Chiang Dao

Wednesday January 16 – Friday January 18, 2008
Thank goodness we’re flexible people. We arrived in Chiang Dao, found our hostel (which was right off a main road, which meant ridiculously loud nights. I think earplugs might be the next investment for a few people one the trip as we were all awake at random hours except sarah who slept soundly with bright little orange earplugs popping out of her head), and headed to café café, a little restaurant right next to where the bus dropped us off.

We were trying to figure out how to spend our full 2 days in the area…and had three options – elephant camp, chiang dao caves and thailand’s highest limestone mountain, dao luang. We decided to nix the elephant camp because it was in the opposite direction and we weren’t exactly thrilled to go see elephants in captivity…even though they are in their natural habitat.

We woke up early the next morning and grabbed a tuktuk to the chiang dao caves. It was an incredible complex, and our guide slash latern holder for the morning had a fabulous time pointing out rock formations that reminded tourists of certain things…such as fried eggs, lotus flowers, chickens, etc. She knew very little English, but luckily we had heather and sarah with us to explain a bit about caves in general. The photo below is from in the caves. there was a natural picture frame!


However, we thought that the caves were going to be a full day activity. They took about an hour and half to go through (very worth it though), but our tuktuk wasn’t coming back until 5pm. Miiiight have been why she looked at us like we were crazy when we asked her to come back 6-7 hours after leaving us at this little outpost. We walked to Chiang Dao Nest, a guesthouse/restaurant which has been rated in the top restaurants in all of Thailand…but they didn’t have much thai food. What we did get, mostly Western dishes, were incredible though, and it was a gorgeous area.

We then went on a hunt to find out about hiking dao luang. Considering when we asked at a streetside stall at the base of the caves about the mountain and hiking it in a day, we were laughed out…we got the feeling that this wasn’t as simple as Lonely Planet made it seem (although, in LP’s defense, they didn’t have much more than 2 sentences on how pretty the view from the summit was). A woman (the equivalent of our national park rangers, potentially?) at the Chiang Dao Wildlife Sanctuary reinforcecd our greatest fears…Dao Luang couldn’t be hiked in a day. It was a two day/one night trip at least, if a guide would agree to push you that much. We called the Chiang Dao Nest owner and found out that most guides wouldn’t allow people to hike for more than 5 hours a day. Which is probably smart – the gradient was rather steep, and it does get ridiculously hot between the hours of 10-4, especially after noon.

To get back to the entrance to the cave complex, where we were getting picked up, we took a “2km nature walk” as recommended by the ranger we spoke to. I’m beginning to think that some people interchange km and miles for us foreigners…not realizing there’s a rather big difference. Though, in the end, it probably wasn’t more than 2 miles.
And it ended up being a nature walk through the woods…for forest monks, maybe. When we hear nature walk in the US, we think nice, flat trail. This was definitely a bit of hike. Regardless, we were excited to be ‘in the forest’ for a good bit.

So, as a result of having to leave Dao Luang without hiking the summit, we decided to change our plans completely. We left the following day, ridiculously early, and caught a bus to TaThon.
“catching a bus” in this case means standing at the parking lot we’d been dropped at and waving at all the buses coming down the road, hoping they were driving the route we needed. We actually had to take the bus to Fang, the furthest stop by bus, and then take a tuktuk to TaThon.

In the end, going to TaThon was completely worth it – one of the most interesting environments we’ve seen. We didn’t see many tourists there, but there was a HUGE wat, with 9 levels, for us to explore. We had wanted to kayak, as far up the Mae Kok River as we could, potentially getting to see the Burma border, but that was nixed by the inability to paddle upriver according to the woman who helped us find our guesthouse, chartered our boat for the next day, ran a local wares/convenience store and would have rented us kayaks (she was the definition of a thai renaissance woman – had her hand in a little bit of everything).

Wat TaThon was incredible. It was actually a series of different Buddha statues, Wats and Shrines in nine different locations. Apparently, TaThon is a big place for domestic tourists, and Wats/generous donors from Bangkok have poured money into Wat TaThon to make it a local Buddhist tourist attraction. Again, we decided to walk through this fabulous wonderment, and again, got stares from all the locals whizzing by us on motorbikes. It was a good walk through great scenery, we got amazing views of TaThon and the surrounding countryside AND we got to see over the mountains to Burma.

(for those that don’t know, Heather and I are slightly obsessed with Burma, and would try to fit that into our route if not for the political unrest). I’m hoping that while I’m in Bangladesh, things will settle down and I’ll get to visit at some point. Like I said, fingers crossed…

that's us - pointing towards Burma!