Scootering up a Mountainous Plantation

 December 2, 2022 - Friday

D'Endless hotel is at the high point on the 4015 highway, tucked way up in the mountains. It was a fun jungle spot, our room was overlooking the road, a few small Thai houses and towards the next mountain. There was a crazy intense wind and rain storm in the middle of the night. Mega gusts and thunderous rain, we aren't sure if that's normal or not, it sure seemed out of the ordinary for us.

There's waterfalls every where here, most cascading down rocks but Graham found a tall one with a big drop that we decided to go find. It was beyond a few towns and up in the mountains. Turns out google doesn't know all and sent us up a plantation road. It was steep and slim concrete paths, just wide enough for dirt bikes (or for us, our scooters). We wound up and up, passing little huts, a scooter here and there and the occasional worker. All the underbrush was carefully cleaned up around the fruit trees and they were all spaced out to allow good sunlight all around. The only fruit trees we saw with fruit were durian trees, but there were also rubber trees, perhaps mango trees, a couple other varieties and the occasional pepper plant. There was also a hibiscus bush here and there left for its beauty. 

The durian trees especially had lots of attention directed towards them. Trees with huge fruit hanging from them were tethered to make sure the fruit didn't make the branches break. Piles of freshly picked durians were lined along the dirt bike road and constant traffic was going up and down. They had a basket on either side of their bikes to balance out the load. Everyone was smiling when we cruised by, I even got a few Sawatdees back at me and lots of big smiles. They must've been thinking, what silly tourists went way up this road on their scooters! But unfortunately the first long trek into the jungle was up the wrong road (if you can call it that) and we had to descend. Slowly, heavy on the brakes and with lots of cool down stops. We went one gully over, through the little Kiriwong Village with a couple suspension bridges for tourists and back up and into the jungle. This time we were on the right path and go fairly close to the falls. We were at least on the right river, and parked our bikes downstream and went for a little hike. For a day that was supposed to be a scooter free day turns out we rode around for two hours already, it was nice to finally stretch the legs. We hiked along the same style of concrete single track and climbed until we could see the falls. They looked great! We kept ascending until we were about two thirds of the way up and we had a good view of the falls. Very pretty and a good drop, but we know why there's no photos on google as most people wouldn't make it where we did. We went down the road to a spot where it was a short jungle trek and on to the river bed. The ground was mostly solid granite with large boulders on it. We tried to climb up to the falls but the big boulders were very slippery. Graham flew his drone around and I climbed a bit further. I went until the rocks we extremely slippery from the mist constantly coming off the falls and decided not to push my luck and just enjoy them from where I was. It would've been cool to get right up into them, Graham did see a rope from the drone but the access was from a different angle then where we came in. 

Graham had spotted a road side laundry spot on our way in, we dropped off the dirty clothes we had been driving around with and went for lunch. Harder to do when all the local restaurants didn't look like they spoke any English and we are inept at reading the cursive Thai writing on the menu. We ended up at the Passion resort, still a great Thai meal just a little more then a local shop. I got a cool and super creamy mango smoothy, the mangos we frozen and the just pureed pure mango. Wow was it thirst quenching after our little hike. Graham had an Italian soda and we both had a big meal of sun-dried pork (deep fried), tom yum soup and green curry with rice. With full bellies and our timer letting us know the laundry would be done, we collected our clean clothes and headed back to the hotel.

We creatively hung up the wet clothes, every surface with a bit of a hanger had socks, t-shirts or shorts on it with hopes it would be dry by morning. Graham settled in for his afternoon nap and I settled down with my book on the deck. Soon I realized I should be pool side for my reading so I put on a bathing suit and wandered down to the pool. It was a fancy pool, black with gold tiles in it and it was infinity-ing over looking the jungly mountains. I was nice but I couldn't imagine all the black tile and painted black wood on a hot and sunny day. After a nice swim, the pool was actually cool which was nice, I read my book pool side waiting for Graham to wake up. The rain however came first. After a half hour of read and the cloud darkening, I wasn't surprised. The skies opened up but it was just a light shower. I was locked out of the room however and waited for Graham to wake up in the covered area. He was up shortly and after rescuing some of the clothing from the rain we both had a long shower for me and a long bath for Graham. Might as well take advantage of the big bath tub!

We headed out to dinner and had a similar experience as last night, we rode until we spotted an open restaurant and when in. This time no menu at all, the chef came out and gave us the five options he had and we paired it down to phad Thai, tom yum soup and a curry. All dishes were huge and we were stuffed full again. Back to our fancy room for a quick pack up what we could and into be to watch a movie.