We started the day by arriving at the English Programme campus a little earlier than everybody else since we got a ride with JJ (We owe that man a dinner). There, we had some coffee and hung out with some of the Thai teachers who didn't want to go on the trip (none of the Thais wanted to). Once everyone was on campus, we all loaded into a bunch of vans that had really comfortable seats. The only issue was that my legs were quite cramped up with very little room. The ride took about an hour and a half and we were able to see some beautiful mountains along the way. JJ pleaded with the group a couple of days ago to only start drinking until at least after the team building games. Our Irish friend ignored that and cracked a beer open about 30 minutes into the trip.
Once we arrived, all of the returning teachers ran to the hut and bought a ton of beer, snacks and water. Kay and I brought some snacks, so we only needed some water. The company that organizes the trips does not seem too worried about drunk people going down rapids in kayaks because they even gave us bags to hold our beers in our laps when we were in the kayaks. Ahh Thailand.
After some fun (awkward) team building exercises, we were put in a line that was ordered by our birthdays; January to December. The person next to you was to be your partner for the whole 3 hour kayak ride (The kayaks were two person kayaks). It just so happened that nobody's birthday fell between July 10th and August 7th so Kay and I we partnered together haha.
Once everyone had been paired up, we grabbed our lifejackets and helmets, or didn't, it really didn't matter. We were then herded, quite literally, onto truckbeds with gages around them. We all squeezed onto a couple of those and grabbed on for dear life as the trucks flew down the road only slowing down when we hit the access roads.
When we arrived, we loaded up our kayaks with beer and water and set out. A few guides followed us but as we soon found out, there were Thai workers set up all along the river at various check points making sure everything was running somewhat smoothly. Most of the trip was just a lazy ride down a very pretty river. Staying out of the sun as much as we could, Kay and I opted to ride along the shore every once and a while.
The rapids themselves were never anything serious. They showed up quite frequently but as long as you steered properly, you could really only tip if you wanted to or you were drunk (which a lot of people were). People fell out a lot.
There really isn't a whole lot to say about the actual river part. We kayaked, hung out with a lot of cool people, and took a break about halfway.
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| Old Thai women fishing |
The Thais met us at the halfway point with buckets of beer (surprise surprise) and a bunch of chips (yes!). They had a notepad and people could start a tab if they didn't have their money with them. Kay and I got a big thing of water and chips. This is where we saw the locals playing on the massive rope swing. You can see my video on Facebook of me using the rope swing. I know everyone always says "Ah man! It was so much higher in person! I went so much farther than it looks!" when looking at videos or photos of any kind. Well I'm going to do that now. I can assure you that I went higher than it looked. I honestly thought I was going to have to edit the video down because of how long I thought I froze up there on the tree. You had to use the vines and small branches to climb up and once you thought you couldn't go any higher, the locals had tied twine very tightly between two trees to act as a bridge you could stand on while waiting for the rope swing. Anyways, I was high up okay?
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| Chilling at the halfway point |
Near the end, you can hear the locals cheering because I gave a boy a high five for turning us around.
The rest of the way was pretty easy, it rained on us, the clouds were threatening and we heard a bit of thunder but nobody seemed that nervous. Our paddles were only metal after all.
I'm having a hard time not just going "And then we were done and went home" because the rest of it was a bit of a blur because of how tired we were. We got out of our kayaks, got driven back up to where we started, had an amazing lunch/dinner and hung out for a while before heading home in our vans.
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| One of the more adventurous forms of Thai transportation |
All in all, it was an amazing trip and Kay and I both had a fantastic time. We both can't wait to get started at our schools with our incredible colleagues!
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| Kay and I at the bottom |
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