On the water
The north is water country. Limestone that you can walk up, a river you can raft two entirely different ways, and pools at the end of a jungle path where there is usually nobody else.
Bua Tong is the one people do not believe until they are standing on it. The rock is porous limestone, laid down over centuries by mineral-heavy water, and it grips the sole of your foot instead of being slick. You climb up through the falling water, barefoot, with the water running over your hands.
There are ropes in the steeper sections but most people stop using them halfway up once they trust the rock. It is genuinely strange the first time — every instinct says you are about to slide and you simply do not.
At the top, the Chok Kamon spring feeds the whole thing, clear and cold straight out of the ground.
A bamboo raft is exactly what it sounds like: lashed poles, no engine, a boatman standing at the back with a long pole. You sit low, the water runs over the deck, and the pace is that of the river.
It is the quiet option, and the one where you actually see the riverbank — kingfishers, water buffalo, kids jumping off the bank.
The Mae Taeng also runs fast enough for proper whitewater, and in the wet season it runs very fast. Inflatable raft, helmets, buoyancy aids, a guide in the boat with you calling the paddle strokes.
Grade depends entirely on rainfall. After a good storm the river changes character completely, which is why the rafting package runs as its own day rather than being squeezed into a shorter one.
Our south tours include a waterfall that takes a walk to reach — over rocks, across the river in places, enough effort that the tour buses do not go. The reward is a pool with nobody in it.
One of our guests put it better than we could: because the hike was more demanding there were no other tourists at the waterfall, and the pictures came out the way pictures are supposed to.