In December 2011, I was back in Thailand. My idea was indeed to spend Christmas time and New Year in the country, but moreover, I was planning to study for my Thai Massage Teacher certificate.
In addition, I wanted to train with a variety of different Thai massage schools and teachers, others than those of the Sunshine Network Lineage.
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Yet, first I wanted to see Laos. So, after having visited Luang Prabang and then Vientiane (the capital of Laos), I reentered Thailand with the idea to go to the Phu Kradueng mountain in Northern Thailand (spending Christmas there) and do some serious hiking.
The mountain is part of the Phu Kradueng national park, and the park is definitely one of the most popular national parks in Thailand (for locals), but due to its remote location it’s much less known by foreign tourists.
The park is actually mainly a single big mountain, covering a staggering 350 km² and its highest point is at 1,316 meters. What makes it special is that the heart-shaped summit (making it popular among Thai people for marriages, honeymoons, and declaring “eternal” love) is a flat plateau of around 60 km², so plenty of space to hike.
It boasts waterfalls, spectacular viewpoints, pine trees, bamboo forests, sub-tropical forests, and many endemic species, to give you the idea. Moreover, there is a bunch of elephants walking around in herds, apart from boars, deer, and jackals.
To reach the plateau, which has a camping ground with thousands of tents to spend the night (5,000 to be exact, for rent), you will need to hike up. There’s no other way. It’s a 9 km uphill walk and it takes about 5 hours. You need to carry your own backpack … or you can hire a carrier who will bring it up for you (you pay per kilo).
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In fact, everything that is needed on the summit is carried up by professional carriers/climbers: food for the restaurants, gas bottles, tools, construction materials, inventory for the shops, water bottles, and so on. Mind that waste and empty gas bottles, and so on, is also taken down by carriers. It’s simply amazing.
On the day, it can get to 20°C on the summit, but in the night in December and January, the temperature can sink to 0°C. I remember that the three nights I spent there it was about 3°C. Luckily, you can rent sleeping bags and blankets, which I did, of course.
It was lovely, with no Christmas atmosphere at all — as a mainly Buddhist country, the Thai don’t celebrate Christmas; only for the tourists in the obvious tourist places — so, yeah, that’s what I always loved about being in Thailand around that period.
Now, I hiked a lot (you can get a trail map of the place, and you don’t need a guide), but I didn’t see any mammals, just a lot of birds. I did see some evidence of the wild elephants because of the warm, smoking poop on the trails.
Interestingly enough, every morning at around eight o’clock there were loud announcements (over heavy loud speakers) of several minutes in the Thai language. However, I didn’t have any clue what they were talking about.
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By coincidence, I met a Thai couple that spoke English, and I asked them about it. I was curious what the announcements were about. They told me that that morning there was a warning NOT to go hiking because of herds of wild elephants roaming the trails.
Funny … well, maybe not so, because I went hiking that morning … for hours … but perhaps the universe protected me — or something like that — because I didn’t have any encounters. You see, it’s common knowledge that encounters with wild elephants can end “not so well.” I was amazed that the announcements were not made in English (apart from Thai). Well, I was shocked, actually. But that’s Thailand. You get used to it, in some way.
Anyway, it was great there. On the descend after the third night, early in the morning, it was all fog. In fact, all mornings on the summit start with heavy fog. Descending is as hard as ascending … notably for the knees.
But then, that was it. That was Phu Kradueng mountain. My next step was to go back to Chiang Mai; spending New Year there and looking for a Thai Massage Teacher training course, and trying to find those special Thai massage masters to learn the deep secrets of the art.
