January 31st, 2023
When we woke up the morning of January 28, Max’s stomach was still pretty unsettled. We packed up and checked out of our hotel, and started walking to the bus station to go to Chiang Rai. Max decided to stop putting anything in his stomach besides water, but here’s the thing: his body doesn’t seem to protect him from cravings when he is sick. When I feel sick, the smell of food might make me nauseous. Not so for Max; he is starving and sad, but if he eats, he is in pain. We stopped to get a coffee for me and Max just stared longingly at my coffee. It was heart-wrenching. I decided I would need to hunger strike too! Haha.
We spent a bit of time trying to find Fluke, who was our ride to the airport. I found some wifi and sent him our photo and location, and he showed up shortly after and lead us to his old truck. We drove about 26 km outside of Chiang Rai. Fluke quizzed us on life in Canada. He is hoping to save up and do his post graduate degree at Centennial College in Toronto, in software engineering! We gave him as many tips as we could.
We arrived at Bamboo Nest just after lunch. Nok, Fluke’s mom and our actual host, had driven to Chiang Mai to do something and would be back late. Fluke checked us into our little Bamboo hut. The place is off the grid with solar power for lights and electronics, and gas heating for the water. It’s right on the river and there are hammocks, and he gave us a couple of camping chairs for our little patio. We are so excited - it’s going to be like a little mini vacation within our vacation! We walked to a national park which had some hot springs and wandered around, but it was too hot to go in the pools. We wandered back and read our books, and Max had a nap and took some medicine that we had been prescribed before leaving in the event of illness - we should have gotten him to take it much sooner, but for some reason we both thought it would be a 24 hour bug.
Fluke cooked us some curry and stir fried veggies with rice, with pineapple and watermelon for dessert. We have all our breakfasts and dinners included in the price of our room, and it seems that the food is going to be delicious. Then we headed back to our hut - it was pitch dark and the perfect level of cold to snuggle under the thick blankets. We listened to the river and the frogs and fell asleep again.
The next morning, we woke up and Nok was there! She made us coffee and scrambled eggs, and she put out her homemade bread and homemade jam with butter. There were oranges and bananas… I am so excited.
Max was feeling a lot better, so we decided to go exploring. We hiked up to a big lookout point. All three dogs came with us, but by the time we got to the top of the hill/mountain, only one dog had kept coming. We named him Lumpy, and he was a bundle of energy - he was scampering up steep faces and racing down slopes! But he always came back to check on us.
We contoured along a ridge to an Akha village (one of the hill tribes of Northern Thailand) and tried to continue on to a waterfall. We got off trail at some point, and had to cross the river and then had to bushwhack/ climb up a steep slope covered in bamboo which was not fun. But it lead us to a little trail that brought us to a beautiful waterfall! We jumped into the pool beneath the falls to cool down and get rid of the itchiness from all the bushwhacking. It was so lovely. Then we ate our tuna sandwiches which Nok had packed for us in banana leaves. They were very good sandwiches. Max only ate half to test out his stomach.
We wandered through a tea plantation and back to a temple, then got some ice cream near the second hot spring location. We made it home in the late afternoon and settled in to read our books and relax until dinner. It started to get very cold when the sun got low. We had showers and bundled up, then we grabbed a beer from the fridge and played some cards. Nok’s boyfriend offered to make us a fire, and he made us a great fire by the river. We sat there and chatted until dinner, it was really great! There are three huts but we are the only ones here, which feels very lucky.
Dinner was amazing. Fluke is a good cook but Nok really takes it to another level. We headed to bed pretty early again and slept for over 10 hours.
Max woke up feeling not great again. We decided he should not go exploring - his body had been improving, but pushing it yesterday had obviously not helped.
We had our breakfast and then I took off with the dogs to a second waterfall. The route there was through fields of rice, corn, bananas and pineapples. I could see people harvesting the pineapples with machetes and loading them into baskets strapped to their foreheads and down their backs. Then guys would load the baskets onto their motorcycles and negotiate their way down a very steep and narrow slope to the truck on the road. It was pretty wild. They all wore big rubber boots which made me a bit nervous about snakes.
It was a very hot day with not much shade through most of the hike. I made it to the waterfall and snapped some photos, then ate my sandwich, then headed back to Max. A lot of people tried talking to me en route, but most did not speak English. I think I was a bit of a curiosity.
I returned to Bamboo Nest to find a very happy Max. He had read almost the entire book “this is how it always is”, and thoroughly enjoyed it. He had laid on our deck stretching and chilling, and eaten his tuna sandwich with no stomach pain. He took more medicine too. Overall, I think we made a good decision and he seems to be on the up and up! I cooled off my feet in the river, and then did my own stretching and reading on the patio. I am reading “all the pretty horses” and it’s really helping me to improve my cowboy impersonations. Max finished his book, and we started to get chilly again. Max found some bamboo sticks and branches, and we built our own fire since Nok was still in town. The stars were great because it was such a clear night. Nok came back and made us another super good dinner, including a full fish. The cat was desperate to get some too so we spent a lot of time guarding the food from her!
We went for another “best sleep ever”. I could get use to this! Max said this has been his favourite place on our vacation so far, even though he was sick for the start.
In the morning, we had one last great breakfast and then packed up. Nok and her boyfriend drove us back to Chiang Rai, and we stopped at the white temple and the blue temple on the way. They are being restored by a local artist, who said it will take three generations to achieve his vision. What has been done so far is absolutely stunning. The white temple has walkways with ceilings crammed with silver lucky bodhi leaves, and the temple is surrounded by a moat filled with angel fish. Every surface of the outside of the temple is white and covered in little mirror-like flecks, which causes it to sparkle in the sun. There are so many paintings and carvings - it’s quite detailed and truly awesome to behold. We got some ice cream after, but it was accidentally durian ice cream, which it turns out neither of us likes. Oh well! You win some, you dim some.
Once we were in Chiang Rai, we got some food near the clock tower (Khao Soi noodles again!) Then went to the hill tribe museum. We learned a lot about the various hill tribes in Vietnam, and in particular their connection with the opium trade which was an original idea by the government to “bring them into the Thai economy”. It sounds like it was quite disastrous overall, and now that opium is illegal, they are often exploited by tourist organizations who bring foreigners in to gawk at them. I am glad we went, but it was very sad to learn about their history.
We headed to the flower festival, which was so pretty! But unfortunately, carrying our heqvy panniers around was getting old quickly. We decided to post up somewhere with food, drinks and wifi until our flight to Bangkok. We had some great chats about where we should live next, then saw the light show at the clock tower (a bit underwhelming), then caught a tuk tuk to the airport. We got through security relatively smoothly, except apparently our checked bag was absolutely full of lighters (lol). Then we listened to podcasts on the plane. Once in Bangkok, we found a free shuttle to the other airport across town, which was near our hotel. We showered at our hotel and didn’t get to sleep until about 1am. We have another flight to Koh Samui tomorrow morning, and then it’s beaches beaches beaches!!! It’s going to be great!
