fantastic saturday

Today we decided to get out of bed early and head up north of town on our pair of motorbikes. At 7:00 sharp, my obnoxious alarm rattled me out of bed. Much like a snow day, I looked out the window in hopes of rain. What I saw pleased me: drizzles. I texted (yes, I know, but its cheaper) Chris and told him I was going back to sleep. At 8:00 I woke up again to a beautiful day; thus began our adventure.

We jumped on our peds (moped) and headed up north with vague directions on getting to one of several objectives: waterfall, snake farm, orchid farm, butterfly farm. All of these things appeared to be in more or less the same location.

We managed to get off track due to ambiguities in our map, but, as often tangents do, we found something better than what we were looking for. We discovered the biggest waterfall we've seen in Thailand. The coolest part, I thought, was some sort of hidden rock shelf in the middle of the waterfall that was shooting water straight up in the air like a fountain. Now, most waterfalls have something like this, but rarely do you see a 6 foot plume of water going upwards out of the middle of a waterfall.

(this is a picture of me pointing that out to Katie, although you can't see it well in the picture)

We drove the scenic, twisty route back to the main road with Katie on the back, white knuckled, and me on the front, grinning like an idiot :)

The next stop in our journey lead us to the orchid farm. This is a showcase for, and nursery of-- you guessed it-- orchids. There were many different types all displaying different colors, patterns, shapes, and sizes. Some of the flowers were quite incredible, some were nothing to write home (on a blog) about. We did eat lunch there and I ninja'd a mosquito out of the sky and threw it into a death spider's web, which made me a temporary hero and offered a few minutes of amusement. I hate those little *&%$#s.



Our next venture took us for a hike in through the jungle and to 5 of 10 waterfalls in a row. Some waterfalls, although they name them such, are not really waterfalls, rather cascades. This was the case with the first 3 waterfalls. Numbers 4 and 5 (yes, they were labeled) were more impressive, although not impressive as our earlier waterfall. The walk through the jungle on a boardwalk was fantastic, and we did run into the largest death spider I have ever seen. This thing was as big as my hand, and it was mere inches from the path. Chris got some good pictures, so you should check those out (email me if you want t0 be added to the picture email list).



The drive home was uneventful, which, when riding a motorbike in a fatalistic country, is a good thing.

Tomorrow its back to work.