My day started earlier than I'd like at 8 am. I met up with my Thai pickleball bro and his girlfriend at a police station about 30 minutes south of my Airbnb. Getting to the bamboo rafting location took another 30 minutes or so after we stopped at Cafe Amazon for some iced coffee. Compared to Vietnamese iced coffee, this coffee was same, same but different. I think I still prefer the Vietnamese one.
Once we arrived at the rafting center up in the mountains, we joined up with the other members of the group. The group consisted of Gen Z and Millennial Thai people and two Americans - another guy and me. We first ate brunch and had drinks at one of the bamboo cabanas lining the river. This was a very cool experience. Food and drink was delivered via a basket and cable system to the different sections of the bamboo cabanas. I enjoyed watching people raft down the river and the local Thais drinking Singha and Chang beers and having a good time.
After eating, we made our way down the river, the three of us. The bamboo raft reminded me of a standup paddle board, except the paddle was a bamboo stick with rubber feet on each end. So, I guess we were poling instead of paddling. There were quite a number of pileups and traffic jams on this shallow and fairly slow moving river, but we managed to make it back to the cabana unscathed. We even stopped and got a photo shoot with a few elephants along the way. I didn't have to worry about getting too hot on the raft since the local Thai enjoyed splashing us as we floated by.
This experience was extremely similar to some of the river tubing trips I've done back in the States. Replace the Thais with some whiter people speaking English, and I could've been fooled into thinking I was back in the mountains of North Carolina. Cold water on a hot day, cold beer, and friendly people make for a good day no matter where you happen to be in the world.
Around 5 pm, we made it back into town. For dinner, I ate prawn Tom Yum and Pad Thai at a cafe I keep passing during my walks around the Nimman area. I loved the Tom Yum soup. It had the perfect level of spiciness. The Pad Thai was tasty as well and better than last night's. However, there seems to be a strange oil or fish sauce that I'm not quite enjoying on the Pad Thais up here in the North.
And of course for dessert I had another gelato, this time trying the lemon meringue. This flavor has surpassed the blueberry cheesecake and claimed the top flavor spot for now.
Other notes:
TIL: prawns are larger than shrimp and found mainly in fresh water, while shrimp are found mainly in salt water