This was an action packed day.
Today we decided to take an uber out to Crazy Horse(the climbing area), rather than the shuttle provided by the climbing gym. We did this because we didn’t want to wake up at 6:30 that morning.
This would prove to be our undoing, as well as add to our adventure.
We went ahead, ate breakfast, bought subway for lunch(I know, I know) and headed out.
We decided for the first climb, we would do a 4 pitch climb in the cave we oh-so-love. We already had done the first two pitches the day before with the instructor, but today we were gonna finish the job.
The first two pitches went uneventfully. Sean took a little long to setup the anchors(someone Sean, it doesn’t take 15 min to set an anchor). Then I lead the next two pitches.
We didn’t know how long they were or anything about them(as they were new and not in our book. But the third pitch was wonderful. It was 30m with about 18 bolts. I had to reuse some of my anchors to make it(as I had only brought 14). Here’s a pic of me and Sean hanging from the top of the third pitch:
This is about 170-180 ft up from the ground. We’re just “hanging out” ???.
Because of Sean’s incident on the first day, I made sure to check all his anchors and make sure to ask he’d locked all his carabeaners. We didn’t have any accidents this time thankfully.
Here’s a picture looking down from the top of the third pitch:
That white dot on the wall is the top of Sean’s helmet.
Finally we did the last pitch, which was only about 10meters. It was very stemmy and fun.
Here’s a picture of Sean climbing through the hole at the top of the pitch:
Finally we got to the top! I thought being near the top of the cave was rewarding, but this was just as nice if not better.
Here’s Sean sitting at the top of the route, sitting in front of the cave hole:
And some selfies looking out on the landscape!
This is by far the coolest climb I’ve been done, and I’d go so far and say it’s the coolest thing I’ve ever done.
After that, we decided to do one more single pitch at another location. That was cool too. The pics are on my GoPro, but I didn’t download them.
Next we headed off to a hot springs to get picked up by a bus to drive us back to Chiang Mai. It was 5km away, so about an hour walk. On the way there, we picked up a dog that started to follow us! He was so cute.
Heres a video not of him, but another couple dogs at the crag. There are a lot of stray dogs in Thailand; I’ve probably seen 30-40 st this point. And they’re all cute ?
The dog followed us for about 2-3km. A good 30ish minutes.
However! At one point, 3 dogs approached us and our doggie. I could smell trouble brewing, and I tried to scare them away. But it was to no avail. The three doggos surround our dog, like SURROUNDED him in a circle. Then one dog went in to attack, and our doggie retreated. They then followed suit and chased him a good 50 meters down the road.
That was the end of our trip with doggo 🙁
Finally we got to the hot springs, and trouble started: the last bus back to Chiang Mai was at 6, and it was 6:12. I thought the last bus was at 6:30. So now we’re stranded.
There are no rooms left at the hot springs, and we tried calling taxis/ubers, but nobody will come out this far.
The sun is down by now and we have no were to stay. Sean’s freaking out.
I look on booking.com, and see there is a Japanese hot springs with a room available for $69 about 1km down to road. It’s a queen bed only however.
I call the reception, and luckily someone picks up. I don’t know what it is about Thailand, bit 75℅ of the time people either don’t pick up the phone, or the phone number listed is wrong.
Anyways the lady picks up, we tell her we’ll be there soon, and we make our way over. We were lucky because reception closes at 6, and she happened to be by the phone.
Its dark by now, so I pop in my headlamp(with the flashy red light in the back!) And we walk over.
We finally get there, and after a strained conversation trying to figure out if we can call a taxi from there and/or get 2 beds for our room, we resign to getting one bed and walk into the room.
Here’s a pic of it. Very romantic 😉
Luckily we had really good accommodations. There was a mattress in the closet, and we put that on the floor and I slept on that. The bed itself was really hard and uncomfortable, just the way Sean likes it.
This is when our bad luck turns into good fortune.
This place, being a spa and all, has a mineral bath area! So me and Sean head in down. Luckily it’s open, and we get to have s private mineral bath free of charge! Here’s what it looks like:
And then it keeps getting better! Across the st, in the middle of nowhere, was a KARAOKE bar that served food! So great. So we went there, had a couple of big changs, ate some food, and watched the locals sing. They didn’t have any English songs unfortunately.
Here’s a video of a local/owner singing.
What a day.