All Summer Long

Channelling our inner Spider-Man and Gex the Gecko, we booked a tour to Bua Tong Waterfall with a private guide, Piangduan (PD for short).

If you google Bua Tong Waterfalls, you will see they’re known as the sticky waterfalls. Odd right? What does it mean? How does that even work? Well, apparently it’s because it is made from limestone and the mineral deposits create a sort of grip on the rocks that stops you from slipping and enables you to climb up. Hence the name: Sticky Waterfalls. Also, the best thing about this place is that it is still a bit of a hidden gem and isn’t overrun by tourists. I’d say we saw about 15 other people whilst there. It doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page!

So armed with our bathing suits, we walked down a lot of stairs to get to the bottom where waiting for us was a small natural spring. Getting down ended up being the hardest part for us because we were barefoot and as it turns out, really soft when it comes to standing on gravel! PD was guiding us by the way so we were getting to see all of the hidden treasures and were also in safe hands.

We got straight into the spring and I had a mini meltdown when my feet landed on what I think was just loads of leaves and tons of little fish darted out and nibbled my feet. Classic. Anyway, I quickly got over it as I had to play it cool in front of PD. We got out of the spring and it was now time to walk up the waterfall. Yes, correct. Walk up the waterfall. Not next to it or just stand under it, up it. At first it is totally bizarre and it takes your brain a while to calculate that’s it’s actually okay to do and it is sticky underfoot so no chance of falling.

We followed PD up and she was showing us different parts and when to use the rope if there were any slippy patches. There aren’t many though and they’re easy to spot in advance. And that’s it, we climbed up. It was absolutely amazing and is one of the best things we’ve ever done! I’m not a natural climber and I scare quite easily when it comes to heights but I actually felt safer doing this then I did in Singapore doing the tree walk. Go figure. We got to the top and did it all over again. It was just brilliant! The couple of photos that I’ve put up don’t really do it justice because you can’t see how much water there actually is!!

Obviously, we sang the Spider-Man theme tune and pretended to shoot web out of our web shooters (hands) on a lot of occasions.