Or That Time I Thought I Was Going to Die (Part 2)
Continuing from Part 1 of the scariest day ever…
The scenery of the rice fields from high up in the mountains got even more beautiful as the sun finally came out that day. I was still marveling at how excellent my driver was at staying upright on these ten inch wide roads when shit went down.
We were leading our pack of motorbikes when it happened. I was trying not to make any sudden movements and just let my driver do his thing when we started rocking left and right. His steering became erratic as he tried to stay on the concrete path and I just knew we are going off the edge. (The concrete slab on which we’re riding is about 5 inches above the dirt, so slipping to one side of it isn’t really an option if you’re trying to stay on the bike/alive). Well, boom, we drive right off, he swerves to the left, and the bike slams to the ground. He must have done some last minute thinking, because he kept the bike from landing on top of me, avoiding some potential burns. Luckily we fell at a place on the trail where the cliff had eased into more of a gradual slope to our deaths… rather than a total drop off to hell.
Thank God for that three foot buffer of grass beside the trail. I stood up to find I only had a scrape on my upper thigh, just a little road rash, probably the kind that the average motorbiker is used to. My driver, however, was bleeding through a new hole in his jeans… and our motorbike was messed up. Eh, considering the circumstances, I’ll take it.
I wasn’t even mad that we fell. I was mad that I then had to get back on a motorbike for the rest of the day, riding around mountains, through jungles, and in traffic with fools I no longer had any faith in. What the hell, TripAdvisor?! Are those reviews written by people smoking crack (or opium, considering this is Thailand)?! Yeah, I was pretty on edge after that.
Some roaming chickens, to lighten the mood
My confidence and trust in this whole tour group was just shattered. But outwardly? I just smiled, awkwardly laughed, and said, “It’s okay, no really, I’m okay, okay? Yes, you can see it. See? No, it’s not bad, no problem. Just a scrape. I’m FINE.” I refused any iodine or first aid as we were about to go swim in the waterfall anyway. And I was just tired of talking about it.
They put me on a different bike with another guide from our group and we finally made it to the water, me still shaking. (Meanwhile, my bleeding driver had to take his pants off and doctor his leg up with the first aid kit they brought. Hey, at least they were somewhat prepared right?)
There were a few other people swimming at the waterfall. It wasn’t huge but it was still impressive. We were at a waterfall in the middle of a jungle in Thailand! Obviously, it was awesome.
Immediately Charlie’s teenage driver takes off all of his clothes except his underwear, smokes a quick cigarette, and then jumps into the water. This guy swims across the river and climbs up the slippery rocks like a damn monkey, moving quickly like he’s done this a million times, climbing up a solid 25 feet until he reaches the top of the waterfall. Everything is wet, so I have no idea how he does it. Then he disappears into the woods and comes running out, jumping and flipping all the way down into the water below. Holy shit, he does not give any fucks. He repeats this jump five or so times. Charlie was enthralled. Meanwhile, I proceeded to jump (feet first, first time, thanks mom) off of a boulder that was like, um, three feet out of the water. That’s the riskiest behavior I was down for. I swam a bit, trying to get my heart rate down from my recent bike wreck.
Charlie wanted to climb up the rocks with his driver and jump off. You can only imagine my mood at this point. The conversation (pretty much) goes like this:
Tour guide (to Charlie, whose eyes are lit up like a 5 year old): “You go? It’s easy.”
Charlie: “Yeah man… Rachel I’m gonna go.”
Me: “No the hell you are not.”
Charlie: “Look, he’s gonna help me get up, he says it’s fine to jump there.”
Me: “Yeah, like I was totally fine on that motorbike. Seriously? You can’t see how deep it is! Risk, reward, think about it? Really?! So not worth it!”
Charlie: “Okay… No… Yeah, I’m gonna do it. You know I like jumping off really high things.”
Me: “We are flying to the beach tomorrow and if you are in a Chiang Mai hospital, I am leaving you the fuck here and getting on the plane.” (sorry for the language, I’m trying to be recreate this scene to the fullest)
Charlie: “Okay, well if I do it, will you at least take my picture?”
Me: “Ha! No! Hell no! I’m not getting out of the water.” (I’m going with the “picture or it didn’t happen” philosophy here and hoping if I won’t take the picture, it won’t be worth it to jump.)
Charlie: “Please? It’ll be okay.”
Me: “No. You are going to kill yourself.”
Charlie: “Sorry babe, I’m going.”
Me: “I hate you.”
-
The rocks are slippppery. That guy on the right is definitely not our tour guide.
Charlie then proceeded to swim across the river with the crazy guy. Our tour guides still standing on the shore yelled out something about how there was a “whirlpool” about twenty feet away, so he shouldn’t swim too far to the right. What?! Okay, sure, that sounds reasonable. Not a valuable piece of information we probably should’ve known earlier…
With some scrambling and nerve-racking climbing, and assisted by our monkey tour guide, Charlie made it to the top of the cliff that overlooked the water. He jumped, and dammit, wouldn’t you know that one of our other tour guides actually did get a picture of it. Jesus. Thank goodness he lived, uninjured, to continue our vacation.
Just then an older (larger) tourist decided he was going to attempt the same jump. Before he could climb that high, his sensible tour guide, dressed in a collared shirt and looking a little more professional (with a much better command of the English language) yelled to him that “he better get the hell down, because he is going to hurt himself and ruin his trip” (I’m paraphrasing). That guide then told us that there are huge boulders under the water there and you can’t tell when the water is high enough to safely jump. Every year, he says, at least a few tourists come here, break their legs, and ruin their vacation because they have to get a medevac out of Thailand. Or they spend the rest of their time in the hospital. Oh, awesome. Yet another snippet of information we could have used five minutes earlier. (Charlie’s facial expression upon hearing this: “WTF!” Mine: “Yeah told you, idiot.”)
I’m beginning to wonder who these guys are that have taken us on this tour. So after my swim, I’m pretty much ready to go, like go back to my hotel go. We’ve done all the super fun things, seen some scenery, and almost died. I’m ready to wrap it up for the day. Also, I do not want to get back on that damn bike. But we haven’t yet seen the Karen Hill Tribe. And we did pay for that part of the trip.
Sooo off we go back into the hills. It started to rain and things got muddier, but we persevered: me with my new (seemingly more responsible) driver and Charlie with his (still crazy) guy who is all the time on his phone or smoking.
On our way up into the mountains where the tribe lives, we saw some of the best sights of the rice terraces yet. There were beautiful views of the incredibly intricate steps made out of the land and the miniature manmade waterfalls that create an irrigation system. For once, we actually stopped and got off our bikes to take pictures. This system of farming makes you realize just how smart humans really are. The viewpoint was incredible. Meanwhile, Charlie’s driver is just taking a leak.
Close up of rice plants and irrigation methods.
After that quick moment of beauty, we began the really hellish ride up the muddy, no longer grassy, mountainside. My mind went back to a review I’d read online in which a middle-aged woman said she had to close her eyes on the motorbike so she wouldn’t get scared and throw her weight around. So yes, in the face of treacherous muddy paths and more of those evil tiny concrete slabs of road, I closed my eyes and prayed for probably twenty minutes straight.
The Karen Hill Tribe is interesting and it’s unbelievable that a group of people have actually built these homes and live this far out in the wilderness. They have chickens, dogs, and a few have huge pigs tied up to the stilts underneath their houses. Some huts have roofs thatched with leaves that must be replaced regularly. Others have newer metal roofs. They told us that sometimes a teacher comes from town to visit the children.
We only saw one woman in the village while we were there, who promptly tried to sell us jewelry and clothing. We did get some bracelets made with seeds and put them on, forevermore referring to them as our “traveler bracelets.” I don’t think I could’ve pulled off the traditional skirt she was pushing. We said thank you and left the village behind, enlightened but ready to get back into dry clothes.
The ride home was an absolute nightmare. It had already been a long day when it began to rain harder. I closed my eyes more. We drove through thicker jungle on skinnier paths. And then we came across the sketchiest “bridge” I’ve ever seen. Probably because it wasn’t really a bridge. Crossing here, which apparently was the plan all along, was a process. I just sat my butt on the ground and took pictures of the guides while Charlie and I talked about how absurd this trip had been. In the end, the guides got the motorbikes across, and we walked. It was then that I discovered that my rubber boots had holes in them. Excellent.
The ride home was also a LOT longer than the ride out. When we finally made it back to paved roads, we travelled about 30 minutes before stopping at a gas station. Surely we were almost home. Noooo, our guides said we had another two hours. What?! Well, maybe an hour and a half. No, that’s impossible. Charlie was madder than me at hearing this and even suggested we tell them, “Just leave us here, we’ll get a cab… somehow.”
Seeing as how being abandoned in a countryside gas station in Thailand with no cabs on the (darkening) horizon and the very high likelihood that we wouldn’t be able to communicate with the gas station attendant, we reluctantly got back on our motorbikes for the long haul home. Eventually, I started seeing the green road signs for Chiang Mai, the traffic became thicker, and we were back in civilization. I mentally celebrated so hard. Then the traffic became much thicker, and Charlie’s motorbike once again disappeared. His driver is flying and they are nowhere to be found. We are passing within six inches of the cars, skirting around the traffic. It’s intense, it’s dark, and it’s cold.
My actual thoughts at this time are as follows: “Either we are going to come across Charlie splattered on the road in a few minutes, or I am going to get back to the tour’s headquarters and they are going to be holding Charlie at knifepoint as he types a five-star TripAdvisor review. That’s got to be how they get such good reviews. There’s no other explanation. What the hell is going on?!”
We ended up making it back safe and sound (Charlie about 15 minutes before me). We waited while the owner, Nat, burned us a great CD of all the photos they had taken during our day. This was a perk we didn’t know we were getting. Nat seemed to have his shit together. What was up with his ragtag group of guides we rode around with all day?!
Something Different Tours was an experience. Maybe not one I’d repeat again, but an experience nonetheless. We got to see a lot of Chiang Mai that’s not accessible by car and packed a whole lot of adventure into one day. I honestly do not know how their TripAdvisor reviews are so, so great after our experience, though I will say that we look back on that day a lot more fondly today than we did that evening. Perhaps it was the rainy season that caused us to have issues. I did happen to recently find a review from a Danish girl who went on the tour around the same time we did and she ripped them a new one (she fell off too). Maybe it was our particular guides. Or maybe we just didn’t have realistic expectations. Who knows? Next time, maybe I’ll just stick to trekking.
And don’t worry, immediately upon returning to our hotel room, we soothed ourselves with hot showers, treats from the mini-bar, dinner, and foot massages at the night market. You can’t rough it all day.
Amazing photos, Rachel! What an experience, thanks for sharing it with us 🙂
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Literally laughed out loud 5 times, you definitely have a gift of writing!
I would be way more of a wimp if I had been in your shoes, falling off a motor bike?! What a crazy experience. Thanks for sharing, and in my upcoming Thailand trip, I will definitely not be doing this tour in Chiang Mai!
Haha thanks Sonja! Yeah the fall certainly changed the tone of that day. It’s not that these guys weren’t trying their best (I mean they do get great reviews!) – maybe we just had a muddy day. Or maybe they do a better job when they’re just taking people on treks. Who knows!? Have fun in Thailand! It’s AMAZING. Can’t wait to get back.