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I was “lucky” enough to take a bamboo raft down a mountain river while in Thailand. We were hours away from civilization by the Burmese border and it all starts by a quick introduction in bamboo raft steering. There’s only one way to steer and basically you use a 15-20 foot bamboo pole, jab it into the river and push with all your might. The guide in front pushes first, then everyone follows. If executed correctly you’ll miss the rocks in front of you. If you mess up… well, you get stuck on rocks, the bamboo breaks and all of a sudden it’s every man for himself.

Now if a normal river raft is a car, then a bamboo raft is a semi-truck. It’s about 25 feet long, 6 feet wide and handles worse than grandma on hockey skates. It doesn’t instill confidence and so I asked our guide - Jungle Tom - “where are our life jackets.” Jungle Tom looked at me like I had sprouted horns and in his Thai accent “ah you won’t need one.” Now I’ve never been a great swimmer, but it was either go down the river in 30 minutes or hike 7 hours to the bus through jungle. I decided I’d chance the river.

The journey starts out a little timid and we received a little more instruction. “When we hit the rapids, kneel down and hold on.” Oh that’s reassuring. Shortly after this we’re cruising down the river and our confidence is building. Then we hit our first set of rapids and we drop to the raft. You can hear the bottom of the raft scraping the rocks, the water is about 6″ over the raft and you’re just trying to hold on. Then -crack- I look behind us and the other raft has hit a rock. Straight on. People are falling, crying and well we’re laughing. Not callously, just the subtle calm laughter that always seems to come when you see a ridiculous situation.

The other raft is now falling apart. The guide tries to tie the broken raft together and puts one of the team in the lead. Well he’s had about 15 minutes to learn how to pilot a semi-truck down a river, I’m sure he’ll - crack -. Crash two. More crying and a few bamboo pieces fly off. They’re stuck now too so we have to wait for them. About five minutes later we see them and it’s pretty clear they’ve had enough.

The last 15 minutes went off relatively smoothly with the standard pattern of pushing your bamboo pole into the river, holding on to the raft when rapids hit and enjoying the scenery. We landed, patted ourselves on the back for a job well done and headed off to the next adventure.

I highly recommend doing some bamboo rafting if you ever get a chance. It’s not pretty, it’s not comfortable, but it’s fun and a better story than walking around shopping in the cities. Just pick the oldest guide and the raft with the most rope around it. Oh and if you ever find a tour company with life jackets let me know. I sure would like to have one of those next time.