While exploring Chiang Mai, Thailand, I saw these youths jumping from the city’s centuries-old moat wall into the shallow water below. It was necessary to make some new like-minded friends.
I come from Northern Minnesota where open pit iron ore mines galore dapper the countryside – vast holes in the ground locally called “the pits.” People “cliff jump” into the who-knows-how-deep water, climb up the rusty-red cliff and do it again.
This moat jumping endeavor may be on the other side of the planet from “Iron Range” ore pit jumping; however, the result is the same: the road to a rush.
Let’s take a jump with the boys!
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Chiang Mai, founded in 1296, is one of the few cities in the world which has a well preserved moat, built hundreds of years ago for protecting the city’s inhabitants from neighboring country threats. Surrounding the “old town,” on the outside of what were once the city’s walls, the moat covers approximately one square mile (2.5 square kilometers).
Today, only sections of the wall remain at the “gates” and corners.