Um Phang

OK first of all pictures are coming soon I promise.

After my multi day journey to get to Mae Sot I quickly left there heading for the small town of Um Phang. Um Phang is a beautiful town located in the hills close to the Burmese border and as a result there are lots of Burmese people that try to smuggle themselves into Thailand here. The trip to Um Phang was done on what is best described as a pickup truck bus, the bed of the truck has 2 benches placed in it and a nice shelter placed over top to protect us from wind and rain. Needless to say it's really uncomfortable. My trip started off pretty interesting as I'm fairly sure that we were smuggling somebody in our truck as one woman kept paying the police officers that stopped us to inspect our ID cards. After all of the bribes the trip got significantly worse: the road to Um Phang is through the mountains and so it's very twisty turny and steep. And as I soon found out the local people there can't handle these things at any speeds as of the 10 locals riding the "bus" with me at least 5 of them were vomiting for most of the trip. So that 5 hour bus ride was one of the least enjoyable I've ever taken.

Once in Um Phang I quickly signed up for a 3 day trek that included rafting, seeing the largest waterfall in Thailand and elephant riding. I thought it would be great fun. The rafting was in beautiful scenery but very similar to what I saw white water rafting so nothing too new and the short trek to the campsite after the rafting wasn't anything special either. To top it off there were at least a few hundred Thai tourists who did the same rafting trip and camped at the base of the waterfalls as us so there wasn't any chance to really see nature. The waterfalls themselves were very nice and probably some of the tallest ones that I've ever seen, but again there were at least a few hundred Thais there to enjoy them too. The last day was spent taking an elephant ride for 2 hours back to the road where we were to be picked up. Well I was pretty excited to get to ride an elephant but I very quickly lost all of excitement. Once on the elephant the basket that you sit in was very uncomfortable and you always had to hold on so that you wouldn't fall off. Then to top it all off my elephant was at least 1 meter taller than all of the other ones so when walking through the jungle while other people could easily fit under the leaves and branches of trees I had to fight them off.

After the trek I was able to get a ride back to Mae Sot in a private bus with the other people on my trek so the return journey was much more comfortable and faster. In Mae Sot I only stayed for one night before heading out to Sukothai and eventually Cambodia.