Bua Tong Waterfall!

Today was a good day. First of all, my friends Betsy and Kristen are visiting Chiang Mai, and it's been amazing to hang out with them, and to have a mini-Grinnell '12 reunion here. When one of the previous Grinnell fellows gave her on-campus presentation, she talked a lot about Bua Tong Waterfall, or the "Sticky Waterfall." Because we had heard so much about it, we all wanted to take a trip and go see it for ourselves. We hired a song tao for the entire day, which cost about 1200 baht, and managed to gather together a group of eight people to go.
The journey there took about an hour, and we were mostly just socializing on the way up there, while peeking out the windows of the truck a little bit. Finally, we turned off the main road and went a few kilometers further. Finally, we reached the parking lot for the waterfall! It's apparently in one of the national parks of Thailand, but there were hardly any people there. We hiked down to the "third floor," which is the base of the waterfall, and began our ascent.
You might wonder at the word "ascent," but that's exactly what I mean. There are certain minerals flowing through the water that adhere to the rocks and make them sticky, so that you don't slip down when you try to climb up them. "Sticky" might not be the best word; imagine that you are either Spiderman or a gecko scaling walls, and that's a little bit what it's like. The rocks are white where the minerals are, and when you climb up them, you can feel the minerals attaching to your hands and feet! It's a very cool feeling.

We played in the waterfall for a while, and climbed up all three levels. It was so much fun! The minerals really make it so that you don't slip, it's crazy. After scaling the rocks and taking pictures for a while, we all sat down to eat--by that point we were pretty exhausted. Our song tao driver, P'Jew, told us about another part of the park called the fountain of seven colors, so we hiked for a tiny bit to reach it. I'm pretty sure it was the spring where the waterfall comes from, and it was gorgeous--so many shades of blue!
After exploring the waterfall, we headed into the song tao and made our way to a wonderful cave, very near the falls. You have to hike about 200 steps straight up into the side of the mountain, but it was worth it once we got there. There is an enormous cave with a Buddha statue inside. If I understood right, this is supposedly the cave where the princesses of the Lanna kingdom ruled from. It was absolutely spectacular.

Not only did we get to go into that cave, but P'Jew took us into a smaller cave right next to it. It was a little bit of uneasy going, because we had to squeeze a bit, but once we made it through the opening we were in a large room, with "windows" overlooking the forest!
Completely wet (from the waterfall) and filthy (from the cave), we climbed back into the song tao and made our way home. Unlike on our ride there, we were mostly quiet and reflective on the way back, allowing ourselves the time to stare out the back of the song tao and look at all the villages passing by.