TRAVEL WRITING CHALLENGE
Where the Sun Never Reaches the Horizon
The A to Z of my favorite travel destinations
On one side there’s Thailand. Tiny mountain roads, villages, farmland. On the other side is Laos. A mountain range covered in forest. Untouched nature. Sounds of birds are sounding across which might be some never seen species before.
I must admit, I do enjoy this alphabetical writing challenge. Every now and then when I decide to pick up another letter, I open the world map and search for countries and cities with the said letters. Places I’ve been to. Then I bring out my hard drive and scroll through folders of photographs. And I time travel. Old memories come back to the surface and I see how a smile grows on my face.
I reached the letter ‘P’ and figured out there are many places I could choose. I’ve been to Portugal and Poland. I visited the love capital Paris but didn’t enjoy my stay there, so I won’t pick that one.
I’ve been to Prague, the capital of Czechia on a trip with my handball team. 14 girls partying the night through. It’s about as much as I remember on that one.
Palma de Mallorca got a similar experience in my memories. I visited the island with a friend of mine during high school I think. We stayed in a bay far away from the party city but took a bus one night to Palma and partied all night long until the sun came up and we could catch the first bus back to our hotel where we dropped into bed. Not worth landing on my list of top travel destinations.
I’ve been to Plettenberg Bay in South Africa during my road trip with a stranger. We stopped in town, I walked down the beach and put my feet into the cold ocean. That was about it.
I lived for over a year close to the sex capital of the world. Pattaya. I opted not to stay in the city but chose a more quiet and local place in the countryside. For obvious reasons. And even though I had to visit the city occasionally. There is nothing pretty about it.
And now I am coming closer to places I traveled to and would go back to in a heartbeat. We visited Pai on our first big adventure and overseas trip together in 2018. We backpacked through Thailand in two weeks and fell in love with this place high up in the mountains.
But since I wrote about Pai in a different article already, I’m taking the chance to pick an even lesser-known place in Thailand.
In early 2022, while living and working in Thailand again for a few months, we took off for a few days to travel. While we originally planned to get across the border and visit any of the neighboring countries, the still strict pandemic rules prevented us from doing so. Instead, we decided to explore a remote area in Thailand. And yes, as touristy as you think the country is, there are still many corners most visitors will never get to see.
Phu Chi Fa and Phatang are two towns located in the remote North of the country at the border between Thailand and Laos.
We rented a car in Nan and arrived in the Luang Prabang Mountain Range one afternoon. The sun was setting and the temperatures dropped drastically. For the first time in our travels through the country, we were cold. In Thailand.
For the following few days, we stayed between 1,500 and 2,000 meters in altitude and absolutely loved it. The fresh air, the views and the people. All of it was so different from the rest of Thailand.
We decided to sleep the nights in one of those cozy tents overlooking the valleys below and were more than happy they had heated blankets on the mattress as the temperatures dropped into the single digits (Celsius).
This area had quite some history to share and while it wasn’t surprising to us that we couldn't communicate with the locals (English isn’t widely spoken when you leave the beaten tracks), we were more than surprised to find out they spoke better Chinese than Thai. Most of them at least.
These hills on the Thai side aren’t only inhabited by Thais. There are Chinese minorities that left southern China in the Qing dynasty and went further south to finally settle in Vietnam, Laos, and on Thai soil.
The Haw, Hmong, and Yak are Chinese hill tribes now home also in the Luang Prabang mountain range. You can find their heritage in the language spoken up here, the food, and of course the religious sites.
Talking about which. The food. The mouth-watering delicious meals they served us were like from a different planet. We first tried one or two restaurants but then returned every day to the same one. The menu was available only in Thai and Chinese and we used a translation app to somehow figure out what we would want to eat but everything we ordered was to die for.
The food was very different from the Thai food we had eaten all across the country. They used different spices and simply weren’t related in culture to other regions. So it made sense their food wasn’t the same.
And while we were waiting for our food to arrive, we always got served a pot of ‘Chinese Tea’ which is how we first figured out there must have been some Chinese influence down here. And man, that tea was delicious.
But what did we do up here in the mountains except for eating and sleeping?
We hiked. A lot. We put a foot onto Laotian soil, saw the sun rise from a peak we summited in the dark, and spotted the Mekong River in the distance.
Yes, getting up in the middle of the night wasn’t what David planned on doing but he didn’t want to let me hike alone up a mountain in pitch black and so he had no choice but to come with me.
We weren’t the only ones up there but we were the only Western tourists. Only Thais and other local visitors were mingling with us at the top waiting for the first rays of sunshine.
It was a cold but wonderful experience.
And yes, this was where we placed our foot onto Laotian soil. We couldn't officially cross the border due to the pandemic, but up here, we could just jump from one country to the other one. Without getting a stamp in the passport.
After watching the sunrise, we went back to bed and came back later in the afternoon for some more hiking on the mountain ridge. Between Thailand and Laos.
It was in late March and during this time of the year, the smog is very bad in this area. While you think smog only exists in and above cities, up here you get air pollution during the dry season due to the weather and additional fires farmers create on their lands.
The sun never reached the horizon and always disappeared much earlier in distant fog and the views weren’t clear but we still managed to spot the mighty Mekong River down the mountains.
Talking about the setting sun. Even if she didn’t reach the horizon, that didn’t do anything to harm the spectacular sunsets we witnessed every single afternoon.
Most hiking trails were leading right on the ridge of the mountain range and therefore we always had stunning views across both countries, Thailand and Laos.
Talking about views. The panoramic function on the phone was used daily. If not hourly.
And in between all our adventurous hikes, we returned to our tent where I spent hours sitting on the terrace taking in the breathtaking views while noting down my thoughts.
The last night we celebrated with take-away food from our favorite restaurant and a bottle of local wine and enjoyed the meal on our terrace in front of the tent. It was a night to remember.
As beautiful as the area was and as much as we enjoyed every minute of being there, we were well aware that we most probably will never return. The place is just too far off the beaten track and, yes, we still have a lot of places to explore we haven’t been to before returning to hidden gems like this one.
But our memories will remain. Memories of hiking at the border between Thailand and Laos, eating delicious foods and drinking Chinese Tea.
If you’d like to read more about this place or our stay in the remote North of Thailand, check out the list below:
This is a response to a writing prompt started by Sam Millichap and many have participated since. I’m so happy to see the community is growing. So many amazing destinations coming up. We welcome anyone to join the fun. Write your own alphabet of your favorite travel destinations.
Sam Millichap with “Discovering Orkney’s 8,500 Years of Human Occupation”
Adrienne Beaumont with “Pompeii”
Robert G. Longpré with “P is for Peru”
Darren Weir with “Petra: Jordan’s Historic Cave City”
Michael Rhodes with “ Joshua Tree National Park”
Dan Carlson | Meandering Naturist with “G is for Gavdos, Greece”
Jerry Dwyer with “Mariposa”
Jillian Amatt — Artistic Voyages with “G is For Greece”
Nishan Fuard with “Anaheim: I Remember the Parking Lot from the Hotel Window”
Ronald Smit with “A is for … Ada Foah”
You can find the full series of the “A to Z of my favorite travel destinations” in the reading list here. And these are my latest ones:
L — “Langbinsi — Where Donkeys Walk on Sandy Roads”
M — “Magnificent Moments in Mozambique”
O — “Sunsets of Oslo”
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