After a busy day, I hopped on a long tail boat up the river for about 30 minutes to my hotel in the jungle. I had already been preparing myself as this place was really about going back to basics, no electricity, no technology, no wifi! For someone who uses social media and my phone everyday, I really was going cold turkey but I couldn't wait!
This place was absolutely stunning! So peaceful and literally felt like you were in the middle of no where. As we pulled up to the hotel, the whole place is floating on rafts with a real quaint homely feel about it. I was given my room key which was on a big wooden leaf and made my way to the room. As there is no electricity, each room has an old fashioned lantern - even in the day the rooms are dark!
After dumping my stuff in the room, the group I was with jumped straight into the river, it was such a laugh! It was pretty shallow and warm ( I could touch the bottom) and we just floated downstream with the current until the end, grabbed the metal stairs to get back up and did it all over again! The currents are pretty strong so you'd be screwed if you missed the last hut and carried on going down the river! We had a Thai dinner and some of us watched the local 'Mon' people do their dancing. At night, not only does the jungle come alive with noises, it really is pitch black. Thankfully with the lanterns and candles you can see around and you're given a small torch on your room key to see inside the room. Whilst it was really back to basics, I loved every minute of it! You see a clip of this on my Facebook page.
The next day, as I went for breakfast, a local elephant had wandered to where we were eating and we took it in turns to feed him. He was pretty hungry! We boarded our longtail boats and headed back down the river to the collection point as we headed in land to the Ewaran National Park. Here they have a number of really beautiful tiered waterfalls that you can swim and bathe in. One of them even has a big smooth rock you can slide down into the pool below. This was also a really cool experience, colder than the river but equally just as much fun. The rock pools below the waterfalls are full of fish, I think carp, and they love to nibble on your feet! Whilst I'm normally fine with this, when you can't see them when your in the water, they kept making me jump! Greedy buggers. I swam across to the first big waterfall and under it, sitting on the rock behind it whilst I watched everyone else jumping it. That was a pretty cool day.
Whilst I was drying off, someone spotted a huge Monitor Lizard walking up from behind the rocks. It was pretty big and soon enough, everyone's attention was diverted to following it and where it would go next. You wouldn't want to mess with it, pretty big claws!
Next stop it was on to Ayuthaya which was the former capital of Thailand and was once one of the wealthiest cities in the world. I had a look around the ruins and temples that remain which are mostly made of stone and brick. The stupas of Wat Phri Sanphet and the bronze Buddha's of Wat Mahatat are pretty impressive up close. It was so hot this day with little breeze that the temple area felt like a sun trap!
I headed back down the Chao Praya River to Bangkok on a leisurely boat trip for a few hours before boarding the overnight sleeper train to Chiang Mai. To say I was surprised with the sleeper train compared to the China one I had a few weeks earlier was an understatement...brand spanking new!! Although this one was more dormitory style compared to compartments, everything was new and it even had a canteen area with wifi! They also come around at about7.30pm and make the beds for you, I think it was a sign that we had a curfew at some point! The downside was that bizarrely the lights never went off or weren't even dimmed properly, so if you didn't have any eye shades, it basically felt like daytime still.
The train arrived in to Chiang Mai at about 8am so it was off to the hotel to get washed and changed before heading out to explore the city ahead of the Yi Peng festival in the evening. One of the highlights of the day was a trip up the mountain to the stunning Doi Suthep temple which stands on top of the mountain overlooking the city of Chiang Mai. The view from here is really worth the drive up.
