The country of many wonders

From the mountains to the beach, from the barreness of untouched beauty, to the crowds of Bangkok, we have experienced much on our 3 week trip.

So, where i left off.. after a relaxing night in Khon Kaen, we headed back up into the mountains, this time without any of the Kosa Hotel staff. Our contact drove us up and dropped us off, where we met up with our guides Montree and Ponsak and were off to venture into the caves. We saw 3 beautiful caves, 2 that connected to each other through an underground tunnel where we came upon a Budhist ceremony, being that it was the Chinese New Year, and sat in the dark, listening to the chanting for over 20 minutes. It was really amazing. After caving for the day, we headed back to the campground where we had a home cooked meal by one of the women who lives on the compound and dined on the outdoor patio while watching the sun go down. Who says you can't experience luxury while camping.

Early to bed and to rise, we watched the sunrise from our tent and then headed back up the mountain to try and find a beginner climbing crag, at the request of our contact. So, we bushwacked up the mountain with 3 ropes, a trad rack, helmets, shoes and harnesses, through bamboo, bush and steep hills, having to scramble the last 60 ft (without our packs which we ditched) and did in fact find what he was looking for. After much discussion, we had discovered the desire of the Kosa hotel is to make money. They want to funnel all climbing through them, where climbers would have to take tests to become accredited and go climing with guides. We made it clear to him that this would not work with the climbing community, they would simply go elsewhere. We realized what he wanted was an amusement park for outdoor adventure, for people with money to come and try out climbing, mountainbiking, kayaking, etc. while making themselves a nice profit. Our investment in this project clearly plummeted and despite the large amount of bigwall climbing possibilities in majestic settings on seemingly great rock, we set out to find what he was looking for. We decided to make the most of our opportunity and visiting areas that had not been visited by many people, discovering new places and meeting locals not yet jaded by tourism was indeed an amazing time.

Our last day up north was spent riding around in the back of a pick up truck, through dirt roads, small villages, open fields, mountains, visiting rivers and waterfalls and other possible locations, taking pictures for our contact to be able to see what was available. In fact, the driving was one of the highlights with everything that we saw.. It was so beautiful and pure. And so, we returned to Khon Kaen, put together a presentation with our ideas and suggestions and key photos, and decided it was time to go to the beach. We said our goodbyes to the nice people of Khon Kaen and headed via Bangkok to Cha Am, a small beach community 3 hours south of Bangkok where again, there were few tourists. It was pretty amazing, on the busride down we met a french Canadian man from Riviere du Loup who was now living down there and offered for us to come to his house, drop our bags and he would help us find a place.. He did, and had us over for breakfast the next morning, supper the next night and showed us amazing hospitality. He is a wonderful man who truly made our trip memorable. And of course, so did 5 days by the beach.

Arriving last night to Bangkok, we were bombarded by tourists, merchants and cars. Wandering around the streets, we walked into a store and I turned around to someone saying to me, "Didn't we meet in Australia?" 5 years ago I had travelled with her for about a week on a trip I had taken and we had become good friends. Losing touch over the years, it was a shock to run into her in Thailand and we spent the night catching up.. What a small world, even here in Bangkok.

Today was spent visiting the sights and preparing to head back to Kentucky early tomorrow morning. Photos will be up once I get back and sort through them all. There are about 800 of them.

Thailand

We have made it safe and sound to Khon Kaen, Thailand.. after a long, long flight over, we arrived in Khon Kaen Sunday morning at 8 a.m. to find the driver of our hotel waiting for us. We were whisked back to the beautiful Kosa Hotel, given a room, some food and a tour. We are being treated as royalty here, with all of our needs being met. We have explored the city a bit, though there is not much to see. It is not a city for tourism and very few white people can be found. Most that we have seen have been with their Thai girlfriends or wives. Very common practice here for older men to come over and marry young Thai women.. We, i guess if it works for them. I did however meet a man on our second morning, a retired dentist from Montreal who practiced in the Seaforth building (all you at MGH will know this). What a small world.
So, after two days of city exploring, temple viewing and fine dining and living, we set out for Phu Pha Man National Park, 1 1/2 hours north of Khon Kaen. The timing worked out that we headed out with all the executives and managers of this lovely hotel, to go camping in the park for 3 days and 2 nights. We wondered what camping with executives would be like. Well, our tents were set up for us, though not everyone slept in them. The campground was beautiful, grenery and flowers everywhere. There were showers and bathrooms (Thai style) and a beautiful roofed terrace where we all ate the meals that they cooked for us, with beautiful views of forest, greenery and mountains. Our first meal was lunch with the President and Vice President of the hotel, the director of the National Park and the Governor of Khon Kaen.. yes, we were amongst the important people. We are certainly being wined and dined. We are to everyone the climbers who have come to do what no one around here does, so a lot of curious people. And plus, everyone is so nice here and despite the serious language barrier, we have managed to communicate quite well.
After lunch, we took a hike to the viewpoint. Even from the campground, the cliff views are amazing.. Tall mountains of limestone, trees of varying types, majestic scenery as far as the eye could see. We checked out rock quality from the bottom of one of the highest cliffs and it appears solid, beautiful and fun to climb.. We even bouldered up the first 15 feet and had a blast.. That was it for the day, by then it was supper time (a late start for the executives that day) and we ate and went to bed early, still suffering from some jetlag.
The next morning we were up at dawn and watched the sun come up through the clouds from our tent. A quick breakfast and then the plan was to hike to the top of huge cliffline that we could see from the campground, and rappel down to check out rock quality. Well, Jake and I set off with 2 guides from the park, bushwacking and scrambling up the side of the cliff, where no one had ever been before. After about 2 hours of hot hiking, we made it to the top. The views were spectacular, amazing. It was breathtaking and to think, no one except a small tiger and deer (as evidenced by poo) had ever been up there before. As the guides said, a new survey team.. We wrote out names on some paper with the date, put it in a bottle and wedged it between 2 rocks. It felt great to have my first, first ascent. We have named it Egyptian Staircase due to the pyramid shape of the cliff.. Wow, what a high.
So, the next step was to come down. Well, we hiked along the top to where we though the cliffline was shorter, scrambled down a bit and then started setting up anchers to rappel off of trees.. 3 pitches later, 2 more scrambles, a short rope and some scary moments, we made it back to the bottom of the cliffline. The rock quality looked amazing, but very difficult to access or climb without doing some bolting. and by that time, we were so hot and tired, all we could do was think about getting back to camp which was still 20 minutes away. We had been hiking and rappelling for over 7 hours at this point in 90 degree heat.. wow.. I can still feel the high and the exhaustion.
We made it that evening to the Bat cave, where are 5:30 pm.., hundreds of thousands of bats fly out of the cave as the sun starts to set, and head for somewhere, to eat bugs we guess. Anyway, it's quite a sight to see so many bats flying in formation as we watch the sun setting.
Early to bed and rise again, though we were both so exhausted from the last couple of days that we only did a short hike to the base of another crag to see rock quality, only to find two buddhist temples in caves.. Access issues anyone? We thought so.. So, another quick drive to another cliffline, and found yet again, access issues.. looked like a 2 day bushwack to the base of the crag.. so, we headed back to the hotel, exhausted and dirty (forest fires had swept through the park a couple of days before and left us covered in soot). Exhausted we chatted with the director here, looked at some photos, had some amazing food and headed to bed. Today has been a rest day, starting with a 2 hour Thai massage - heaven - and then lunch with a glass of wine. We wandered around town a bit and now are relaxing before a game of snooker tonight at the hotels snooker club. We may also go for a drink at the beer garden, found right outside the hotel, covered in palm trees, a small oasis.
Alright, so now that I have made you all jealous, I will stop. I know that most of you are currently covered in snow and cold. For those of you who are climbers, I'm sorry, for those of you who are skiers, enjoy, I'm jealous.
Tomorrow, we head back to the national park, this time without the executives. We now have a better idea of what the hotel wants to do and so have a better idea of what we're looking for.
Pics and more stories to follow soon.

Photo Reorganizatio

So, in an attempt to make photos more accessible, I have reorganized them. I also upgraded my flickr account allowing me to upload even more photos, so you'll be seeing a lot more of them. And since I keep coming back to Kentucky, I'm going to organize them based on season. So, I have a Kentucky Winter section, and have added some sweet shots from a beautiful hike today. Though I can't climb, the scenery is to die for around here, especially on a nice day with some sun and snow. It makes me feel a little closer to home.

Thailand here I come!

So, it's confirmed. Tickets were booked today and we fly out on February 9th to Bangkok, arriving back in the US on the 28th. We are so excited that it has finally become a reality and can't believe we're leaving in less than a week.
In the meantime, it's snowing here. We actually have snow on the ground and had a snowball fight at Miguel's this morning. It's quite beautiful here with the snow, though it certainly puts a damper on climbing. We've been getting out a hiking quite a bit though and hanging out at the monastery at Miguels. We rented a cabin at Torrent Falls, one of the climbing areas, for a friends birthday which was fun, but we weren't able to even climb there. It was torture having the cliffs within view in the morning, though beautiful to see the snow. We have had a couple of beautiful climbing days and good fun with the small group of people who are in the gorge. It's nice being here with so few people, a small community. I'm the lucky one who gets to sleep indoors at the hostel.
It's a quiet time at the moment, lots of reading, watching movies and down time. I even picked up Sudoku. I figured my brain needed some kind of a workout. I must say it's been quite nice to be able to relax and catch up on a lot of things. You'd be amazed that being on the road, you'd think you'd have so much time on your hands to do whatever you want, but days seem to be full of climbing, cooking and driving. It's been nice to be in a home, with not much to do except hike a bit everyday. Returning to the hustle and bustle of real life will certainly be a difficult transition, but, one I don't have to worry about until September.
More stories from Thailand to come, and I posted some new pics on my blog. Enjoy.