East of Chiang Mai- Pai

Our next mission was to lead us to a small hippie village north east of Chiang Mai where we had seen pictures of a river called the Mo Paeng. We loaded up the car and headed off. About 2 and a half hours drive up a steep windy road we made it and headed straight for the river. As we made our way down into the steep section we saw blue pipes coming from upstream and not a lot of water coming down the waterfalls!.

-Sam and I at the dam and diversion of Mo Paeng

Unfortunatly the river had been dammed and diverted for irrigation and there was now minimal water coming down the river bed. Our run of luck had finally stopped and we were faced with the long and windy drive home. We decided to stay in Pai and we checked out another waterfall in the afternoon which was also not paddlable. We decided to check out some of the local festivities in Pai that night which in Thai style saw us down many bottles of Sam Sung whisky, party in a bar completly made of bamboo and return home well after 5am.

-Sam and I looking down the Mo Paeng riverbed with no water

The next day we headed back to Chiang Mai to plan our next venture to the North Eastern province of Nan.

We have now been in Nan for a week and paddled a further 2 first descents which will be on this blog soon as. Right now it has been raining hard for 20hours so we are having the day off then going to catch some more creeks with high water and then a 3 day trip on the Nam Wa river.

cheers