S.E. Asia Part 4: Loy Krathong

In the dark, warm night, we trudged under the weight of our 40lbs packs. We’d just spent four hours ripping down the highway in the back of a songthaew (essentially a taxi pickup truck) after missing our bus to Chiang Rai and had gotten dropped off downtown, four kilometres away from our hotel. It had been a rough, bumpy drive and I was grumpy, hungry and tired.

As we followed the road towards our lodgings, the streets slowly emptied and the vendors, shops and people made way for sporadic traffic and discontinuous sidewalks. “Great…” I thought, “We’re going to get to the middle of nowhere and there’s going to be nothing to eat nearby”. With sore feet and stiff backs, we rounded a bend in the road when suddenly, a cacophonous explosion of light and people burst out in front of us.

In our tired state, it was hard to understand exactly what we were looking at. Tall 10m structures covered in neon lights towered on each side of a road jam-packed with food stands and people. It seemed like thousands upon thousands of people had appeared out of nowhere, all heading down a side road towards what seemed to be some kind of fairground. As we got closer, the visceral thumps of competing music stages lay down a soundtrack to this unexpected festival scene.

“This looks awesome!” Emma exclaimed. While I was still pretty grumpy, the sight and smells of innumerable food trucks made it impossible to disagree. Our hotel was thankfully only 10 minutes away so we rushed over, dropped our bags and started back towards this mysterious party.

We approached the entrance to the festival with a mix of excitement and trepidation. BANG! An explosive crack ripped through the air making us both jump. BANG BANG! More detonations punctuated the din of the festivities. We spun around looking for the source of the noise to see a group of youths casually lighting firecrackers and tossing them in all directions. Towards the festival grounds, Roman candles crackled and erupted towards the ski. Every 45 seconds, it seemed like someone was blowing something up.

It’s hard to accurately describe what the next few hours were like. Wandering the festival felt like entering a different world. The grounds were intensely packed with people who filled the available space between a bizarre array of food stands selling everything from live eels in ziplock bags to fried octopus on a stick. Hot cooking stoves fueled by rusty propane tanks cooked up meals inches away from the crowd and with the incessant sound of DIY fireworks overhead, I couldn’t help but think we were walking through a giant bomb, one drunk misstep away from going off. 

Chiang Rai’s surreal/weird White Temple.

This was the annual festival of Loy Krathong. Loy Krathong translates to "float ritual vessel or lamp”, and celebrates the Goddess of Water. The krathongs are decorative, floating baskets lit with candles and sent down the river as offerings to the Goddess. Throughout the evening, people would walk down to the river that flowed along the fairgrounds and send off krathongs into the night. It was a beautiful sight to see these lit vessels of good intentions slowly flow toward the Mekong River.

We got back to our hotel, exhausted, and flopped down onto our fancy beds. Tired but happy to have experienced this unique event, we went to sleep to the sounds of far-away fireworks hurtling through the ski.


This marked our last few days in Thailand before going into Laos and we couldn't have asked for a better sendoff. Next stop, Huay Xai.

S.E. Asia Part 3: The House of Apis Dorsata

I reached up to another hold on the steep rock face. I had left the shade lower down and was now fully exposed to the brutal sun. Sweat poured down my face and into my eyes, stinging and making it difficult to see. The rock, baked in the sun, was almost too hot to touch. I only had a few more meters of climbing before reaching the anchor when suddenly Emma called up from below.

“Do you hear that? What’s going on up there?” 

I broke from my intense focus and noticed a low, buzzing hum that was quickly getting louder. It sounded like a big fan that was getting closer by the second. That’s when it dawned on me. Bees.

I frantically started looking around and saw a cloud of bees about 15m away coming straight at me. Thousands upon thousands of giant Asian honey bees, Apis Dorsata, had left their nest and were swarming my way. I jumped off the rock and yelled down

“Down down down down!!! Lower me as fast as possible NOW!”

Zipping down the wall at breakneck speed, I landed beside Emma and desperately untied my knot to detach myself from the cliff while staring at the bees above us. Back on the ground, it didn’t seem like the bees had followed me and for now anyway, we felt safe’ish (emphasize on the “ish”). Above us, with a terrifying, surreal noise, the bees kept buzzing along until the swarm was out of sight.

Halfway through our trip, we had arrived in the Mae On district of the northern Thai province of Chiang Mai. A friend back home had given us a tip that the climbing here was quiet but spectacular. The crag was located in the countryside where huge, limestone walls lay hidden throughout the jungle of a nearby hill, the Crazy Horse Buttress.

Our stay in Mae On was simply perfect. A short scooter ride would bring us to the crag where we’d climb rocks and explore caves all day. When the sun set, we would drive by the evening market to share fresh fruit, papaya salad, sticky rice and some kind of delicious local dish. Another 2 minute ride would bring us home to wind down on our room’s deck with a bottle of Chang soda water, listening to the sounds of the jungle around us.

The climbing was like nothing I had experienced before. The first thing that grabbed your attention was the amazing textures, shapes, and construction of the rock. The wall was plastered with an infinite number of unique holds from tiny, fossilized remnants to perfectly formed rock handles big enough to swallow your arm. Immense stalactites seemed to grow out in all directions and would ring out like cast iron bells when climbed on.

The next thing you quickly realized is that these cliffs were teeming with life. Every nook and cranny contained something alive and it was wise to peer into a hole before putting your hand in it. Industrial ant trains crisscrossed the wall looking for food, giant venomous centipedes hid from the sun in rock pockets, and meter long snake skins hung like drapes off key holds you needed to grab. My favorite critters were the stingless bees, Trigona Collina. They would emerge from their small narrow, tubelike hives and, attracted to our sweat, would land on you to lick it up. There was no escaping from these harmless little buddies but it did take some practice to not constantly swat them away. Then, there was Apis Dorsata.

Apis Dorsata, or the giant honey bee, liked to live in gigantic hives under rock roofs and overhangs. Unlike other bees, they would shield the hive by forming a dense mass of bees that completely encased a single, beach ball sized comb. Get too close, and the bees would shimmer their torso in synchronicity, creating a wavelike ripple effect. Unlike the friendly Trigona, these bees were extremely defensive and wouldn’t think twice about mangling your day.

Apis Dorsata hives under the rock roof.

But it wasn’t just the rock above ground that blew us away. After a week of climbing, we donned headlamps, crawled through a tight squeeze in the rock, and discovered a wealth of climbing underground! We spent two days exploring absolutely mind bending crags in the biggest caves I had ever seen, culminating with a 150ft long multipitch climb in a subterranean chamber big enough to hold an apartment building.

Inevitably, we did have to move on and leave Mae On. Climbing into the back of a pickup truck, we bumped along for 4 hours towards the border for the final leg of our adventure, Laos. But Thailand had one more surprise for us and before we could leave, we were going to experience Loy Krathong.

S.E. Asia Part 2: A Comprehensive Review of QT Tours

Last October, Emma and I embarked on an amazing adventure throughout Southeast Asia. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting stories from the trip based off journal notes and photographs.

Part 2: A Comprehensive Review of QT Tours

Northern Vietnam - Hà Giang Province

At first, it felt thrilling. Clutching the tiny plastic handles on the back of the motorbike, I watched in awe as my driver tore through the dense traffic of Hà Giang. The growl of our little bike engine was peppered with incessant honking, warning anyone near to get out of the way. Whenever the driver saw even the smallest gap between traffic, he’d gun the throttle with such ferocity that it took all of my strength to hold on and not get thrown off the bike. Soon, we had left the city center, the traffic thinned, and the roads began to narrow and steepened as we entered the countryside. It wasn’t long before things stopped being fun.

The Hà Giang loop is a famous motorbike loop that weaves through the mountains on the border of Vietnam and China. An incredible mountainous landscape dotted with little villages, the area hosts an incredibly diverse population with over 40 unique ethnic groups with their own language, traditions and subculture living in this small northern province. The motorcycle loop had garnered a reputation as a must do adventure and had come highly recommended to us by a friend back home.

The official Hà Giang loop uniform.

Our drivers, happy to have ended the day without killing anyone.

We had been emphatically told by the hostel owner in Cát Bà that we should not do the trip ourselves and recommended we join a tour group. So after a little bit of research, we booked two seats with QT Adventures and excitedly prepared to head north.

After an awful 12 hour night bus ride (which could be its own blog post), we were dropped off at 4am at QT Tours’ headquarters in Hà Giang city and shuffled into a crowded dorm room with mats scattered on the floor. There were bodies everywhere and mold in the bathroom, but we did manage a few hours of restless sleep. The next morning, as we were having breakfast, I turned to Emma and said “Is it just me or are there a ton of wounded people here?” The room was packed with people either getting ready to leave or returning from a tour and looking around we noticed a few people on crutches, a few with their arms in a sling, and lots of folks with bandages. Looking back, it should have been our first clue to get the hell out of there.

A few hours later, Emma and I, wearing the provided rain gear that I can only describe as pink garbage bag ponchos, were sitting on the back of motorbikes driven by drivers who barely seemed to notice us. After our thrilling ride out of the city, things got bad quick.

Motoring up switchbacks up a steep mountain side, we rounded a hairpin turn when the bike in front of us, driven by a guide, suddenly washed out, throwing the passenger onto the pavement. I watched in shock as the guide picked up his bike and yelled at his passenger to get back on without so much as a second to check for injuries. None of the other guides slowed down and we continued barreling up the mountains. It was at that moment that I knew anything could happen. No one was safe.

Our drivers seemed to be motivated by one thing only: to pass as many vehicles as possible. On narrow, cliff sided roads, through blind corners, or in quiet villages with children running around, our drivers would pass trucks, buses, or other tour groups with 30+ bikes at 70 to 90 km/h. By the time we would arrive at our homestay in the evening, my jaw would ache from all the clenching and my fingers were numb from death gripping the bike.

This debacle continued for three long days. Our stops included innumerable visits to techno blaring coffee stands, a short visit to a historic monument where Emma and I were left behind, and viewpoints (often obscured by fog) filled with drunk twenty-somethings aimlessly milling about trying to take selfies. On our last day, we were left stranded on the top of a mountain in a dilapidated hostel under construction with the lead guide demanding we leave a good review.

Roadside art.

This concludes my comprehensive review of QT Tours. Not convinced? Read my tripadvisor report.