Umphang (January 24-27)

Since Sukhothai I am traveling with Marlene from Vienna. We had a really fantastic ride on a pick-up truck from Mae Sot to Umphang. It took more than 5 hours, of which 4 hours we shared the truck with around 20 other passengers, 2 puppies, 2 hamsters and loads of food in large sacks. You can imagine that it was not especially comfortable but a great experience. Many passengers were from Myanmar and one girl spoke really good English. She told us about her difficult situation here in Thailand and we learned a lot from her. The friendliness of these people is really overwhelming and these contacts with locals are a great travel experience. It doesn’t occur too many times that you can hold a conversation in English so you really have to take advantage. There was also Paul on the truck, an Englishman married with a Thai woman. He is already retired and passes the European wintertime in Thailand with his wife. As his wife doesn’t like traveling he is on his own. He even speaks a little bit of Thai, which has been of great help.

We arrived in Umphang on Tuesday afternoon and the pick-up truck driver even took us to the guest house we looked up in the guide. Finally I found what I was looking for! Our guest house is a lovely piece of earth. Wooden bungalows within the nature and a terrace pointing towards a river, absolutely great! We are the only guests in this large guest house since our arrival and we have already figured out that there are hardly any other tourists in town. That is really strange because Umphang has an infrastructure for hundreds if not thousands of tourists. In the guest house they told us that tourists almost disappeared from one year to another, very mysterious! There used to but quite a lot of local tourism, but the growing middle class of Thais is now going elsewhere. Last year’s flood may also have had its impact because some people lost their houses and have no money left for vacation.

On Wednesday Paul and I went to town in order to check out how to get to the big waterfall (biggest in Southeast Asia) but we couldn’t get any useful information because there were no agencies and the other guest houses we visited were abandoned. In our guest house they wanted to charge us a lot of money and that’s why we decided to crosscheck in town. In the evening we learned from Marlene that we actually went into the wrong direction, so at the end we didn't go to Umphang but to another town we have passed on our way from Mae Sot. That's why it took us almost an hour by foot and not 20 minutes as indicated, really stupid!

We did some shopping because in the guest house we could only get basic food and water. So we bought beer, some sweets and milk (Paul is traveling with a water boiler and a selection of English tea, that’s what we needed the milk for). There was a funny situation in the morning because Marlene didn’t know it was her birthday. She noticed it when she read SMS on her mobile. She thought it was the 24th and not 25th. To be honest I’ve never met a person who forgot the own birthday!  In the afternoon we had a great swim in the river. We walked like 500 meters up the river and swam down with the streaming. Really cool!

Yesterday, Marlene and I finally went on our tour to the waterfalls. At the end we booked it in our guest house because there was no other way of doing it. We started our trip with 5 crew members (2 steering men on the front and rear part of the boat, 2 girls from the guest house and a little boy. Later there was a sixth man who picked us up with the 4x4 car. We then understood why it's so expensive when 5 people have to be paid!

It was a great 3h ride on the raft through a beautiful valley, then 1h by car and finally a 30 min walk to the waterfalls. The waterfalls were not very impressive compared to what I have seen in South America (also it's dry season and the water level is quite low), but we had a swim in the turquoise blue water and enjoyed it a lot. At the waterfalls there were more tourists, but only Thais. Seems as if this place is not yet on the roadmap of backpackers. Better for us! All in all it was really worth it because the two girls from the guest house were really nice and seemed to enjoy it like us.

I am now sitting in an internet cafe in the real Umphang. I will spend this afternoon swimming and hanging out in the guest house and tomorrow take the pick-up back to Mae Sot. I will then finally upload some photos. I know you are waiting for it.