A Day in the Life of a Backpacker
A Day in The Life of a Backpacker: Hostels, Waterfalls, Peaks and Valleys
Life offers its share of highs and lows. You’re moving along through your daily routine, when suddenly an unexpected turn of events throws a wrench in your workaday life. In a sense, you move along in a straight line, and every so often a break in the norm will cause this line will dip down low (ie: losing a job, breaking up with a partner) or rocket towards the sky (buying a home, getting married). Ordinarily, these juts in the “line” are few and far between.
In travel, these occasional blips, or rolling hills, evolve into a jagged mountain range.
Let me explain via a trip to Thailand in September 2012, a mere days after Elliot and I first met.
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During life on the road, peaks and valleys take on a life of their own. Every day…hour…even minute, you move between incredible highs and lows that are brought on by both physical and emotional circumstance. Through these last two weeks, I’ve noticed that solo travel allows for the peaks and valleys to reach unprecedented levels.
It’s one of the best parts about traveling, but managing these ups and downs certainly takes some figuring out. This is where Pai, Thailand comes into play.
Along with four new friends, Elliot and I set out to find a place to stay in Pai upon arriving in the late evening. We ended up at Sawasdee Pai Spa & Resort, which is made up of a series of bungalows placed perfectly along the Pai River. (If you ever find yourself in Pai, do yourself a favor and stay here.)
Pai is a small village located deep in mountainous jungle of Mae Hong Son, Thailand’s most northwestern province. What was once a tiny village surrounded by hill tribes has become a popular vacationing resort for Thais and foreigners alike, not to mention a common stop on the Southeast Asia backpacking trail. As fellow traveler and friend’s Brian and Sam wrote after traveling through Pai earlier this year, “Pai is super small and if you walk around it 4 times you’ll see the same person 5 times.”
Our bungalows at Sawasdee felt like home right away, and renting motorbikes gave us a way to explore the all the area in and around Pai. We even adopted two dogs, who spent a solid 24 hours following us all around town.
Trips to waterfalls and hot springs only scratches the surface of our time motoring around Pai and Mae Hong Son – we biked through remote villages where men smiled toothlessly while smoking opium, learned about Thailand’s role in World War II as we crossed a memorial bridge, and found ourselves apart of a muay thai training session overlooking the valley.
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Then, one day, a few of us decided to hike to Mae Yen Waterfall. The 15 kilometer (9.3 miles) “trail” ran alongside a river and switched back between bamboo fields, thorny vines and trees with unimaginable side-winding tree trunks. I put the word “trail” in quotations because this path was anything but a trail. Dozens of river crossings and wall scrambles made the undefined trail hard to find and even harder to navigate – and this was when the skies were sunny and clear.
Chatting about the emotional appeal that I wrote about in the introduction, we walked, climbed, crossed the river, walked, crossed, climbed, crossed. The river ran began to run deeper, but there was still no sign of the falls.
We contemplated giving up and turning back as clouds rolled in and the sky darkened, the trail all but disappearing. But we persevered on, finally climbing over a fallen tree and spotting the falls. We sprinted to the last bit of the trek Mae Yen Waterfall in celebration.
Almost on cue, the heavens opened up. Thunder sending vibrations through the jungle, water fell from the sky in sheets. Massive drops of fury made our decision to not stick around at the waterfall and head back to the trailhead easy.
We forgot to consider the effect of a huge rainstorm on an already fast-flowing river, and what was once an ankle deep crossing only minutes before quickly turned into a waist-deep battle. It was fun at first – it really was. Trekking through the Thai jungle, wading through rivers that came up to our belly buttons and fighting strong currents.
The fun didn’t last long as the river gained strength. Fear set in quickly as we were forced to make use of bamboo and human chains in order to cross. As we continued down, water levels continued to grow and were now almost breast-high, making it nearly impossible to cross. (At this point, the river was so powerful that it swept away one of my sneakers right off my foot.) The alternative was twisting and turning through the aforementioned thorny vines and scaling up super-steep slopes– literally clawing at the muddy hillsides to create any sort of balance.
It was around this time that the group was separated. Shouts were worthless (anyone who has been around a strong river knows just how loud they can be), and we did our best to keep one eye on the trail while the other searched for the rest of the group. This was one things hit their low point. With only 2 hours of daylight left and the rains continuing, we began looking for shelter, thinking that we may have to spend the night and wait for the waters to recede.
Finally, we saw the other group across the river and — with tons of effort to cross — were soon reunited. We decided then, with our clothing and all of our belongings 100% saturated, that there was no way we could spend the night in the jungle.
Teamwork prevailed, and after a few more daunting crosses we finally made it back to the trailhead, where we hopped on our motorbikes and got the hell out of there.
What we thought would be a leisurely 9-mile hike turned into one of the most trying adventures of our lives. The motorbike escapades in Chiang Mai left us worried and confused, but ultimately we knew that we’d find our way out one way or another. The May Yen Waterfall hike, on the other hand, genuinely had us scared for our lives.
The rest of our time in Pai was spent the same way as before – trekking through villages and gallivanting around town.
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Travel is often romanticized – the idea that every waking moment is spent taking on culture and adventure. I was as firm a believer in this credo as anyone prior to beginning my journey. The fact is, it’s not always fun and games, and sometimes attempts at finding said adventure and culture leads to dead ends (or flooded rivers).
I can’t think of anything that beats the freedoms associated with backpacking around the world. But with these ultimate freedoms – the peaks – there are always going to be a few times when low points – the valleys – find their way into your consciousness.
Peaks and valleys…
