Trekking Mae Hong Son To Pai
The one and only guide from Mae Hong Son Discovery Tours, (Ph. # 081-1684667), Mr. Pordee (Tour Guide) that treks from Mae Hong Son to Pai was out in the field when I inquired about the trek. The woman at Like View Guesthouse told me he’d be back in a few days and that he was on a trek and would meet me when he returned. I enjoyed my time in Mae Hong Son hiking and writing and having some social time at the Crossroads Saloon in the center of town.
Most of the hikes entailed walking up to Wat Phra Thart Gong Moo Temple, built in 1860 and contains the ashes of one of the Lord Buddha’s disciples; Phra Moggalana. The first ruler of Mae Hong Son, Phaya Shinghanat Racha, built another Pagoda on top of the hill in 1874. It’s a great place to watch the sunrise and sunset. One day at breakfast I ran into a young French woman who was keen on doing a trek and I told her what I had in mind. She thought it would be exciting and something not touristy. She was not wrong.
We met Prodee early one evening and settled on a price, a porter, and possibly a hunter. Chloe and I agreed to go the following morning at around 9 am giving Prodee enough time to go to the store and get some basics together. He mentioned that we would only carry our belongings and that most food and water would come out of the forest. The water would be boiled if need be in bamboo for tea, food and drinking water during the day. Mae Hong Son is at around 400 meters above sea level and Pai is at around 700 meters but Prodee informed us that we would clear 2200 meters at least once. Daily temperatures are around 100 Fahrenheit and very dry.
We motorcycled to a Karen village where we began our trek. Smoke fills the air because it’s the burning season. On paper it’s illegal to start these fires but the elders insist that if they don’t burn once a year they are going to have forest fires like they have in California where everything burns not just the underbrush. We walked up, up, and up to a small hilltop Karen village where we were put up for the night and fed rice, vegetables, omelets and tea. Water Buffalo, pigs, chickens, and dogs had the run of the land.
We awoke to Gibbons howling in the distant trees and a light chill in the air. The sun had yet to come over the ridge in front of us. I had settled on the fact that we were either going to be ascending or descending with sparse areas of flat or gently sloping. We climbed up in the heat for four hours and then downhill for about the same amount of time following a creek ravine to a two-story bamboo hunting shelter that had recently been hit by what we in Alaska call a ‘widow-maker’, tree that is standing dead near a campsite. Everybody took an hour and splashed around in the creek and resting. Smoke and fire were coming down the hillside towards the camp and heading up the steeps as well. Animals have a tendency to run towards the creek when fire approaches, so do the big pythons. As I napped with my feet in the creek bugs of every imaginable size and description came for me. I am now painfully aware of the term, ‘quit bugging me’. Between the biting red ants, jumping spiders, honey bees, horse flies, and wasps I didn’t last long and took to walking the nearby game trails in the shade of the trees instead and watching the countryside burn.
Soon after we arrived at this make shift shelter a hunting party of four Karen men and our porter showed up and joined us for the night. Our guide knew all of them and after tea the hunters began fine tuning their tools or making them out of bamboo. I sat and watched as they made spear guns for fishing, sling shots, and cleaned their shotguns. After dinner and well after dark the hunting party put on their headlamps and broke into small groups and walked into the jungle in different directions.
About 10 pm two of the hunters came back with a small deer and a medium size lemur then another hunter showed up and said his prey was too big for him to carry and needed help getting it down the mountain. After the three of them cut and cleaned the deer they ate the heart and liver raw and headed back into the jungle to retrieve the next kill. Prodee stayed up and cooked them all dinner because the two that went fishing still hadn’t returned but when they did they had a shoulder bag full of speared fish and spicy fish soup was back on the menu. Midnight came around and all the hunters were accounted for. They ate and went to bed planning to clean the bigger kill in the morning, split it all up and carry it back to their village or villages. The night chilled down as the smoke and flames approached the shelter and then the full moon crested the cliffs above. Fireflies dotted the jungle weaving in and out of the trees and smoke with their backsides intermittently glowing.
Tea and toast for breakfast for us as the hunters cleaned, weighed meat, and divided the night catch between them. We said our goodbyes and thank yous and headed off across the creek. I’m wearing a pair of cheaply made New Balance runners with plastic or hard plastic soles, Chloe is wearing lightweight high top hiking shoes with smooth hard plastic soles and Prodee is wearing rubber-cleated shoes with socks. His shoes cost about 60 baht and are worth the investment. My shoes won’t make another trek. Between the large leaves, pine needles and steep slopes I recommend not wearing smooth bottom shoes with hard plastic soles, it makes traction extremely difficult especially going downhill.
Our loose path was to follow rivers and take shortcuts up and over the mountains. The main rivers we used were the Mae Hong Son, Hoi Cloi, Pai River and the Mae Yan River. We walked through burning bamboo forests that were flowering. Bamboo seldom flower but when they do they die so a lot of the stalks had weakened and broken midway. We hacked at a lot of bamboo to make headway. The ground was buried in multicolored leaves or charred ground. The heat was abated for the morning due to the canopy of trees overhead but the fires continued to rage as we walked near them. Prodee says the best time to do this trek in October – January when things are green. The good thing about doing the trek in March is there are few mosquitos and seemingly no leeches.
Sweating profusely all day long we arrived at the confluence of the Pai River and I think the Hoi Cloi River where we camped near a group of Karen villagers down from the village on a fishing expedition for a few days. There is no electricity in these villages so salted fish and dried fish are the only way to preserve their catch. Through out the early hours of the evening the Karen came to our camp and had a laugh with Prodee and stared at us inquisitively. By this time I had cuts from carnivorous plants that ate bugs and ripped the flesh off your legs and arms with saw like thorns if you brushed against them. The Karen laughed at my arms and legs. I realized that almost everything in the jungle wanted a piece of me and infection risks run high. We had deer stew for dinner and again made everything from boiled water and cups and plates out of bamboo, even utensils. Once darkness had fallen we could hear the Karen fishing in the two streams and having a good time doing it. Every now and again a headlamp would flash through the jungle along with the fireflies. Our porter joined in the hunt for fish but was too beat up to do the night hunt again and we had plenty of meat for what we were doing.
Chloe and I decided we were not going to do 6days/ 5 nights because we didn’t feel like we were walking far enough and wanted to push ourselves no that we acclimating to our new surroundings. Prodee agreed and we headed out about 7:30 after the last of the toast. We always have tea. We broke off of the Pai River and headed up another creek until 12:30 where we came to a Karen village we were supposed to stay in. We had lunch and relaxed for an hour or so and then set out for another 4 hour walk towards the head waters up the hill. This is the hottest part of the day and fortunately we were in a rain forest for the second half of the day hiding from the sun although it was still hot and smoky. We swam in some of the larger pools as we ascended into the upper forest of tropical pines and out of the bamboo forests. The slope took on a new look, steeper, slippery, and slower. Our feet had been wet for almost the whole day and were sore. We pulled into a rice crop with a couple houses at each end and stayed in one just as the sun was going down. This was the alternative to getting to the waterfall but that was out of the question due to light and we had dinner and chatted for a couple hours and drank rice whiskey that the Karen villagers had given us as a gift. It wasn’t terribly strong, maybe 20% versus some that are 50% or higher. The night was going to get cold and there was a group of blankets hanging in the house that we helped ourselves to for padding and warmth on the bamboo floor.
The morning was cold and the sun was blocked by a massive mountain range that we were going to climb, cross and drop down the other side to a Lahu village and then on to Pai. The rain forest was teaming with birds and monkeys as we followed a gorge, then a ridge and over a saddle for lunch. We were at approximately 2200 meters and had a serious downhill ahead of us that would take 3 hours to descend with toes wrapped up under our feet. It was a bit painful having my toes rammed into the front of my shoes for so long but when we finally reached the bottom and kicked our heals into the dirt everything went right and off we went for a bottle of mineral water and a beer. A nice Lahu market owner gave us a lift from her store into town about 10 kilometers away. We were pleasantly exhausted and content with our achievement. Prodee said that there are not that many people that do this trek because it is difficult and long. That’s why we did it and why it was worth it more than so many others that just don’t satisfy at the end like this one did.
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