Songthaews and Tuk-Tuks - Thailand's Transporters

“Don’t hang off the back. I don’t want to see your head rolling down the highway.” Our project director was always the somewhat morbid voice of caution. And for good reason – we were entrusted with the lives of 40 high schoolers for four weeks of a service trip in Thailand. No Mom. No Dad. Just a bunch of college interns pulling at the reins, wanting to serve some orphans, see the jungle, and ride an elephant.

But today we were riding something a little more commonplace on the streets of Chiang Mai – A “songthaew”. Literally meaning “two rows,” the songthaew is the ubiquitous rear-opening, red taxis that get you and 7 of your soon-to-be closest friends from place to place at a cheap rate. It was 150 baht – just 5 USD – across town to the mall for massages, or to the famous night market for mango sticky rice and souvenirs. The “two rows” are the two benches , parallel to the road, that make passengers face each other and interact while they ride.

Today our whole team would ride our fleet of six songthaews an hour and a half into the jungle, in search of something missing from most guidebooks. If you’ve come to the Far East looking for peace and tranquility, you won’t find it here at Bua Tong Waterfalls.

Better known among the expats as Sticky Falls, this tumultuous stream has a secret. The water cascades over porous, sponge-like limestone. No algae or slime develops wherever the water flows and it stays rough enough to give you traction to climb straight up the falls, against the current. From watching you’d assume climbers must have a waterproof adhesive on their fingers. But that’s just how Sticky Falls earned its name.

On the day we visited, we had the falls almost completely to ourselves. While some clambered up and down the slopes, the most adventurous in our group went all the way to the bottom of the falls, where you could find a completely vertical, 30 ft cliff face. It marked the end of the limestone and was wet, but not very sticky, which made it very difficult to climb.

As the day ended and we piled back into the red songthaews to head home, you’d think our thirst for adventure would be satisfied for the day and our director could rest easy. But we want to hang off the back of the red taxis while speeding along the jungle road for the same reason we want to climb the most difficult and dangerous waterfall at Sticky Falls: we want to experience the unexperienced. Comfort is not the highest state of humanity, curiosity is.