The next morning began with a hurried, desperate scramble to erase any evidence of the apocalyptic mess we'd made of our room before we had to check out. At some point in the middle of this, it occurred to me that due to lack of any washing opportunities thus far, I had ended up with a small bundle of clothes and shoes that were, in no uncertain terms, disgustingly soiled. Saturated with river water and encrusted with mud – some of which had already been left to fester for 36 hours – I wasn't overly keen on zipping the pile back into the cavernous depths of my backpack, where it would be free to mingle with my clean and un-ruined possessions. The obvious solution to this was to contain the fetid bundle in a plastic bag, but the commendable (if currently infuriating) eco status of the hotel meant there was no such thing to be found in the room.
After a solid ten minutes of searching for an answer (which was becoming increasingly pressured, as we were due to catch an early bus to a nearby waterfall in less than an hour's time), I happened across a light, linen drawstring bag in one of the room's endless cupboards. Fairly certain it was the best I was likely to get, I hurled the soggy mound inside, shoved the bag into my backpack and followed Rachel out of the room.
We had very nearly successfully achieved checking out without any major disasters, and were just about to haul our bags around to the hotel's storage room for one more day, when the intercom system next to the receptionist crackled into life. Whilst tightening bag straps and preparing to call a taxi, we overheard a slightly concerning exchange between the receptionist and whoever was on the other end of the intercom, which consisted of garbled Thai followed by two haunting words: ‘laundry bag’.
Sharply looking up in what must have been a hugely incriminating manner, I was addressed by the receptionist — 'you have small laundry bag?' At this point, I had to make a decision. Should I play dumb, and avoid having to (ironically) come clean about the laundry bag that was now just as filthy as the clothes it was containing? Or should I just front it up and get the whole thing sorted in the interest of swiftness? Assuming that the hotel staff would be far too busy to spend time quibbling about something so trivial, I opted for the former option, and shook my head whilst doing my best to feign innocence. Sadly, it seemed that my luck was out, and we had booked into the only hotel on the planet that kept strict, meticulous stock counts of its laundry bags. Several minutes passed as I tried to work out how to get Rachel and I out of this situation in the least embarrassing way possible. This even involved having to agree to Rachel's offer of going and having another look in the room for the laundry bag, knowing she wouldn't find it, simply to add authenticity to my increasingly complex lie. As time ticked on, it became clear that the receptionist wasn't gonna let this one slide, and so I resorted to over dramatically (and unconvincingly) fake searching through my backpack and 'finding' the laundry bag (which had to be done behind a pillar, so as to conceal my emptying it of gross, wet clothes). I hurriedly handed the ruined bag to the receptionist, who took it from me wordlessly, shoved my backpack into the storage room and dashed into the waiting taxi pulling Rachel behind me. After about five minutes of driving in exhausted silence, Rachel turned to me and said
“Emily please don't hate me.”
“Why?”
“I took two hand towels from the room!” She confessed.
“Why the hell did you do that?!?”
“Because we wanted to swim in the waterfall and we don't have any towels, and I didn't want us to get straight on the night bus this evening without being able to dry!” She pleaded.
There was logic in her actions, I can't deny. And as a freshly proven laundry bag convict myself, there wasn't much room for me to judge. I wouldn't have minded, even after the morning's events, but we had to return to the scene of the crime that evening to collect our bags, where we would surely be met by Interpol. In the interest of enjoying the day however, I forced hand towel worries to the back of my mind. Half an hour later, Rach and I were bouncing along on a local bus en route to the Erawan Waterfalls, chowing down on our first meal of the day — fresh chunks of pineapple and a bag of Doritos.
Of course, by the time we had arrived at the waterfalls, it was torrentially raining. Once we'd entered the park, we sheltered as best we could under the awning of a nearby, closed cafe, and waited. We were waiting not only for the rain to stop, but for the arrival of Win and Emily, two elephant buddies we'd made during our time at the sanctuary, and with whom we’d coordinated our waterfall visit. The Erawan Waterfalls consist largely of seven naturally-formed platforms, each of which features a rocky, cascading pool. Climbing to the top of all seven was roughly (and dubiously) forecasted by Win to take about two and a half hours, and as Rach and I had arrived to find a grand total of zero opportunities for food, we were slightly concerned that we wouldn't have the energy required to make it to level seven, fuelled by our measly breakfast alone… We set off behind Win regardless.
Levels one to three were fairly unchallenging, and the four of us were easily able to chat amongst ourselves as we went, laughing and looking back over the highlights of our 36 hour friendship. The route from levels three to four however, was not kind to us. Endless knots of gnarled tree roots lurched out of the ground at regular intervals, causing Rachel and I to both come a cropper at the mercy of their tripping power. The terrain underfoot was essentially a slippery soup of rainwater, mud and chalky gravel, which was rendering my converse trainers (the only shoes I had left in Thailand that hadn't already been hopelessly ruined), a silty, sodden mess. To add to the fun, every few metres of path was blocked by boulders, rocks and tree trunks that had to be scrambled up on all fours. And all of this was taking place in tropical rain showers.
By the time we reached level five, Rachel and I were physically exhausted, starving, parched, incredibly tetchy and once again covered head-to-toe in mud. It was largely because of this that I suggested we call it quits five levels up, have a quick swim and then head down to shower, change and eat our weight in noodles, before catching our scheduled night bus to Chiang Mai. Rachel was so close to agreeing with me. I could almost feel the words "yeah good idea" sat just behind her lips. And then Win piped up.
"Oh come on girls! It will only take us another 20 minutes to get to the top!"
Guess what kids. We believed him.
I reached level seven somewhat lacking the swelling sense of achievement I might have experienced, if I wasn't literally on the verge of passing out with fatigue, hunger and dehydration. A quick, cursory dip in the waterfall pool later, and we were reluctantly setting off on the treacherous journey down, plagued by flashbacks to our ascent, which had at one point involved wading through a puddle that lapped our armpits. After a wobbly and light-headed few minutes of climbing down jagged rocks and rain-soaked tree roots, the inevitable happened – Rachel slipped and twisted her ankle.
Lord only knows how we found ourselves in the murky and stained showers that were situated at the entrance to the falls, but we did. Horrendously worse for wear, but alive. We showered and dried using our tiny, stolen hand towels, and joined Win and Emily in a nearby restaurant for swiftly consumed pad thai and gallons of water. This achieved, all we had to do was retrieve our bags without being arrested.
I can't speak for Rachel, but I was certainly caught between feeling immense relief and mild annoyance at the fact that we were able to collect our bags from the hotel's storage with NO MENTION AT ALL of hand towels from the staff, but we pressed on regardless, back to the bus station and into our pre-booked seats on the night bus, which would transport us north to the province of Chiang Mai. Night bus travel was so prevalent a feature of our backpacking days of yore, that we both immediately found ourselves slipping back into the pre-departure prep routine that we had got down to a fine art seven years previously:
- Brush teeth with bottle of water in hand outside the bus
- Store all non-essential items overhead
- Arrange wads of hoodies (and optional stolen towels) to create pillow
- Recline seat just far enough to be comfortable, but not so far that it encroaches on the space of the passenger behind
This done, we settled back under the bus' fluorescent, purple strip lighting, just as the journey's scheduled entertainment began – a soothing movie marathon of blockbuster classics Battleship and Oblivion.
One of the numerous downsides of night bus travel is that often, the journeys don't fit as neatly into one night as would be ideal. It was for this reason that Rachel and I found ourselves dishevelled and weary, surrounded by bags, sat on a bench in Chiang Mai's central bus station at 4am. Considering the hostel we'd booked ourselves into didn't open for another three and a half hours, and the bus station's attractions extended only to a gaudily lit 7-Eleven, it's safe to say we were at a bit of a loose end. It seemed as though several historical periods had passed before we were in a taxi, winging our way through the streets of outer Chiang Mai, towards Backpacking Adventure: Phase Three.
Chiang Mai, a sprawling, mountain-ringed city and province in Thailand's north, is a well-worn feature of the country's backpacking trail. Its compact, walled centre sprinkled with ornate and crumbling temples, buzzing night markets and proximity to all manner of natural wonders (think cascading waterfalls, wild rainforests and misty mountains), make Chiang Mai the ideal destination for those dreaming of culture, adventure and wafting through streets dressed in cotton elephant-print trousers. To really crank up the traveller experience, Rach and I checked ourselves into a central hostel, just a few minutes' walk from the walled city, and selected the its cheapest accommodation option – two beds in a mixed-gender dorm. After grabbing a much needed shower in the expansive shared bathroom and dumping our countless bags, we headed out in search of that Chiang Mai vibe we'd heard so much about.
Once fresh fruit smoothies and copious cups of coffee had improved our fatigued demeanours dramatically, we wandered through the walled city's entanglement of streets and pathways, into one of many temple gardens. Peaceful, tranquil and lightly sun-dappled, as we weaved through the foliage and serene monks we were regularly met by written Buddhist teachings, each of which had been printed, laminated and stapled arbitrarily to various tree trunks. These ranged from the vague and spiritual 'no light is bright like the wisdom', to the slightly more dubious 'every tub must stand on its own bottom.' One simply read 'chip off the old block', which we assumed must have been an unfortunate mistranslation... At this point, it began heavily raining, so we retreated to a nearby cafe for lunch and guidebook-assisted rerouting.
Our first Chiang Mai day concluded with a somewhat unenlightening wander around the Lanna Folklife Museum, the highlight of which was stumbling upon a fairly accurate folk art rendering of the two of us struggling through the unceasing rain with but one minuscule umbrella earlier that day...
Back at the hostel, and from the (relative) comfort of our mixed dorm's curtain-concealed bunkbeds, we hatched a vague plan for the evening. The plan largely consisted of a trip to one of Chiang Mai's nearby night markets for after-dark street food and nocturnal shopping, and so we freshened up and headed down to the bright lights of cut-price bargains and Thai themed bric-a-brac. Along the way, we stumbled across a fairy-lit courtyard, containing a healthy sprinkling of food trucks, outdoor seating and even a small staging area that would not have been out of place in east London, and was very much welcomed by two ravenous travellers such as ourselves. After ungracefully stuffing down two enormous plates of food from one of the numerous trucks, libations were on our collective mind. Oddly, none of the apparent drink-serving establishments seemed to be open or functioning, and not one of the food court's many patrons appeared to be in any way inebriated. There was no alcohol to be seen. Accepting that this simply must be a quirk of the venue we'd wandered into, we pressed on soberly into the throng of gaudy stalls that is Chiang Mai's Night Bazaar.
Vast, lively and containing enough lanterns to illuminate a small nation, the bazaar was captivating, but even to our inexperienced eyes, seemed somewhat empty. Again, no establishments advertising beer, cocktails or any kind of tipple were serving – outdoor seating areas, which we would have expected to be full of jovial drinkers at this hour, were almost unoccupied. I appreciate that this continuing theme of alcohol absence is somewhat painting us as rampaging drink demons, out on the lash in a foreign land, but in reality we were simply on the hunt for a cosy venue to sink a few Changs and rest our weary bones after a day of intense exploring. After a while, we concluded that although good fun, the Night Bazaar could only hold our attention for so long. We wandered back in the direction of the old town in search of life, laughter, and beer.
We'd been aimlessly ambling throughout the old town's warren of backstreets for quite some time, bouncing from closed bar to closed bar, before we sat defeatedly on a bench at the roadside and concluded that there simply must be some city-wide reason for this poor state of affairs. Prior to our arrival, Chiang Mai had been touted as the home of backpacker bonhomie and inebriated antics, but the darkened doorways and deserted streets of this evening displayed anything but. Finally opting to call it a day, we trudged back to the hostel.
Ironically, what we found upon our return was a scene of much mirth and frivolity, which, if the mounds of discarded beer bottles on table tops around the common area were anything to go by, had been sponsored heavily by our evasive friend alcohol. A large group of young, spirited backpackers were sprinkled throughout the ground floor, and Rach and I swiftly pasted over our weary, frustrated expressions and joined them. It was during this portion of the day that we finally uncovered the reason behind our bemusing evening. Incredibly unfortunately, our first night in Chiang Mai had coincided with the city's monthly Buddha Day, a 24-hour period of worship and categorically no alcohol. There was talk among the congregation that we wait it out until midnight, when surely the alcohol ban would be immediately lifted and bars would doubtless throw open their doors for business, but one exchanged glance between Rach and I communicated that we were mutually done with hanging out in a hostel with a bunch of drunken teens, and we headed up to the sanctity of our curtain bunks to await the next day's adventures.