Today I witnessed something some people never see in their lifetime. But let’s play the day through from the beginning
First, I woke up at 5:30 am to watch the sunrise over the mountains during a “morning” hike it did not disappoint, through I was super groggy the entire time.
It was cool to see the fog over the mountain tops.I really like the third one. I think I’ll make it my phone background.
Next was our kayaking adventure! We kayaked for about 4ish hours on these inflatable kayaks. There was me, a girl named Joyce from Holland, and a group of 4 Texans in their mid 60s.
The group of Texans was the most pleasant bunch. Ill be honest, I thought they’d be a bit conservative and closed.minded considering Texas, but they were the most open minded accepting people! And they had that wonderful southern kindness. They just had great stories and humor.
One of them was an environmental lawyer, and tod a story about how he had to write a will for s guy who ran a canoe shop for 30 years and amassed a bit of wealth. Apparently the guy had never married, and upon hearing that he was writing a will, no short of 6 of his long terms girlfriends came out of the woodwork and started fighting amongst each other to a portion of his wrath. And here was our Texan friend caught in the middle of all the drama, previously unaware of the girlfriends, just trying to write a will ???.
Anyway, it was a oleasure to spend the day with them.
I ended up being in a double kayak with Joyce(who was also very nice and entertaining). I didn’t take any pics because I forgot my gopro and didn’t want to risk my phone, so here’s some pics from hers:
There were a few maybe class I rapids we had to go through. At one point I almost smashed into a log that was at face height; if I had hit it I’d definitely have gotten hurt. Luckily I dogged it at the last moment by laying down in the kayak while trying not to fly out of the boat.
We kayaked 6km in all. All in all a bit dull, but relaxing trip; I wish there had been more rapids 😉
Next, we took a little detour after kayaking to look at a local cave. Here’s some pics of it:
There was this sick-ass river running through it that was too far to reach, but which our guide had previously guided. He told us a tale of how 3 people he was guiding almost passed out from oxygen deprivation, and he had to carry all their shit out on his own.
Here’s a pic of the river. It’s a bit hard to see:
Caves are dangerous people! Don’t mess around if you’re unsure about something.
Here’s some pics of me standing in the entrance. Look for the blue shirt 😉
On our way back, we took the opportunity to climb a few of the trees on our way back and got some silly pics:
However, the tree gods didn’t Ike this, and they came back. With a vengeance. And tried to murder us.
That’s right. A tree almost killed us.
*Crack crack crack* we heard in the distance. We thought nothing of it.
Then like a gunshot, we heard a giant *CRACK*. We look into the distance, and about 100 m off and we see the leaves at the top of a bunch of trees moving. Then suddenly I realize the leaves are moving TOWARDS us. WTF IS HAPPENING my brain thinks. Simultaneously my brain thinks, “oh shit the forest is exploding” and “should I run?” but I’m dumbstruck by this giant leave moving force I see in the distance. I then realize it’s a fucking giant ass tree that’s falling over, headed right for us. I worry a bit that it’ll be Ike a domino effect and knock all of the trees over in front of us and hit us. Luckily that doesn’t happen. The approx 70 ft tree with a diamater of about 2 ft came down about 30 m in front of us, and stayed still. It lay across a small little gully, as well as laying on the path that we were just about to cross. If we hadn’t been lollygagging around climbing trees, it very likely could have fallen on us.
Now what prompted it to fall? It’s anyone’s guess. There wasn’t a strong wind, or an animal, or an earthquake. It just came down for no reason.
Anyways, here’s some pics so you can get a scale of the tree. I didn’t get any video of it falling as it all happened so fast.
Me walking across the obviously rotten and unstable newly fallen tree.
Our guide also grabbed a large “log” out of the newly fallen tree to make a gamer handle, but unfortunately it was too rotten to create anything out of it:
Here’s a video of the first responders on the scene lol.
On the way back I took some pictures of ants, which I thought was cool. They’re freaking huge here in Thailand.
And here’s some views on the truck ride back.
What an adventure. I wonder what adventures tomorrow will bring.