Xmas 2011 Trip in Western Thailand

The ghost of Wat Don Kaew - Mae Ramat

We left CM on Friday, December 23rd to drive to Mae Sariang, a sleepy town on the river Yuam and stayed at a lovely wooden guest house, the River House Hotel.  We took a walk around the town in the late afternoon visiting the temples Wat Jong Sung and Wat Si Bunruang, both in the Burmese-Shan style, and came across the evening market.

Here is a video of 21st century temple technology that I really don't like but it's not my temple!

After breakfast, which was included in our room rate we drove on a very bad road to Mae Sam Laep thinking that we might take a boat ride on the river Salawin which divides Thailand from Burma.  The village was interesting with houses built on the side of cliffs but after a walk around we decided to forgo the boat ride and headed back to Mae Sariang and onto Mae Sot.

Here are some slides:

The drive from Mae Sariang  to Mae Sot was long and over roads which were winding, steep, unpaved in parts, and full of pot holes – a recurring theme in our travels!
We wanted to get to Mae Sot in time to deliver some packages to the Borderline shop that evening as they were going to be closed for 2 days for Xmas.  We made it there in time – but by the time we arrived in Mae Sot it was dark and we had great difficulties in finding a suitable place for the night.  However, we ended up in the DK Hotel, which is part of the DK bookstore.  The room was OK (450 Baht/night with air and WiFi) and we stayed there for 2 nights.  The next day, Xmas Day, we had an early morning walk around Mae Sot after which we drove to the border town of Waley, not much to see there, except it was somewhat surprising how “open”’ the border is.  We saw rice being brought from the Burmese side into Thailand over a log plank bridge, while the “official” crossing with a soldier sitting on the Thai side was only a few yards away.  We then drove to the more popular border town to cross into Burma via the Friendship Bridge – the so-called market was very disappointing.  That night we had a very nice dinner at a Burmese restaurant after visiting Wat Mani.
Monday  was a long drive to Umphang with some beautiful scenery over roads with many, many curves (they claim 1219 curves) on very steep hills.


Some slides:
Umphang is another sleepy town, which has grown in the past few years to accommodate the tourists who want to trek, raft, and visit the largest and most difficult to access waterfall in Thailand etc.  We spent the night in a charming guest house Tu Ka Su and for the first time on our trip it was cold – that was the night that Tom had his feet in my computer case to keep them warm!  We asked about taking a raft / ride to the waterfall and was told the price was 4000 baht but after asking around we found another group that offered the same tour for 3000 Baht which seemed more reasonable. However once we were on the raft we noticed that the was a sound of bubble coming up a lot and the following video made wonder if saving 1000 Baht was a good decision!

The next morning (Tuesday) we took a raft trip to see the biggest waterfall in Thailand called Thilawsu.  It was a pleasant ride on the river in a rubber raft which had to be inflated every so often by the boat man!  Luckily, there were no dangerous rapids to navigate, and on the way we stopped to warm our feet at some hot springs. We traveled through some very tall gorges and you could see debris that was caught at least 3-4 yards above the current water level so it was clear that in the rainy season this was a raging river/stream!


Here is a video of some of the rafting:

Once we reached the park we had a very, very rough 14 Km (9 mile) drive to where we could start our walk to the falls.  It took us over an hour to cover 14 kms.  The falls were beautiful and very easy to get to as the 1.5 Km path was concrete all the way. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site.


More Slides



We left very early on Wednesday for the long drive to Tak via Mae Ramat and the Phumiphon Dam.   In Mae Ramat we visited Wat Don Kaew with a white marble Buddha, one of 3 statues supposedly carved in Rangoon;  one image is in India, the other in Pakistan and the third one at Wat Don Kaew.  We also “paid” for some roof tiles with our names written on them.
On our way to Tak from the Dam we stopped at Wat Phra Borommathat, supposedly the most beautiful temple in the province.  
We arrived quite late in the afternoon and some monks were doing their evening chanting which was quite nice:

In Tak we stayed at Viang Tak Riverside Hotel,  the nicest hotel of our trip where we did not have to walk through a wet floor to use the toilet at night, but the guest house in Mae Sariang was more picturesque.  On Thursday morning before leaving Tak we tried to walk through the old Chinese district but the roads were all torn up; on the way stopped at Wat  where the Viharn temple building looks like a Christian Church.
If you are still awake here is the final set of slides

The drive back to Chiang Mai on Thursday was uneventful.  All in all,  a very nice 7-day trip. We drove over 1600 Kms (1000 miles) and 1000s of curves on steep hills and even more potholes!
Here is a map of the whole trip: