxury facilities and shopping, as well as the now-standard beaches and rainforest. We spent a week staying in a beautiful hotel with a pool and gym – all for around 25 dollars a night, which helped our rapidly dimishing remaining budget. It was a pretty good deal, and we spent a lot of time just enjoying the facilities and relaxing.
Once again, we hired some scooters and hooned our way around the island (and by hooned, I mean carefully drove around trying not to get killed). One of our first destinations was the Big Buddha, which is pretty much what it sounds like – a gigantic golden statue.
Another scooter excursion took us to the “Tanim Magic Garden” which consisted of a cute waterfall and surrounds that had been carefully landscaped with various statues. It was right on top of one of the highest mountians on the island, which meant we had a rather wild ride down on the scooters, with unreal views over the beaches and rainforest.
Of course. my obsession with cheap eats continued – lucky the hotel had a gym! We managed to avoid food poisoning during our time in Thailand which was a relief – we made a habit of checking Google reviews for any reports of previous food poisoning. Any mention – automatically avoided. We also tried to avoid street-food type places where we could see the meat not being refrigerated – for pretty logical reasons. We hit the local markets a few times, which while not Bangkok-level still had plenty to see.
Eventually, we reluctantly left our island life and took a ferry, bus and plane combo to Chiang Mai
Chiang Mai and the Mae Hong Son Loop
I’d heard from some friends that the Mae Hong Son Loop, which is a 600km road trip starting and finishing in Chiang Mai, Northern Thailand, was well worth a look. And so for our very last week of our trip, we hired a car and headed out into the true jungle. Many people choose to do the loop on motorcycle or scooter – we decided against this as it was wet season, and boy am I glad we did. Occasionally and without any real pattern or warning, absolutely brutal downpours of rain would come through, and the few brave souls we did see on motorbikes were soaked to the bone when they were unlucky enough to be on the road at those times. Our Nissan Navara on the other hand kept us dry and safe, and our only minor mishaps were having to turn back at a surpringly flooded river, and briefly getting bogged once when we took an ambitious Google Maps-based detour down a muddy track.
Our first stop on the loop was the massive Machirathan Waterfall. We’d tried to visit some waterfalls during our time on the Thai Islands, and had been underwhelmed by the trickles of water we found. In contrast, some areas around the Mae Hong Son loop were in flood – so this waterfall was an absolute torrent. We were buffeted by mist coming off the water from metres away, and taking just a few photos we were soaked to the bone. We also made it to the Royal Pagodas of Mount Inthanon in the same national park, which despite being inside a cloud were a visually spectacular sight. These Pagodas were built by the Thai Air Force in honor of the Thai Royal Family, and apparently contain relics of the Buddha.
We managed to visit two very interesting, and distinctly un-Thai places during our road trip. The first was Huay Sua Thao – a village of Karen refugees from nearby Myanmar. The Karen ethnic group have been persecuted by the ruling governments of Myanmar for years, and so hundreds of thousands of these people have crossed into Thailand and live in their own villages. Under Thai law, they are treated differently to citizens, and lack a lot of basic rights and protections. However in some townships, such as the one we visited, they are permitted to sell goods that they make, and due the distinctive “long necks” of some of the women (traditionally, some Karen women would elongate their necks using golden rings, a tradition that has continued for many), these towns have become tourist attractions. It was definitely an uncomfortable experience to visit somewhere where “people” are the attractions, but we made the decision to go after reading online how these refugees are reliant on the purchases made by visitors to survive. So we spent some time talking to the people, and bought a number of beautiful cloths from the women.
The other fascinating non-Thai village we visited was beautiful Ban Rak Thai. This township was formed by refugees fleeing communist China after the revolution, and as a result has a distinctively Chinese feel. Set by a beautiful mountain lake, it is truly a spectacular sight. We spent quite a while here just enjoying the views and eating noodle soup and other Chinese dishes.
On a couple of occasions we were able to visit different bamboo bridges over rice paddies, which were both beautiful spots to take in the sights and grab some photos. The level of manipulation of the flow of water and intensive agriculture through drains, canals and paddies astonished me – I suppose when you have rich soils, huge amounts of rainfall, and elevation, you can do things that just aren’t possible in Australia
On one surreal day, which also happened to be my birthday, we visited two astonishing places. The first of these was a mountain-side noodle soup restaurant at a place called Ban Jabo, which has become famous as an Instagram hotspot for the incredible view in recent years, but unlike many Instagram spots, was actually well worth the visit. It was totally surreal to eat our noodle soup with our legs hanging over the edge, looking out between the mountains.
The second spot was a remarkable large cave with water flowing through it. Despite the floods, we were able to visit the part of the caves that was open, and were transported into the cave through the darkness by bamboo raft. A crazy experience.
A classic tourist attraction closer to Chiang Mai is the Sticky Waterfalls. The name pretty much sums it up – these waterfalls flow over grippy minerals deposited by the spring that feeds the waterfall, resulting in a steep waterfall that you can actually walk your way directly up. Definitely a lot of fun, even if we did get caught in one of the torrential downpours during our visit
On our last day of driving the loop, we headed off into the jungle early and made our way to Elephant Rescue Park. Here, we spent a surreal day in the rain with Asian elephants. We fed them, walked with them around the property, and finally hand-scrubbed them in the nearby dam. This activity was another moral quandary for us – elephants are both incredible intelligent and often-mistreated, and taking part in “elephant tourism” was not something that felt comfortable. On the other hand, all elephants at this park were already domesticated before they came to the park, and had been rescued from working in forestry or in the circus. They cannot go back into the wild, and so instead they are waited on by individual handlers each who care for their every need. It was definitely a surreal day and one I’ll never forget – elephants are just huge up close, and are surprisingly playful, patient and gentle.
It was really fascinating just to get off the beaten track at times, and even to be on the beaten track during such a non-tourist period (unsurprisingly, wet season is not a popular time for tourists, and we got many confused looks and questions when we turned up at different places). We drove through countless tiny villages where kids, dogs and chickens seemingly roamed freely (dogs would sleep on the bitumen, and often we would have to drive around the dogs, as they would just ignore us). It was clear that many people lived very cheaply and simply in this area, but the kids seemed to relish the freedom – we passed many happy 8-12 year olds driving their motorbikes/scooters around town.
For our last day in Chiang Mai, we spent some time looking through the markets and shops for souvenirs for family. We finished up the day by hitting up a delicious Japanese restaurant that served small plates, and toasted to the end of a long journey!
Home
Of course, we still had one more gruelling travel day to go. So after a short domestic plane ride back to Bangkok, we killed some of our several hours waiting for the next plane by visiting the “secret” street food area in Bangkok Airport – Magic Food Point. Honestly, I thought I was going to get food poisoning just by looking at the food here, but we tried our luck one last time and ended up eating some ok Thai food for 2 dollars a plate – definitely the cheapest I have ever eaten for inside an airport. Then it was onto an overnight Jetstar plane (which was exactly the experience you would expect) and before we knew it, we were back in brisk Melbourne on a Friday morning.
So that’s it folks. 9 months of travel comes to an end – within budget (just) and without any major injuries or disasters (just some close calls). Thanks for reading along as we made this trip of a lifetime – it has certainly been an experience we will never forget. I hope you’ve been inspired to travel, or at least feel like you’ve had a window into what the experience is like. For now, I’m very much enjoying forward being in my own bed, and being able to properly relax – 9 months was a long, long time to be on the move. It is amazing how much we’ve enjoyed the small things since we’ve been home – supermarkets with big ranges of food, knowing where we will sleep, having a full kitchen. Turns out there really is no place like home! But I’m sure the travel bug will be biting soon before long.
