Dear Steemit friends!
Today I am going to tell you about my adventurous first time doing bamboo rafting in Thailand.
Something I wanted to do for a while was to take a day trip and go bamboo rafting in Chiang Mai’s countryside. I told one of my Thai friends about that dream and he said, sure let´s do it. We told a few people about our plan and everybody wanted to join. On an early Saturday morning, 4 friends and I packed our stuff, took our scooters and started the adventure.
One of the most popular spots to go bamboo rafting in Chiang Mai is the Mae Wang or Wang River, which is about an hour’s drive southeast away from the Old City.
For this drive, you don´t need to have a very good scooter. Just make sure that your scooter is in a good condition. If that is the case, you won´t have any issues to drive this way.
The way to the Wang river is very beautiful. You pass rice and flower fields, elephant camps and a lot of rivers.
On the way, we stopped at a little waterfall and a little village where people made their own products.
Once we arrived, we first went for lunch. Right next to the bamboo rafting place, there was a super nice restaurant which was located on the river. The restaurant was a huge construction made out of wood and people were sitting there on the ground. The food came on a zipline from the kitchen down to the people which looked very interesting. Real Thai style.
The food there was really delicious. We ordered 5 different dishes and each was fantastic. The price per dish was around 100 baht which are around 3 $. We really enjoyed the time at the restaurant. It was such a peaceful place.
We actually expected ways more tourists there but no, we were the only ones.
Once we were done with lunch, we went to a little no-name-store were we had to pay for the bamboo rafting. If you have anything with you which can´t get wet, then you can leave it at the store or you just leave all inside your scooter. Trust me. Everything will get super wet so if you don´t have a waterproof bag then just leave everything at the scooter or store.
From there we hopped into the back of a pickup truck and took a short ride to a big shack in the jungle that housed about a dozen of bamboo rafts.
We were quoted 300 THB (9-10$) for a raft without a Thai guide. If you want to have a Thai guide then it´s 500 THB (around 12-15$). We didn´t need a guide because we wanted to steer the rafts ourselves. Each raft can hold four people, five if the water level in the river is high enough. We decided to take two rafts. So two people had one raft and my other three friends had another raft.
The bamboo rafts were HUGE and around 7 meters long. They were pretty basic and made of several thick bamboo stalks that were bound together with some rope and strips of rubber. We were handed two long skinny poles for each raft to propel ourselves down the river.
The river was very shallow (only a few cm deep in some places) but the water was refreshing and not too cold. The trees and grasses came up to the waterline so we were in the cool shade for most of the time.
You can sit on the bamboo raft or stand. You will anyways get wet so it´s better to put on older clothes which can get dirty. Many people will say now why didn´t we put on our bikinis. As Thailand is a very respectful country, you should always cover yourself. It´s not very respectful to raft in a bikini. So don´t forget to bring dry clothes.
There were several twists and turns in the river and shallow spots that we had to skillfully maneuver around, so we found that it was easier if two people steered the bamboo raft. One person stood in the front and one stood in the back. We all took turns guiding the boat and got a good workout from the challenge.
If you are not so fit and strong in your arms, if you don´t have a good balance or you do this trip with children then I really recommend a guide as it is really hard to steer the raft.
It was a really fun ride but also very hard and our hands hurt after a time.
We passed several rafts which sold beer and it seemed like as Thai people would celebrate and spend time with their friends there. As there were not many tourists, the Thai´s wanted to take pictures with us. So we were very famous.
They invited us as well for a few drinks and of course, we joined them.
It was really nice to see that the people who were drinking, didn´t throw their cans inside the water. It´s very important to keep all clean.
We really had a lot of fun with all the local people. We rafted for about two hours (including our stop at a rock) before passing a series of restaurants and coming to the endpoint. You’ll know you’re done because there will be dozens of other rafts floating in the water and several people hauling them out and onto trucks. Basically, you can’t go any further!
Once we arrived at the end, we walked back to our scooters and drove back to Chiang Mai city.
This activity is offered by many agencies as day tour but we went on an independent trip. I personally would not do this trip with an agency because it´s ways cheaper to do it by yourself and you are independent. So you can do whatever you want. Just plan at least seven hours for this adventure.
All I can say is that it was really worth to do it and we had a lot of fun for less money. I would definitely do it again.
I hope you guys liked my story and I would be very happy about comments, likes or any feedback.
Thank you so much for reading :-)