New Year's - Thai Style

For our New Year's we were invited to go camping with a Thai family. It was really fun and.. how should I put this... also quite interesting! :) The plan was to go to 3 mountains: Doi Inthanon, the highest peak in Thailand, Doi Angkhan, the second highest, and a place or mountain called Pu chi fa (yep, it really is pronounced poo shi fuh.. :) ), which is on a mountain and famous for a cliff and apparently for watching the sunrise.  

Doi Inthanon is 2,565 meters (8,415 feet) high and because of this altitude it get's quite chilly at night. Well, it was here at Doi Inthanon where our cultural awareness camp started by squeezing our tents into a gap between two other tents on a huge open lawn - maybe it's warmer that way :).

Towards the top of Doi Inthanon there is a huge and very modern temple with escalators leading up to it and a beautiful view from the top.

Our next stop, for the actual New Year, was Doi Angkhan. Again, the campground, this time quite full, had tent next to tent next to tent. It was a lot of fun, people were sitting outside their tents, eating, drinking, making merry, I mean.. music. Not many people made it to midnight though. It seemed like most people had already gone to bed and only a few brave ones were still up to welcome the New Year. 

It was already late when we arrived at Pu Chi Fa. We knew we had gone up a steep mountain but that was about it. Even when we arrived in a little "town" made up of hotels, cabins, camping spots and restaurants, we had no idea about the popularity of this place. Before going to bed our friends told us about watching the sunrise in the morning but we weren't sure if we'd want to get up that early. Little did we know, this was not an optional. At 4 in the morning, a voice through a megaphone blared throughout town:" Wake up! Wake up!" ...and then something in Thai which apparently said that to see the sunrise everyone had to get up and get on a bus. Two minutes later our friend came in:"Jeff! Kat! Get up, we have to hurry! Get up now! Hurry!" We really didn't want to get up. It was cold and we were tired after only a few hours of very uncomfortable sleep. Two minutes later the Intercom went off again. "Get up! Get on the bus!" Well, we managed to get up, brought our blankets (for which we first got laughed at for a while, but later envied) and got on the "bus" (the back of a pick-up truck). After it stopped we, along with a thousand other people were directed up a steep narrow mountain path. Did I mention it was 4am and pitch black and steep and that we were walking along a cliff... :) 

So then we got to the top and there was a guy who offered cotton balls soaked in ammonia..for feeling light headed or dizzy from the hike or altitude. 

Up at the top there were already a thousand people sitting and waiting for the sunrise. Squeezing through the masses we found a little spot to sit down (at this point we had already lost half of our group). We sat there for like 10 minutes and suddenly another megaphone went off (in Thai): "Excuse me everyone... Excuse me...but you are on the wrong side of the mountain... the sun rises on the OTHER SIDE..." So then all the thousands of people stood up and tried to squeeze over to the other side of the mountain which already had another thousand people on it... and then...dun dun dun...the sun started rising... excitement in the air...dun dun dun... and then ... A huge cloud of fog came and covered everything so you couldn't see anything! YAY!! And one of our friends said:" This happens a lot during this time of the year!" ummmmm...wait? why did we and all of these millions of people come here NOW? We still don't know the answer to this or to the why a million people squeeze on a mountain to see a sunrise together..Granted, sunrises are beautiful but I think in our thinking it is accompanied by solitude which makes it a special experience.. well, i suppose this experience was special too.. just a different kind of special. :)  In the end, the fog disappeared and we still got a nice view of the valley and caught the last bit of the sunrise, plus we got to see the great cliff of Pu Chi Fa.:)

On the way back we stopped at our friend's friend's house on a lake. Beautiful. 
Not to forget, on the 25 th of December was Jeff's birthday. We hit golf balls at a driving range and the best part: Jeff got to drive a Tuk-Tuk! YAY!!! Happy Birthday Jeff.