The Wild lodge site will be updated in the near future to feature our Northern Thai location in Muang Khong. At the moment we have kitchen, sala and toilet facilities on the valley side overlooking the Mae Teng River and plan to construct a lodge in the off season.

The location will be the base camp for several new forest/jungle based trekking routes and the start point for climbing Doi Chang Dao, one of Thailand’s highest peaks at 2225m, which can be seen from the Muang Khong Lodge. Watch this space….

Reto has finished the initial set up of our new Wild Lodge in Northen Thailand in the Muang Khong valley. Images will be posted later. This will be developed along with the local community over the next few months.

Plans are being made with Sal Madden to conduct the first trip on the new self-supported 3 day route from Muang Khong to summit Doi Chiang Dao, Thailands third highest peak at around 6,600 ft.

I have just returned from a recce in the valley area with the team from AIS and our local guide P’Mu and after a hard off road day it looks like we will be putting together a challenging journey program for their Yr 9 students involving an exploratory trek around the Muang Khong valley and a decent of the Mae Teng River in small self contained groups. We found some great free camping sites out towards Hui Nam Dan a Lisu village and will be posting some images shortly

Cheers

Robin

Sally Madden and Andy Mac (IYA big cheese in UK)  ran an International Youth Award group leader course in Bangkok during June and as a bolt on to the end of the course brought the attendees down to the Wild Lodge to have a look at what outside providers (such as ourselves) can offer for IYA groups.

The IYA award (D of E in UK) is a great program that gets students into the outdoors and challenges them though a series of projects and expeditions rising through Bronze, Silver and Gold awards.

Attendess of the course came from all over Asia and the award is growing rapidly thoughout international schools in the region.

Upon the groups arrival at the lodge we had coffee and bisuits and, as usual I pointed out the parts that were still under construction (August 15th is the final completion deadline) and told them to feel free to wander.

I also assured them that the high ropes challenge course was defintely finished 

We also showed how the lodge has been used as a base camp for Bronze IYA programs and induction training, and talked about more challenging Silver and Gold routes into the forest directly behind the lodge.

Coffee over, we split into two groups and ran high ropes and low ropes workshop sessions entitled “adding value” showing how addtional team exercises can add to an IYA weekend.

During lunch both Sally and I chatted about risk assessment and then Dave “Old School” Williams and I gave short presentations on what we could offer in terms of locations and programs for IYA training and expeditions.

Dave runs a fantatsic kayak and nature touring company called Paddle Asia based down in Phuket and is the man to go to for anything in the Andaman Sea or Khao Sok National park in South Thailand

We had a fun day and it was good to swap idea and experiences with like minded people.

Big Thanks to Sally and Andy Mac for running the program and taking the time to visit us.

Anyone interested in possible locations for their IYA programs contact us :) Anyone interested in starting an IYA program in their school, have a look at www.intaward.org/