The best move we made in our decision making process to leave Chiang Dao a night early was to charter our own boat from TaThon to Chiang Rai. By bus it would have been 92 km, a little over an hour bus ride, and much cheaper than our own boat…but we figured it was worth the extra baht to see the Mae Kok River and do something we hadn’t yet tried.
Our renaissance business woman (who, I don’t think I mentioned this, originally struck up conversation having passed us on her motorbike asking if we were looking for a hostel and immediately taking us up as her charity case…most guesthouses will give people a small commission if they bring travelers their way who end up staying a night or two...) was all ready for us Saturday morning. She had given me a map of the river and highlighted stops for us, pointed to our boat, helped our driver load our packs and wished us well…we had no idea what was in store for us. All we knew was that it was usually about a 3 hour boat trip but with stops could take up to 5 hours.
The first place we stopped was a village of the Lahu hilltribe and it was everything that we had hoped to avoid in our decision not to go ‘trekking’, as is ever popular among tourists following the route we are. It was a village, but set up to sell their wares to tourists while they gaze, stare, watch (whichever your choice of verb may be) at the local goings-on. There is something to be said about buying things from local tribes, cutting out the traditional ‘middle-men’ who would rip off the local villagers, but usually tour outfitters do receive a small cut. Additionally, while it is great that these villages can open themselves to become part of the tourism industry and increase their economic lot, it says a lot about the nature of globalism and the era of traveling which has skyrocketed to catastrophic proportions in the past few decades in comparison to the turn of the 20th century. Heather made a really great analogy, remarking that she felt uncomfortable, “like it’s the world fair all over again, this time, we’re coming to them”
Not that we were around when the world fair took place…but I mean, we’ve learned about it.
I think that our driver, Kaa (spelling?), picked up on our discomfort for having stopped at a village, and spared us stopping at the next one on the map. Or he just didn’t understand our boat outfitter’s directions. Regardless, we then stopped at a Hot Spring Park, which had little pools you could pay to bath in if you so chose. We had a nice little walk around, and got back on our boat and headed further downstream.
Our last stop on the river before Chiang Rai was an elephant camp. We pulled up and ‘docked’ (read: ran into the shore) and made our way through the numerous elephants that were hanging out near the shoreline to the local street. We found awesome khao soi for lunch (we’ll rate it about 2nd or 3rd best thus far, behind the random stand in Pai that Gaew pointed us to, and potentially after a roadside stand we went to in Chiang Dao) and walked around a bit to the local Karen streetside stalls. There were some incredible setups where women were handstitching quilts, tablecloths and tablerunners and clothing, and usually had old Singer sewing machines set up in a corner. (mom, you’d be proud, let the quilting bee know)
This river boat was an incredible trip, especially because we got to see a different aspect of Northern Thai culture – those that live on the water and make their living harvesting rocks for local cement? mills – this is complete conjecture on our part, we’re not entirely sure. The views were gorgeous, and the ride itself made us all miss boating on good ‘ole Lake George, ps.
The best part of our trip was the last leg, from the elephant camp to Chiang Rai boat dock, was the fact that we walk up looking for our boat and Kaa, our driver, and realize that all our stuff is in a different boat. No life jackets this time (although, we only used them for cushions in Kaa’s boat) and no driver. After about 5 minutes another man ran up and asked, “Chiang Rai? Chiang Rai?” We nodded, and he ushered us into his boat. All our stuff had been nicely moved from boat to boat and placed almost exactly where we’d left it. It was only about another 30 minutes more, and then we were in Chiang Rai.
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