~thailand/chiang_mai/trekking

As announced in a previous post, i spent 3 days on trekking through the jungle north of Chiang Mai. The trek was great fun, for many reasons. Firstly, there were 8 of us trekking (incl. me) plus our guide, and everyone was young, fit, adventurous and generally 'a bit of a laugh'. I wont bore you with the details of their characters, but here are there names with a short summary in brackets: Barbara (teacher, smokes), Charlie (wood engineer, not a carpenter. Smokes), Aloy (Buyer, big, happy), Martine (researcher, also big, slightly less happy), Mathew (writer, funny, creative), Lidya (doctor, beautiful), Arne (doctor, not beautiful, deceptively hard name to pronounce), Bon (guide, short, terrible jokes) and Me (perfect).

Day 1 of the trek started with a couple hours of trekking through the jungle and rice fields, avoiding massive insects, leeches and innocent looking branches and twigs on the ground which kept jumping up and me all day cutting me in the feet and legs. Stupid branches. The days highlight came when we arrived at the elephant camp. It was a small village of a hill tribe called Karin, who used elephants for building, lifting and dragging stuff. They also are used to carry the odd tourist around. The elephants were amazing!! Not like in the stupid zoo, where they are behind bars and there is a sign saying "Do not feed the elephants". These elephants just wandered around the village... they were HUGE! Think of the biggest thing you can think of, and then add 1 onto it..... the elephents were bigger than that! Incredible. Although pretty scared at first, i soon realised they were gentle giants and would do no harm. Especially as i was armed with a hand full of corn on the cob. Feeding the baby was the most entertaining. It just kept running around getting excited by the food (sounds like me).

So we got a ride on the 'phants for a couple of hours. I had the biggest elephant, which would like to stop every other stride and sample the vegetation on the side of the path, and would also fart excessively when walking up hill. I soon worked out that to keep the elephant focussed, i have to make a rather loud grunting sound, which everyone else found amusing. Esp. the Karin people. It worked though, mostly. And when it didnt, i would give the 'phant a kick to the side of the head, and then it would start moving again. I also managed to ride on the elephants neck i.e. with my legs tucked behind its ears. It was great! It might sound cruel, but i was assured the elephants hardly feel it, and considering the locals sit on their heads with their feet resting on the trunk, i didnt feel so bad. They seemed happy... At least they werent used for tourists every day like some villages, these elephants are only used once month or so. Win win!

The day ended with a camp fire, an evening being entertained by the village people (not the Village People, thank God), and some great, although spicy, local Thai nosh.

Day 2 cosisted of a shed load of trekking. Up and down some rather large hills. The hills were humorously graded according to difficultly by Bon as "Baby hills, Mummy hills and Daddy hills". The first hill was a baby hill. I though he was joking, it went on for ages, and was so steep! We were all shattered at the top of it, even the locals had to stop half way for a break. It was incredible, after another few baby hills, a few mummy hills (which nearly killed us all) and thankfully no daddy hill, we arrived at the rafting camp. We spent the evening swimming in the fresh water river, singing songs around a fire, eating beautiful Thai food again, and generally trying to aviod getting bitten by moving things on the floor (there are so many creepy crawly things). Thank God for my sleeping bag being able to fasten all the way to the top!

Day 3 was rafting day. The villages built bamboo rafts for us 5 people on each, and we set off rafting down the river for a couple of hours. It was so mcuh fun, esp. as the thing was barely floating with 5 huge europeans standing on it. The river was low, so in the white water bits, there were plenty of huge rocks showing their teeth, trying to take a piece of the raft (and often succeeding). With me steering on front with a big pieve of bamboo, and Aloy on back, we managed on 3 full speed head on collisions with rocks, only 3 people fell into the water, a mere 2 people fell THROUGH the raft, and only managed to destroy the right hand side of the raft. Pretty good going i'd say.

The finised off with a very cool swim in a massive waterfall. Getting massaged by the powerful current, and poor Mathew almost dying by tring to swim into the really fast, man eating bit!
What a great 3 days. It was laugh a minute, and the jungle was beautiful. Managed to see hundreds of species of spiders, mosquitos, beetles, cockroaches, snakes, monkeys etc etc. Just a great experience.