Advice for the Single Female Traveller

When you are staying at a hill station in a remote area of northern Thailand, you should, without a doubt, go off on your own on a trek in the jungle without telling anyone what you are doing, except a fellow traveller from Germany, when you ask her if she knows how to get to the waterfall. You will find the waterfall quite easily, it's huge, and when the trail splits, go down, because everyone knows that waterfalls are best photographed from below. After the obligatory photo, you decide not to go back to the path, instead you make your way through the bush along the river, assuming, that since you're walking along a river, there will eventually be a bridge, and where there's a bridge, there will be a path. You're assumption will prove correct, and across the rickety bamboo bridges you go. Once on the other side, you should head uphill for two reasons; a) it's more of a work out and b) maybe there will be a view, if you climb high enough. After hiking for twenty minutes or so, your trail will meet an orange dirt road, badly in need of truckloads of fill. In some places the ruts are 1.5-2 feet deep. The road climbs for a few hundred feet and then crests the hill, where you are rewarded at last with a view of the valley. The hills opposite are covered in tea plantations, rice terraces and jungle, there's not a town as far as you can see, only a smattering of small villages and solitary houses and you will feel blessed to be there, in that moment, in northern Thailand.

Along the way, you will get covered in bug bites and mud, from taking photos of small mushrooms and other foreign flora, you'll pick up strange looking fruit and decide to try it, because it sort of smells like a grape, even though it doesn't look anything like one, you won't know exactly where you are, because you don't have a map and there are no signs anywhere, but you won't be truly lost, because you have a good sense of direction and when ever the trail forks, you leave a sign, some small branches propped up on a tree, a log across the path, to indicate that this was the path you came from. And you will experience immense joy when you find a clump of plants that contract their leaves when you touch them!

Rural Thailand

Huai Kaeo Waterfall

 

View from the top

On the way down you will come up with a witty way of writing about the mornings adventures so that you can tell you friends and family what you've been up to. And while they sit in their kitchens/offices/bedrooms, living vicariously though your travels, they will know that you are safe and sound, still have all your fingers and toes and you are thinking of them and wishing they were here to share in these experiences.