Chiang Mai is a strange place to fall in love with. She’s been around the block a few times, a little worse for the wear. But she’s charming and kind, pretty in an unconventional way, and different than then others, so fall in love we did. But we’ve got commitment issues and can only stay with one city for about three days. It’s not you Chiang Mai, it’s us. We’re not the kind who skips out while you’re still asleep, so we stay for breakfast before slipping away.
Crazy traffic is even crazier when you’re driving on the
wrong side of the road, but we make it out of town unscathed. We’re heading southwest to Doi Inthanon
National Park for some hiking today. Our
first stop lands us in a parking lot lined with merchant stalls that look like
the main street of the villages we
passed through on the way here. The souvenir
shops all pretty much sell the same stuff, but the food vendors are much more
interesting. Cluttered shacks with the
most basic of cooking appliances, always run by older women, and able to whip
up a fresh, delicious authentic Thai meal in 3 minutes or less.
We walk the 200 yards up the hill to the Mae Klang Waterfall. We visit waterfalls like others visit lighthouses…
collecting as much as visiting, appreciating each on its own merit.
Next stop is Wachirathan Waterfall, very impressive with a
dozen side spouts surrounding the main gusher.
(editor’s note: “side spouts” and “main gusher” are technical terms we
in the biz use around the office. Do not
try this at home, unless you’re in porn, in which case these terms may also
apply.)
The third planned waterfall today is Sirithan, named after
the house he was in at Hogwarts. It’s
wide, powerful and going full bore all the time, the same qualities that made
it a pretty great Quidditch player back in school.
The park is dotted with villages of the Karen tribes, the
native hill people of Northern Thailand.
Traditionally isolated farmers, these tribes were forced into growing
poppies for the opium trade a very long time ago. In the 1970s, the Thai king started a campaign
to rid his country of the drug trade. The
king introduced alternative crops such as coffee and instituted other means for
the Karen people to make a living. One
such program, that still exists to this day, is to have the Karen people act as
hiking guides. It’s a win-win kind of
sitch… the tourists get to meet the indigenous people, who share their
knowledge of the land, protect the ecosystem and make make some money. Today’s long hike is the Pha Dok Siew Nature
Trail, a 2-hour trek named for, you guessed it, the Pha Dok Siew Waterfall.
After parking, and paying a few hundred Baht (6 bucks-ish),
we’re introduced to our Karen guide, a woman named Paw, which incidentally
means flower in the Karen tongue. In her
traditional dress and flip flops with socks, Paw doesn’t look like an athlete,
but right out of the gate, we have a hard time keeping up on the steep, uneven
trails. She stops briefly to point out a
unique type of beehive. The tiny species
of bees bores their way right into a certain type of tree and makes their
living turning sap into honey. A yellow waxy
cone that serves as a front door is the only evidence of the hive’s existence.
As we near a field of strawberries, another high-value poppy-replacement
crop, there’s a farmstand where we indulge in the cup of the fresh, sweet
berries. About halfway through we get to
the first of the trail’s waterfalls then turn to follow along the meandering river.
The first waterfall is smallish, but creates a tranquil stream...
The second cascade is the main event, and it really is
spectacular. For me, the bamboo bridge
across the river in front of the falls made it even better, a triumph of engineering
using only what can be found in the nearby forest.
We hike out of the woods and along some huge farm fields,
where we’re greeted by 4 head of water buffalo.
Right away we knew that these huge, horned creatures were no threat,
just out for a graze and to pose for a few pix.
The hike ends in a Karen village where we’re sat under some
shade and given generous cups of the local coffee made Karen style. The roasted beans are ground with a hand
crank grinder while water boils in a cast iron pot on an open wood fire. Every so often our hostess takes a piece of
bamboo, sticks it into the coals and blows into the other side to stoke the
coals causing a snowfall of ash throughout the space. In a two pot brewing method, the grounds are
scooped into an 8” conical net that never gets emptied (just keep adding
grounds… where they go is clearly black magic.)
The net is dunked into one of the 2 pots and boiling water from the
kettle is dumped over the top. The net
is moved to the other pot and the weak coffee from the first pot is poured
through the net again. The more times
you pour back and forth, the stronger the coffee you get. Of course we say yes when offered seconds.
We knew this was a point-to-point hike, and we know we’d
have to pay a few bucks for a ride back, but we were not expecting to pay to
ride sitting in the bed of a pickup on a thin rug. The video of Mandy riding like she was being
smuggled across a border was worth the price of the entire trip.
The adventure portion of our day done (we thought…) we put
our accommodations into Maps for some GPS guidance. The mountain road to Mae Wang may be the most
challenging I have ever driven, the turns so tight and unpredictable that I was
getting a bit of motion sickness even as the driver. Our home for the next two nights is Zen
Mountain Farmstay, a working Karen farm owned and operated by a young woman
named Nukul. When we pull in, we’re
greeted by… no one. We drive around the
main barn and see an elderly woman hoeing a field by hand. She gestures to us, but doesn’t stop her
labor. We park by the three guest cabins
and… have exactly no idea what to do. We
start walking towards the only other character in this story, who finally comes
over to us and gestures in Thai for us to take any cabin we want. As we carry our bags in she, shows us how to
turn on the hot water in the shower (it involves opening the back door of the
bathroom and turning a valve on the top of a propane tank), then
disappears. We’re not exactly sure what
to do, so we wander around a bit. It’s a
real working farm for sure, and we introduce ourselves to the pigs, goats, roosters,
and dogs. Still no people to be had, but that is one damned charming pig.
After lounging around the cabin for a bit, I decide to hunt
down some coffee, where I finally run into Nikul, who had all this time been
trying to reach me on an incorrect Whatsapp number. Apologies are made, and so is coffee. She leaves me at the “café” to introduce
herself to Mandy. At 4:30, the three of
us meet to tour the farm and gather some veggies for dinner. After wandering the strawberry field owned by
her cousins, we go next door to meet Nikul’s auntie and uncle. We sit with them in their home, which is
different from any we have seen around the world. The main structure is a barn about the size
of an American 2 car garage. That part
is for storage of everything from bags of rice to tractor parts to a transistor
radio, all piled at random. The living
space is a lean-to about 10’ wide running down the side. There is a 4’ wide bench running all the way
down the building side and half way from front to back along the open outside
edge which creates an aisle, and that is mostly covered with stuff too,
including big, shallow pans of drying and fermenting vegetables. In the back of the lean-to is the fire, so
essential to Karen living that it is never allowed to go out. It’s for cooking, preserving food, boiling
water and, at night, the family members put a few blankets on the benches and
sleep next to it. It is a very simple
way of life. It’s here we learn that
Auntie and Uncle speak no Thai, only Karen, such was the extent of their
isolation in this remote rural place. We
learn that Nukul, who we guess is about 30 years old, is the first person in
her family to have any sort of formal education.
We continue to the next farm (owned by other cousins) and
meet their five water buffalo. We’re
told they have been getting lazy now that the family has acquired that heavy
duty 60 year old tilling machine over there.
They seem happy enough to see us so I play with them for a while. It’s like they are very big, very dusty puppies.
We walk through three or four more farms, owned by three or
four more sets of cousins and pick daikon radishes, cabbage, cilantro, husk
fruit and passionfruit. The fields are well tended, the land is uneven and
hilly, water runs everywhere.
Back from our walk, we wash up and head to dinner. Nikul and her sister are cooking in their
kitchen and invite us to watch. The
kitchen is not a kitchen in any sense of western terms. There are no cabinets or counters. Everything is done on the floor. In one corner, there is a concrete vessel the
size of a large pot which holds the never-extinguished fire. It’s glowing red and the wok gets put on top
as the veggies are being chopped on a cutting board elsewhere on the floor. In another corner there’s a cast iron gas
burner simmering a pot of soup. We are
taken to the café, which consists of three tables on the porch in front of the
building closest to the street. Dinner
is served, complete with yard-to-BBQ chicken.
The food is wonderful.
Our cabin is charming, but basic. No screens.
No heat or AC. The bed is
comfortable. The noises lull you to
sleep.
The experience is real.
Authentic. This is a working
farm. Come stay with me.
