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> My Holidays
Around Thailand
> Long-necked Hilltribe in Mae Hong Son
Have you ever been in a car for a long time when you have gone somewhere
far? I am sure most people have done it before and I don’t think
anyone likes it. For me, I don‘t ju During the summer holidays, I went on a photo trip with Richard to other provinces as usual. We always do that when we have long holidays. We are hoping to go to all 76 provinces in Thailand to take pictures of tourist attractions for one of my websites (www.thailandguidebook.com). This time we headed for Chiang Mai and Mae Hong Son. But when we were in Chiang Mai, we realized that it was a big province and that it wasn‘t easy to get around and see everything. So, we decided to only go to Mae Hong Son. It was a really good trip, really fun. I think it was the number one road trip adventure I have ever had in my life. We set off from the guesthouse in Chiang Mai early, hoping to get to
Mae Hong Son before lunch time. I wanted to be able to take a break
before taking pictures. It was only 250 kilometres away from Chiang
Mai so we thought it wouldn’t take long to get there but we were
wrong. We forgot that we were in the north and that there are lots We didn’t arrive in Mae Hong Son until late afternoon so I only had time to take a few pictures of a couple of temples there. Even though I wasn’t the one who drove there all the way, I felt very weary. As the sun was setting we went to look for a guesthouse and we found one by the lake which looked nice. I looked at Lonely Planet to get an idea of the price. The guidebook said 250 baht for a room with two beds, air-conditioning and bathroom. It is quite cheap so we went to park the car and went to check-in. We were shocked after we heard that the price had been changed to 600 baht. We thought it was expensive but we were too tired to bother. I went to get my suitcase in the back of the car and went straight to the room. I took a shower then went to bed straight away. We left the guesthouse the next morning at about 7.30 a.m. and went to find the way to go to the village of the Karen people or the long necked hilltribe. I looked at the city map that the tourist office gave me. There are three villages that we could visit: one is small, one is big and one that you can only go by boat. We decided to go to the biggest one and it is also the famous one called Nai Soi village. From the map, It looked easy to go there but really it wasn’t like that. There wasn’t any signs by the side of the main road to tell us which lane to go down too, so I had to keep asking for the way. Then when we found the way after I saw a small sign in the ditch that said “Long Necked Hill Tribe. Turn left here”.
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dislike it, I would say that I “hate” it. But now, after
I went on a trip from Chiang Mai to Mae Hong Son in Northern Thailand,
I would say that I prefer to be in a car all day on a straight road
than being in a car for five or six hours on a windy road.
of
mountains and hills. The road to Mae Hong Son is very windy and hilly.
In fact, there are 1,894 bends in the road. So, we couldn’t drive
fast. The fastest we could do was only 80 kms/hour. I think we were
lucky because we didn’t meet many trucks and cars. Along the way
the views were very beautiful and we stopped many times to take pictures.
