One of my goals this year is to take 12 adventures - at least one per month. They don't necessarily have to be big adventures, but the first one of the year sure was!
I was on the road with expat YouTuber Karl heading up north for an adventure. Our destination was Phu Kradeung National Park in Loei Province, but we decided to make a few stops along the road on the way. We left Bangkok at 7am to try and beat most of the traffic. As we drove further and further north, the plains and fields of central Thailand fell away to the verdant hills and mountains of the north.
Our first destination was Wat Pha Sorn Kaew, or the "Temple on the Glass Cliff" in Phetchabhun Province. The views across the nearby landscape were incredible!
The temple is relatively new; I believe it was built in 2004. It's quickly become one of the area's top attractions, though it's very difficult to reach without a car.
I had actually had this temple on my list of destinations in Thailand for quite some time, but I had never been able to make my way up that direction. It was so good to finally visit one of my big bucket list destinations... and I wasn't even expecting to be able to check it off my list!
After about an hour, we left the temple and headed to our next destination.
As we drove on, we began to pass small groups of dark-robed forest monks walking barefooted along the highway. Sometimes they would be carrying Thai flags. The further north we got, the more frequent these groups became. These were forest monks; wandering monastics who spend their lives walking from village to village in order to preach and subsisting on the donations of the locals. Soon it will be the rains retreat, and these monks must return to a home monastery to meditate for the duration of the rainy season, but for now, these forest monks are still on their never-ending circumambulation of the north of Thailand.
Our next destination was Nam Nao Canyon, just outside of Nam Nam National Park. We had rough directions to the canyon: "park at the small wooden temple and take the footrail to the viewpoint".
We spotted some locals and asked them if we were in the right place. They assured us that we were and, delighted to have two westerners visiting their very remote temple, invited us inside to have a look around!
They were doing some renovations inside the wooden hall but were very excited to show us around. We took several minutes to pay our respects at the very unique wooden temple shrine before moving on.
The canyon was impossible to miss. Just a few minutes' walk from the wooden temple brought us to a remarkable viewpoint.
Karl sent his drone up to try to photograph and film the canyon from the air, and I tried to take a few photos from the platform (although photos don't do any justice to the amazing natural feature that is Nam Nao Canyon).
Eventually, it was time to move on.
As it got dark, we pulled off the highway at a very small very local restaurant to search for nearby accommodations.
Karl and I ordered a few plates of basil chicken and shared a Leo beer toast to our first successful day of adventure.\
We found a small local guesthouse with rooms for just 390 baht - or about $10 - per night. It's hard to beat the price, especially when the rooms had large beds and hot showers.
This was to be our last hot shower for the week.
The day had been a lot of fun, but I knew that the following day would be a hard one... little did I know how difficult it would be!
