Don't Go Chasing Waterfalls, Because You Will Get Lost Repeatedly

Yesterday, Phil and I used our day off to hit the Mae Sapok Waterfall (nam-tok mesa-pohk; น้ำตกแม่สะป๊อก). Except first we hit a few potholes, and then we hit the sign for the Mae Sapok Waterfall, and then we didn't hit the Mae Sapok Waterfall, we hit a mini-waterfall, because if experience has taught us anything, is that we are terrible at finding waterfalls. Last week we tried to find this same waterfall and instead ended up at the Mae Wang Waterfall, where my camera died capturing Phil walking across a narrow bamboo bridge. It's an accurate depiction of how this feat made my stomach feel.

Image taken in-camera, no Photoshop applied.

Well, this week we decided we'd do it right. We followed Marco's directions to a tee, and then came to a sign that said in Roman characters (in addition to a thousand Thai ones): MAE SAPOK WATERFALL. We registered that it was in 500m, but failed to register the arrow pointing right. So we turned left.


In our dim recollection, Marco had said that after the sign, we'd just need to follow a dirt road up for about five hundred meters before coming to the waterfall. We saw a dirt road. We saw it went up. Was this our dirt road? We were considering all this when a guy on a motorbike sped past us and disappeared up the hill, and we figured this must be it.

Half-way up the road we abandoned the motorbike. "Would this qualify as a gulch," I asked Phil, as we rolled the bike slowly back down to a suitable parking spot, "or a gully?" No photo can convey how steep and gutted this road was, but here is my meek attempt.

Eventually we began to hear the sound of water falling over rocks, and arrived at a very small approximation of a waterfall. But it was pretty, and Phil decided to practice his particular brand of yoga, which can be practiced in absolutely no other spot than a slippery rock.




We figured this must be some small post-waterfall, and that the real waterfall was close by. So we followed another steep dirt road up, and then took a narrow little steep dirt path, and went through the woods a long steep while, and it is a marvel that we didn't get lost, but we knew at least that if we rolled down the hill we'd end up at the bottom. And anyway, our perambulations were worth it, because we found some long lost relatives of mine.

Look, ma, my sisters!

With that, we change narrators. Phil.

Long, dusty story not very short—for example, we passed a pasture full of what appeared to be plastic bags or white and black cloths hung from arching poles like angler fish; were they scarecrows?—we retraced our steps all the way to the bottom. With chagrin we noted the afore-resented "500กม" and an arrow pointing farther down the original road. A sheepishly short time afterward, we were standing at the base of Nam Tok Mae Sapok.

Look at little pink Pil in the upper left!

I immediately scrambled up to behind the glorious cascade while Stephanie tried to capture my impish soul in her digital image capturing contraption. There, between a crashing stream of pure nature and a golden Buddha shrine, I spoke in broken Thaiglish with a fellow who had traveled here from Chiang Mai to celebrate Christmas. Why, yes, this was indeed on the 21st. For some reason, possibly the work week, I hear it's common for Christians in Thailand to celebrate Christmas early.

(The second photo is of another part of the shrine whose purpose we are unsure of—if anyone can shed light, please do!)

Stephanie soon joined me. We sat. No sooner had I opened my notebook to make (duh) a couple notes than one tourist in a passing pack asked me with an American accent whether I was studying. Of course I was studying. Step attempted about six dozen photos of me behind the waterfall, which I had to admit is good because one should always do the best job one can (Stephanie's Note: None of them turned out), and then we headed down and sunned on the sole rock that did not house carpenter ants.

(The previous day, may I clarify, I had been helping the Karen Farming Squad to remove some dastardly foliage. As I reached for a large severed banana branch, one of them exclaimed, rapidly: "Uh, sir! Wait! Careful! Sir!" I paused, holding the branch. He pointed. I apprehended with revulsion a swarming nest of large, translucent, rust-colored ants covering the first leaf on the branch. And thus my fear was born.)

I studied the "middle class" consonants of the Thai alphabet, writing them over and over Bart Simpson style, while Stephanie did some light reading on The Human Condition. After we were as serene as possible, we breathed in the waterfallen air one last time and set off over the rocks in search of lunch. A friendly Thai guy stood ready to save us from falling.

In less impishness, though, it was a great adventure. The detour up the wrong and very steep path, past the gully-ulch that has been called a mini-Grand Canyon, was at least as interesting and surprising as the waterfall itself. We found several small shelters impressively made by hand from bamboo and leaf-roofs.

After the waterfall, we had some beers and played an obsolete French card game we've gotten into and Stephanie held three kittens in her lap at once. But basically, dust.

We conclude with this GIF. When Baby Serena saw it, she buried her face in her mother's shoulder and squealed.