So… The Flood. 2025 brought a rather persistent and precipitous, in several senses of the word, rainy season here in SE Asia. With massive flooding from The Philippines to Sri Lanka the tale of ever-increasingly intense and amplified weather phenomena continued. Tropical storms meeting monsoon winds focus the effects of these amped-up meteorological misfits on places unused to weather of the severity now being seen. In Thailand’s south, Hat Yai – the fifth largest city in Thailand – was completely evacuated due to flooding.
But, for me, further north, the rain had left the forecast. True, there was some flooding indicated but basically just touching the top of the riverbank. So, with a pat on the head for Hello Kitty! and a phuang malai fluttering from the rearview mirror, I left the confines of Bangkok for my trip north.
My travel plans are founded on a belief that it’s better to be somewhere than to get somewhere. I plan short travel days with plenty of time for side trips or exploring unexpected… well… they’re unexpected, so it could be anything. My plan was to take four days to do the 850km trip from Bangkok to Chiang Mai where my partner would fly in and we’d have a visit with friends who moved there a couple of years ago.
And then my front tire hit the water. Thailand’s biggest river, the Chao Phraya, had burst its banks and flooded some low-lying villages. Thailand, being a tropical, monsoonal location, is not unfamiliar with flooding. Annually, even in drier years, some part of the country gets hit with rising water and the locals have to deal with it. For some that means breaking out the boat and moving upstairs, for others, it’s packing up the buffalo, chickens, dog, and bedroom set, and moving out on the highway.
Despite the seeming illogic of highway camping, it is a time proven way of getting people out of harm’s way quickly and allowing them to bring more than the clothes on their back. It also lets them preserve what property they feel is most important to their livelihoods. This latter goal led to an interesting insight of what people feel they need to save. Rice tractors and similar featured prominently. When the floods receded, they’d be needed to get the next crop in. After that, it was anything goes: the aforementioned bedroom set – bed, mattress, nightstands, dressers, the works. A full kitchen. Piles of clothes. Most people had large market tents to keep everything dry. There were food vendors, and free food. People were cooking out, visiting with their neighbors. Helping each other.
The process is, that when an area is expected to flood, the highway department comes through and closes the shoulder lanes of the highway. Signs are put up. Cones are set to establish the new travel lanes. People stake out a place, put up their tents, and bring up the things they want to keep dry. Then they wait for the water to stop rising. Which, on the day that I passed through, happened about when the river reached the eaves on one story houses.
After riding through a few more places where the river overtopped the highway, I reached my destination for the first day, the sleepy town of Chai Nat, where I checked into my four-star resort villa and spent a restful night listening to the wildlife prowling through the rice paddies.
Now, as you can see from that previous sentence, when I roll, I roll like a rock star, if by “rock star” I really mean “impoverished troubadour”. While technically a “resort” because that’s what the sign said, and technically a “villa” because it was a stand-alone structure with an en-suite bathroom, the property was basically a cluster of concrete jungle huts that would do just fine in whatever apocalyptic scenario you could conjure up. The per night price – including breakfast was about 500 Thai Baht, roughly 18-bucks US, at the time of my visit. But, the room was perfectly fine and provided basically everything I would have gotten at a fancier place except the fluffy robe.
My next night, I stopped at the bustling city of Kamphaeng Phet and stayed at one of two “high rise” hotels in the downtown area. Being a big city and all, the price was almost double what I paid the night before. But the included breakfast was much better. Also, being right next to the night market, dinner options were good and inexpensive. My final night on the road was spent at the aptly named Funwan Hotel and Viennoiserie. Funwan being one way to transliterate “Sweet Dreams” and “Viennoiserie” meaning “let them eat cake”. Now, many hotels in Thailand offer welcome drinks and cool towels to relieve the weary traveler from the road dust. Check in to Funwan, however, and your welcome is a bag (it’s a Thai thing) of tea and a sizeable piece of cake. But I was traveling alone and the base room rate (everywhere I stayed this trip) was for two guests. Funwan’s attitude was if he paid for two, give him the extra stuff. A less than cost-conscious way of thinking that was so foreign to me that my head came close to exploding. It was the same on check out. Funwan prepared two warm croissants and put them in an insulated bag. Just so I could have a bite on the road. Sadly, the motorbike’s storage for delicate baked goods is limited so I had to leave those behind.
Then came four days in Chiang Mai. Chiang Mai used to be pretty nice, like Bangkok-lite. Since I was there last, it has morphed into something like the bastard spawn of Key West, Florida and Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco, California. It was wonderful to spend some quality time with our friends there and we had an amazing Chef’s Table meal up in the hills one night. But Chiang Mai, the place? Its soul left with the locals when the tourist dollars chased them out of their town.
From Chiang Mai it was into the mountains and more surprises. To Doi Saket, where I stayed in a tiny house with breakfast brought to my terrace and a local restaurant that sat you in huge barrels. To the middle of the middle of nowhere at Chae Hom where a group of five modern bungalows set in a rice field at the very descriptively named Tiny House Homestay and Café. That room included a breakfast that also included lunch. The picturesque setting coupled with easy access to a national park with an amazing waterfall complete with hot springs and not-so easy access to Doi Phra Phutthabat, a cloud temple set 700 meters up at the top of a local peak, made this stop a surprise favorite. But not by much.
My turnaround point was the town of Pua, in northern Nan province. More restaurants per capita than I have seen anyplace else in Thailand. A bustling downtown and weekend night market. Amazing views, spectacular national parks, and the best – by far – Thai massage I have ever had. Plus, it’s coffee country.
Was everything amazing? Of course not. There was a hotel in Phayao that was so completely uncomfortable I left after one night. It’s been, following the rainy season, a particularly cold winter up north and spending a few nights in an unheated room when it’s 9°C outside, covered with nothing more than a thin blanket, was definitely not a packed-for possibility.
Those are all the things, good and bad, that turn a trip into an adventure.
We live in a world of infinite information but, as math teaches us, there are infinities and then there are infinities. However many trip reports and must-see opinions litter YouTube and social media, it’s not everything. People are always asking for “hidden gems”, those places where, for whatever reason, tourists don’t seem to frequent. They may be too difficult or time-consuming to get to. They may not feature as more than a footnote in the online guides. They may exist outside of a language or cultural comfort bubble that travelers think they need to remain inside.
If you look, you will find them on your own. Like hidden gems everywhere, don’t look up to find them. Look down, in the dust around your well-traveled feet. When looking for a place to stay, lower the max-price slider down to where you feel uncomfortable. You’ll find some surprisingly nice options. Cover your eyes and stick a pin in a map. Go there. For every spot that is paved in tourists there are places very nearby – sometimes a few kilometers, sometimes a stone’s throw, away – that are littered with sapphires. When you’re looking for gems, they’re much easier to find if they’re not hidden.
