2 days/1 night - group adventure - day 1.

A few days ago, I went to a travel agency and booked a package for a two-day adventure with various activities with a group of unknown people. The package includes a visit to Doi Ithanon National Park, Wachirathan Waterfall, hiking through the mountain and forest/jungle, visiting the royal pagodas, camping in a village without electricity, bamboo rafting, visiting an elephant sanctuary, and feeding the elephants. All tickets, transportation, guide, and 4 meals are included in the price (around 80€) and it is highly recommended!

Around 7:30AM, a van arrived to pick me up, and the driver and I headed to the city center to pick up the other passengers. A group of 6 people (two children) arrived, a family from France, specifically from a French territory near the African island of Madagascar that I had heard of for the first time - the island of Réunion. This was the entire group for this adventure, so we immediately headed to the first destination - Doi Ithanon National Park. Somewhere on the outskirts of Chiang Mai, we picked up our guide Ron, a resident of a village north of Chiang Mai who is a very positive and fun person, and we continued our journey which lasted about 1.5 hours.

The journey was enough to get to know the other group members a bit, and the landscapes we passed through towards the end of the trip, climbing higher and higher, were beautiful and sunny. We reached the first destination - the waterfall. I had never seen such a large, powerful, and noisy waterfall before, so I was very impressed and felt the true power of nature and water. We stayed here for about half an hour, and then we headed to the highest point of Doi Ithanon mountain, and indeed all of Thailand. We had to walk and climb a bit, but the temperature, which was noticeably lower than in Chiang Mai, was pleasant for such an activity. At the top, we took pictures, walked through a small forest, and then returned to the van and headed to the royal pagodas.

The royal pagodas are actually two pagodas dedicated to the previous king and queen, each on its own elevation, connected by stairs between them. In the immediate vicinity of the pagodas, there is a well-maintained zen garden, while in the distance, you can see only green trees on the hills of the mountain.

After the pagodas, we headed to the village where we would spend the night and, unlike the previous locations where there were many tourists, there was not a single one on the way to the village! The village is, of course, cut off from the road, and it takes about an hour of hiking and climbing to reach it. Before we even started hiking, we stopped at a place in the middle of nature where there was a small improvised shop with various goods in the open, and we also had lunch there. Lunch was simple, rice with vegetables and a fried egg wrapped in a banana leaf, along with a few mandarins.

The driver left us, and we started hiking with Ron. A dirt path, uphill, and nature around us. Halfway through, we visited another waterfall with a small pond where we could swim, but the water was cold, so I skipped it.

We continued the hike and reached the village. The houses were scattered across various hills, 1 or 2 every 5-10 minutes of walking, made from natural materials like bamboo and roofs from banana leaves. The village has no electricity, hot water, or shops... - everything is very simple for living. Our camp was also located on a hill with a beautiful 360-degree view of the surroundings and the few houses in our sight. Just before we reached the camp, from one elevation we noticed another group of people heading to the camp, about 5 minutes ahead of us. They were another group of about 10 people my age with their guide.

We found them at the top as they were unpacking, and when we arrived, we were immediately assigned sleeping rooms in a hut made of bamboo and OSB boards, with 2 rows of 3 rooms each. The rooms were just big enough to fit 2 mattresses, with half a meter of space between and around them, and that was all that was in them. Although we had a roof over our heads, the house had no insulation, so you could hear everything from outside, and of course, the sounds from every room since the walls were just those OSB boards a few centimeters thick. I was assigned a room with another guy from the other group who also seemed to be a solo traveler.

Next to this hut, there were 3 separate toilets and 1 room for bathing, which means a large and deep basin with water from which water is taken with a bucket for pouring. The water was cold and, as far as I understood, given the continuous flow of it (yes, there are faucets but they don't play any role), the water is supplied from a nearby source. Besides that, there was another sleeping room (where the guides stayed) connected to a primitive open-air kitchen where dinner and the next day's breakfast were prepared. In front of the kitchen and the hut was a wide and long wooden table with two equally long benches where we all had dinner together about 1.5 hours after arriving, eating rice with chicken curry and vegetables prepared by Ron and the other guide.

I am by nature a very introverted person, so these 7-8 new people in my group were more than enough to drain my energy through communication (which I rarely initiate), so I didn't make any special connections with the people from the other group, except that I caught a few names and where they came from.

Soon after dinner, it got dark and the temperature dropped significantly, so I needed the jacket I luckily brought. On the flat top of the hill, in the middle of the camp, there were 4 wooden benches arranged in a circle around a fire pit, which was soon lit. A few of us went to our rooms, while most stayed to socialize around the fire with drinks and conversation. Although I wasn't physically present around the fire, I could hear everything being said because the sound easily traveled through the room walls and the gaps between the roof and the boards... Everyone around the fire dispersed around 10PM, and apart from occasional sounds and muffled laughter from other rooms, it was very peaceful and quiet... Everything was great, until the middle of the night...