moped excursion

on saturday morning we took our first out of town excursion on the moped. chris rented his very own for a week so that we can adventure and not have to ride like thai's with 3 on a bike (plus i don't think our bike would ever make it up a hill then!)
after being delayed by an early morning downpour, we took off, armed with a really vague map and raincoats. our destination was an area the was supposed to have orchid farms, butterfly farms, and a snake farm.

we made it to our destination town and even found the road we wanted on our vague map! it turned out that was not the road with the farms but it had a waterfall at the end so we went to explore that. the road to get there was a twisty and turny country road with lots of hills. luckily our moped cannot go very fast, especially with two people on it! (this is good for me, although i was much less nervous riding out in the sticks where there are no other cars!)
so the waterfall is in a national park and they had some super slippery concrete pathways and slippery old (maybe not structurally sound...) wooden boardwalks. it has been pouring the past 4 nights, so the river was raging and so muddy! the waterfall was not very far in, and it was so big and cool! the water was coming down heavy and fast. i took lots of pictures which are on shutterfly. we were in the jungle!

next we went back to the main road to find the orchid farm. the one we went to also had a butterfly farm in it. well sort of. there was this area that was the 'butterfly farm' where i saw a total of one butterfly. there were a few snail though! kind of a dud. the orchids were sort of interesting, in that they farm them by hang ing them from little planters and their roots are hanging really long and twisty and all dried up! i dont really know how they were alive. we ate lunch there and saw this really cute puppy and alsoa cool treehouse lookout in the field next to the farm.

there was a snake farm and a monkey center nearby, which we might go back to at some point, but our next excursion was another national park waterfall, since we could use our same tickets from the first one. this waterfall was more like the very first one we saw that is near our house. it was a series of cascading falls (not as big as the first one we saw today). some of them were really full of water though because of the rain. we walked about halfway up until we got to this cool bridge walkway that went across the river. the falls were so loud! and this park was bigger so we really felt like we were in the jungle! there were lots of bamboo clusters - some huge! - and crazy jungle vines. we also saw a couple more of the huge monster spiders - including the biggest one yet! ahh!! the jungle is so so green.



45 minutes on a moped can really make your feet numb from all the vibrations!

later that night, we met up with a girl i met in a thailand group on facebook. her name is natalie and she will be here for the same length of time that we will be. we took her to the rooftop bar and hung out for a bit. she just arrived yesterday, but was already brave enough to take a tuk tuk to meet us!

in other news, we will be in chiang rai the 29-30, and then on a riverboat ride in laos, returning home on the 4th. so if i don't talk to you before then happy halloween and don't forget to vote!!!!! (if you are still undecided and need some information, email me and i can get you some facts to help you!)