Chiang Mai, Thailand Part 3

The next morning, a couple of us sent the host's son to our sleeping hut to wake up the rest of the crew. While he doesn't speak English, he does know how to say "Good morning!" With a bamboo shoot in hand, we ushered him towards the hut to carry out the wake up call. He was more effective than an alarm.

While we sat around the fire and ate our breakfast (toast with jam), our host was busy making us our rafts for the day. The rafts consisted of 14-16 bamboos tied together and can carry ~7-8 folks at a time. As I said previously, bamboos are a very versatile resource!

As you can probably tell from the images, the water level in the river isn't that high as it's the dry season. Normally, the river runs a couple meters higher. As a result, we had to stop several times so that Doh could gather up fallen trees, plant debris, etc to create a dam to redirect the water flow and raise the water level along our path. Other than that, the float down the river was rather calm. Here are a few images from the ~2 hour ride.

Dam construction #1

Dam construction #2

Rocks

We hit rocks.

Dam construction #3

Finally, we made it out. The drive back to Eagle House, with a short stopover (see below).

Doh taking an unexpected shower in the falls!

See the rest of my travel posts here.