Thailand Travel Blog

After a long drive from Chiangmai, we checked in at the Rim Kok Resort in Chiangrai around 1.00 p.m. The hotel was quite okay. We asked the bell boy who took t us to the room about the Kok river cruise. He told us that he could arrange the trip for us. The rate was 700 baht to Ruam Mit Hill Tribe village from the hotel pier. So we booked the 2.00 p.m. trip that afternoon. We took a hearty bath before going on the trip.

 At 2.00 p.m. we walked to the hotel’s pier. A long tail boat steered slowly to pick us up at the pier. We paid the fare for the boat trip before going down into the boat. The weather was very cloudy at the time we started out on our trip. Only 5 minutes from the pier and it started to rain. That was hampering our good view of the beautiful scenery on both sides of the river. The weather cooled down very fast after the rain and the wind was strongly blowing while we still kept on going.

After forty five minutes had passed, we reached Ruam Mit Hill Tribe Village’s pier. A lot of elephants were waiting for visitors at the pier.These elephants were available for tourists to hire for a ride in the tour of the village. While we were at the pier, the big snake (I’m not sure if it is a python or not) in the cage. This snake was also available for tourists who want to take a picture with it (only small fee applies).

 We decided to walk to visit the village instead of taking the elephant ride because by this way we could stop at any point of interest we wanted to see. There were many souvenir shops along the street in the village. This seemed to be a commercial spot for tourists. But there still is some traditional culture of hilltribe to be seen in this village.

There were 3 little karen girls trying to sell us some souvinirs. So Aom and I had an idea and told them that, if they became our guides to their village, we would buy the souvenirs from every one of them. The girls agreed to our proposal and took us past the old traditional village and went to their school. I saw a lot of hilltribe boys playing around at the school. I appreciated the visit a lot.

We stopped at a hilltribe clothe shop. Aom bought some antique hilltribe shirts. It was quite expensive but quite hard to find elsewhere. While we went back to the pier, we stopped at a souvenir shop of an old hilltribe man who was standing and playing an old traditional hilltribe musical instrument. I could not figure out the name of this instrument but I bought one from him. This musical instrument was made from bamboo. It could be played by blowing it like a flute. We also bought an old and traditional hilltribe bag which was very very cheap here. Wow…!!! what a bargain!!

 We returned to the pier after much of our money went away along the way in the souvenir shops :D. It was the time to go back to the hotel after we let the boatman to wait for us for more than 2 hours.

While we were going back to the hotel, the boatman let us visit a temple in the cave along the way before we reached the hotel. It wasa very peaceful site. There was only one monk here. The monk told us he had to live in the cave all the time. If he left the temple, sometimes some hilltribe thieves might raid the template and steal the money that people donated to the temple. How sad…

We had a nice trip to the hilltribe village and to the temple and I thought that the Kok River has a great view and a lot of interesting things to be seen more than the Mae Ping River that I visited in November 2002.