Phu Chi Fah

Phu Chi Fah is a very sleepy mostly Hmong town on the Laos border. It’s claim to fame is the alluring sunrise over Laos above the clouds with mountains peaking through the clouds. The pictures are truly stunning. We really enjoyed our night here in our little bungalow! IT was really peaceful, scenic, and yet again…..the local food was out of this world!!! At 5 am, a local boy that we hired, showed up and guided us up the approx 1 km incline (not bad at all) to the summit of Phu Chi Fah. All of the local boys seem to have discovered this lucrative way to make some extra baht and were guiding others, as well! Heck, there was even coffee being sold at the foot of the path by Hmong villagers! Once at the top, we enjoyed the sunrise and got some awesome pics! Unfortunately for us, the scenery was not quite what it could have been due to the burning process in the local agriculture. Most crops have been harvested and dried and they have recently been burning the areas to clear them for the next crop. This has made most of northern Thailand quite hazy at times. Nevertheless, it was like nothing we’ve seen before!
Afterwards we headed out of there and stopped in the small town of Waeng Kaen and visited Ted’s cousin whom he hasn’t seen since he was 9 years old! It was fun to watch them catch up! We didn’t stay long, however and drove on in to Chiang Rai for the night. Driving through northern Thailand mountains and countryside has been a definite highlight of this trip! If we had to do it all over again, we would make sure it wasn’t the burn season, so our views could be a little clearer but it has still been incredible. The mountains are lined with flowers, banana, mango trees with rivers and rice fields below. Driving along the Mekong on the northern Laos/Thai border was also spectacular! We didn’t come across any more dirt roads, thankfully!

The GPS tried to kill us

After the elephant camp we put in the coordinates for Phu Chi Fah National park and hit the road. It’s about a 3 hour very scenic drive from Chiang Mai. One 20 minute period of this drive was actually one of the scarier moments of our life! We were about 20 kms from our destination when we came to a point in the road that the concrete turned to dirt but there was a huge steel professionally made, painted sign (just like on US highways) saying “↑ Phu Chi Fah ↑ “ . It was very reassuring actually. After talking about it, sitting in our AWD Honda CRV, it lured us in and we decided to proceed. Surely the sign wouldn’t guide us into danger?!!? Right??? WRONG. A short ways onto this dirt road, the downward grade and the narrowness of the road became too much to stop or turn around. Then came an increase in the downward grade and multiple hairpin or winding curves! In addition, the road became one of two consistencies, either dry with 6 inch water furrows in it, or six inches of dry sand like dirt. If we stopped we would get stuck, we couldn’t turn around (too narrow), the bumps were so harsh at times we didn’t know if we’d blow a tire or knock something loose under the hood. Furthermore, we had no idea how long we would be in these conditions. The possibilities were much scarier than what actually happened, thankfully. Breaking down or becoming stuck on a dirt road in Northern Thailand mountains on the Laos border in the late afternoon with no cell phone was not appealing at all!!!! Thankfully, in about 25 minutes it became concrete again without incident but the GPS is not to be trusted again!!!!!!!! This is a picture after we stopped to catch our breath when we hit the sacred paved road again!

Mae Sa Elephant Camp

This morning we got up at the crack of dawn in order to catch the early show at the highly recommended Mae Sa Elephant camp. It was an excellent deal at the equivalent of about 3-4 USD per person. We were apparently the only one’s ambitious enough to attend the early show which was great because we got all the attention! Highly recommended if you ever visit the Chiang Mai area! First off, these elephants appear to be healthy, happy, treated kindly, and well taken care of which is all a must before we pay money to see animals in captivity. They are so healthy and happy in fact that one or two babies seem to pop up every year or so! Here they have elephants of all ages, sexes, and sizes that you can get up close and personal with and watch them do some pretty amazing tricks such as, play soccer, throw darts, dance, paint pictures, and bow after their performance! Here, Roger was entered into a dart throwing contest(by default) against Sedor “the elephant” and was almost beaten! It was a really fun time!!!!