Chiang Mai: Journey to Dtaat Mook

It’s been 13 hours on the train.

We boarded in Bangkok yesterday evening. The second-class sleeper car has a distinctly Soviet esthetic –  blocky design, steel construction, fluorescent bulbs rippling in their drawn-out struggle with death. Amplifying this is a uniformed car supervisor who patrols the aisle, intermittently barking at backpackers. The language barrier that prevents him from communicating rules does nothing to quell his enthusiasm for enforcing them.

I suspect cold-war era design was influenced by an embargo on style.

He gives us our wake-up call and now I’m staring out the window. We rumble through the Thai jungle, past rural towns and packs of stray dogs. Finally, a whistle blows and brakes clang signalling the end of our northward journey.

I named this one ‘Rabies’.

We have arrived in Chiang Mai.

Chiang Mai is to Bangkok as London is to Toronto: a university town for city kids who want a change of scene, a six-digit population as opposed to seven, decidedly superior air and water quality.

This last point has me excited because, more than anything, I want to go for a swim. Our whole group of six does. Humidity in Thailand hasn’t wavered from 100%. Temperatures have consistently exceeded 30˚C. Bangkok’s prohibitively filthy waterways meant the only liquid fit for human recreation was that sweated from your own pores. It is time to splash in something cold. In Chiang Mai, we commit to seeking out the best water Northern Thailand has to offer.

People say Bangkok's canals are the arteries of the city. My vote is for lymph system. Maybe bowels.

Immediately upon reaching our accommodations, I google 'Chiang Mai Hikes', select the first result, and select the first hike with the word 'water' in the description. I skim the page and find a downloadable map file. 6-kilometer hike round trip. 30-minute drive to the trailhead. Sold. We lock up our bags, apply a cursory dusting of bug spray, and are off within 15 minutes of arriving. We’re on our way to the Dtaat Mook Waterfall.

That’s right. Go big or go home. The first time we touch Thai water it’s going to be tossed off 30 metres of Thai rock on a Thai mountain in the middle of a Thai jungle. If you can’t tell, I’m quite excited about this.

That’s because waterfalls are objectively great. They are awe inspiring, powerful without being imminently threatening, and the secret mixing mechanism that gives Willy Wonka's chocolate its unparalleled taste. Like world peace and NBA dunk contests, waterfalls are something everyone can get behind.

Instead of taxis, Chiang Mai has songthaews. These are red pickups modified for optimal bulk tourist hauling. The truck bed is covered. Inside there are haphazardly installed benches and not a single seatbelt. The back is wide open. If Cash Cab is ever filmed in Chiang Mai, I suspect three strikes will result in ejection at full speed. A songthaew is hailed, I show the driver our destination on a map, and we barrel out of the city.

Among Thai automotive safety experts, crumple zone is just slang for a passenger’s chest cavity.

We enter the park that contains our trail turn right. Something is wrong. The map that I showed our driver definitely called for a left. Before I can protest, we hook another right and find ourselves idling in the middle of an empty visitor center parking lot. Our driver’s face pops up in the opening at the back of the truck. He offers a single word.

“Guide.”

On many of the hiking trails in Thailand, a guide is actually required by law. It’s a win-win way to create well-paying jobs for locals and prevent tourists from becoming tiger snacks. From my brief peruse of the webpage on this hike, though, I read that no guide is required. Attempts to communicate this are met with staunch resistance.

“No guide for this trail. All good.”

“Guide.”

“No guide. Good to go.”

“Guide.”

This is going nowhere. Time to switch gears.

“Okay. I will go in. I will check.”

My footsteps echo in the tiled atrium of the visitor center. The lights are off. Not a soul in the place. I silently count to thirty, put on my best exaggerated grin, and walk out the door to the truck giving two thumbs up.

“All good! Good to go!”

That’s right, I lied. Well, technically, I deceived by reiterating my original assuredness in the new context of leaving the visitor center. Whatever it was, it worked.

Five minutes later, we are at the trailhead. The path is lined with lush vegetation, massive leaves that harken to Jurassic Park. The sky is light despite a tropical shower that promises to make things challengingly muddy. This is exactly what we came for.

Welcome to the jungle.

In every horror film, there is a harbinger: a wretched old woman who claims the music box is cursed, the attendant of a dilapidated convenience store who notes that you don’t see too many folks looking to spend a night at Old Ed Huckley's place, or maybe a well-meaning songthaew driver insists on a guide. Without fail, these warnings are ignored and something horrifying plays out. Try as I might to distract myself, this thought keeps surfacing in the back of my mind.

As we walk, the jungle gets progressively spookier.

First, it’s the plants. Not twenty steps onto the trail, Kam, a member of our group whose athleticism and enthusiasm have her leading the charge, touches the frond of a nondescript tropical palm and immediately begins dripping blood from the laceration that now spans her hand. It’s a flagrant and violent signal of how truly foreign our surroundings are. 

Second, it’s the bugs. Seeing them is unnerving, but hearing them is worse. One permeates the air with the continuous and horrifyingly shrill sound of an air conditioner that needs to be banged on. Another perfectly reproduces, in character and volume, the noise an angle grinder makes as it pulverizes steel. It strikes me that I couldn’t put a name to a single insect I’ve seen, let alone distinguish which are poisonous. The sight of a mosquito provides a moment of comfortable familiarity. This is swiftly extinguished by the remembrance that we are in prime territory for Zika, Japanese Encephalitis, and Dengue fever.

This bug is big, brown, and provides no hints as to whether or not it lays eggs in human skin.

Lastly, it’s the atmosphere. The rain lets up after an hour, but the sun refuses to break the clouds, creating a perpetual twilight. The natural surroundings that were so wondrous take on a quality of sickly unease.  Paired with the muggy stillness of the air, there’s the sensation that we are outside of time, that upon returning home we will either discover that not a moment has passed or one hundred years have flashed by. Everyone in our party has stopped talking.

We emerge on a rocky plateau and the path disappears. Referencing the downloaded map on my phone, there’s indication the path goes right, but searching yields nothing. I have an idea. I open the browser on my phone and we’re in luck: the webpage for the hike is still there. There’s a chance some internet Samaritan faced this problem before and talked about it in the comments. I scroll down the page and read.

Neither of these is the right direction.

“It is a new requirement to hire a guide,” writes Martha.

“Not a beginner’s route! People must be fit and not anxious in dense jungle. There have been King Cobras seen. Big spiders. Be informed,” writes Hendrik.

“Be careful and bring a GPS!! And extra battery back up!” writes Peter.

And with that, my phone died.

The group convenes to discuss our situation. At this stage it’s worth acknowledging that, as far as groups go, we are relatively stubborn. We came here to swim. After two hours hiking up a mountain, there has been no swimming. We didn’t come this far to turn back without at least one more concerted effort to find the path.

This screen triggers the realization that, without tools, humans are essentially overzealous meat.

Our desperate optimism is downright embarrassing. Furrows in the underbrush are investigated as legitimate trail candidates. At one point, I find something that looks promising except that the way is blocked by a yellow sign with a bold black ‘X’ on it. I advocate for the possibility that Thai people follow the convention of pirate treasure maps where ‘X’ marks the spot. It was a dead end.

We give up. Exhausted, sweaty, and beaten, we begin to make our way back the way we came. Then something catches my eye. A yellow sign positioned such that, coming from the other direction, it would be entirely obscured by foliage. On it is an arrow. We have our heading.

It’s now that the real jungle begins. The trail takes on an aggressive slope. The ground gives way to slicks of mud. Walls of bamboo encroach on both sides, arching low over the trail in a snarling mess that forces us to duck and bears an uncanny resemblance to Thailand’s electrical infrastructure. Even though the rain stopped long ago, I am soaked with sweat. In the dead air, no amount of quick dry can save you. Every once and a while, I pass a piece of bamboo that has been cut off at a sharp angle, suggesting that we are either still on the path or have entered the traditional territory of a jungle tribe armed with pointy homemade spears.

Tangled chaos. Who wore it better?

A low rumbling emerges. It builds gradually, a crescendo to an absolute roar. Suddenly, there’s a break in the jungle. We see it.

It’s miraculous. For a long time, we just stare - relieved to have made it, captured by awe. Then elation sweeps through us. Someone hoots. I holler. Tossing shirts and bags aside, we make for the water. It’s everything we built it up to be.

The initial splash is refreshing. So is the one after that and the one after that. The air is suffused with a light, cool mist. The falls themselves are not just scenic, but a source of interactive novelty. That is to say that, faced with a true force of nature in a remote Thai jungle, I did what any early-twenties backpacker would do and stuck my head in it. The noise is obliterative.

We laugh until we’re tired from laughing and swim until we’re tired from that too. On the trek back, we practically skip, buoyed by unadulterated satisfaction.

I’m your Venus! I’m your fire!

Any attempt to pull a moral from the story is fraught: we were ill-prepared, persistent to the point of obduracy, and, in the end, it was magnificent. This message brought to you by the publishers of the Darwin Awards.

No, this story doesn’t offer a lesson. It offers hope. The version of Thailand that is sold in every advertisement, but never delivered upon – the perfect, isolated, untamed and untouched wonderland – it exists. And, in at least one case, the willingness to sweat, slip, stumble, and smile your way through the better part of an afternoon is enough to find it.