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So after we said goodbye to Sukhotai we got on the bus for the five hour journey to Chiang mai. Which as usual was uneventful just very very long, although on the way we did make friend with a Brasilian couple and ended up going to the same hostel as them. The thing with Chaing Mai is trekking so when you get to a hostel first thing they do is offer you their trek which we looked at and it turned out to be quite good. We paid 32 quid each for all food, accomodation, equipment, white water rafting, elephant trekking and bamboo rafting, which we thought was a bargain. So the next morning we set out hopeful of a good time. First stop was a market where we saw some snake meat...mmm so that they could buy all our food (which our guides were going to carry on their backs along with equipment etc) luckily no snake meat was on the menu!
After this we headed out to a waterfall "a nice gentle walk" it was not! We were all so grateful to get to the top with the cold water and it was bloody cold! So i got half of me in and decided i was cool enough whilst Si prayed like a monk under it's full pelt! The people we were with were a nice friendly bunch and off we went on the first days 4 hour hiking!
The guide told us to go on ahead up the steepest path i've ever seen in my life! So we did and after 2 hours we were knackered! So much hard work and we still hadnt seen the guides, after 3 hours though they caught us up and were impressed with our pace as the village was just around the next corner hurrah! When we got there he showed us a monkey that had managed to tie him self to a basket and we played with him for a bit, he loved Dani (our Brasilian friend) but wasn't a big fan of Si! Then it was chez village hotel...or not. We were staying on bamboo bed type things and our shower was a bamboo pole in the river! You'll see on the pics, was very very funny! We did meet one local woman here though she was 93! and really bent over but so sweet and she came down to meet us all and shook our hands and posed for photos...so friendly even though she couldnt speak a word of English.The guide told us she still got up at the crack of dawn and did washing and cooking for her family too!
For tea we ate loads and the guides even shared some of their pig's face curry with us...yummy! We then played cards by candle light with a few beers before going to bed about 9pm! Only down side was one of the girls we were travelling with felt a bit iffy and stayed in bed with the runs and sickness.
Next morning we were up incredibly early and had breakfast of toast and boiled eggs...random but it was filling, although i started to feel a little bit off colour we set off thinking it was just tiredness, oh how wrong we were!The guide was nice he cut us all bamboo walking sticks and showed us how to blow bubbles with the stalk of a plant, but then the rain started. And it started monsoon style and didnt stop. So the four hour hike became a five hour one and i was feeling worse and worse and worse so whilst we skidded down mud banks because our usual path was closed by the rice farmers, got eaten by leaches (which left my foot bleeding for a good hour!)and had to walk through what was supposed to be a small stream but was now waist high and you had to hold your bag over your head my stomach was swishing round like a washing machine, oh yeah and was i mentioning the rain that was unrelenting! Then it broke and whilst we were walking up a particularly steep bank i stopped...to throw up...in the rain...in the middle of a five hour trek. I felt like complete s*** and to be honest how i managed to do the rest of it was beyond me a little guide who was about half my size wearing flip flops took my rucksack and practiacally ran through the jungle with it whilst Si pretty much pushed me to walk cus all i wanted to do was sit down. After what felt like forever we made it to the elephant camp where they cooked some nice food that i didnt touch and it rained some more! Si brought me a bracelet for being brave :) then we boarded (is that the right word) our elephants for the gentle walk along what should have been a nice shallow river...but was a raging torrent! Our elephant was called Boosa (which apparently means something very rude in Portuguese!) he was 24 years old and really cute. Bigger then the one we went on last time but he was much better behaved. There were 4 elephants to a group and one female at the front who was like the matriarch cus everytime she stopped the whole troop pretty much stopped and followed her lead. As there were not enough elephants for us all someone had to sit on the neck of the lephant while two of us sat on the seat and the guides walked besides us. It was hillarious the elephants crossed the river about 15 times, so when the guides tried to follow they just got swept downstream it was pointless swimming against the current! One had a life jacket and one hitched a ride on an elephant...the final one got a log that he found floating down the river and surfed from one side to the other parking his log when ever he got near us! Brilliant! When we got to a certain point in the river we were told by some guides ahead that the river was too deep for the elephants to walk through. The elephants were already scared by the river and sometimes refused to cross when they were made ot half most of the time our feet were wet and the elephant had to hold his trunk out of the water to breathe! So there was only one choice...elephant off-roading! By this i mean the tiny little paths that we had walked along about only about a foot or two wide the elephants walked down it! The scariest thing by far and we sat praying that Boosa didnt slip and go hurtling down the bank to the river next to us, at one point they even had to climb over a huuge tree and squeeze between two it was amazing. howecer after a while we notice our elephant was vibrating...odd i know we thought so too...and we realised he was growling! Since when do elephants growl, he was obviously not happy about his new experience so we held on even tighter to the seat as we went down a really steep hill, the poor bloke sat on his neck almost fell off!One we had disembarked we had a 5 min trek to the village, and with all its basicness it was a marvellous sight! This time at least we had a shower and i half walked whilst Si half carried me got washed and fell into bed. I got much worse hot and cold shivers stomach cramps la la la and managed to doze off while Si went outside to play a game of like a corss between football and volley ball. All was going well until they noticed a man with a huge musket bigger than him (that i am assured looked like something out of the Alamo, which must have been packed with gun powder it was so old!) When they saw the boys looking distressed the Thai's assured them by saying "chicken chiken" and true enough the man got down and aimed at the chicken's. He sat there for some time contemplaying the right moment and when it finally went off, me that was inside was awoken by the loudest bang in the world! The boys were in hysterics and this massive cloud of smoke came from the gun! Sure enough they got the chicken we never did find out iof it was served to us for tea though!
The next morning i was feeling much better which was good considering today was bamboo and whitewater rafting. The bamboo should've taken 3 and half hours or somerthing but we did it in an hour as the water was so deep and fast. But before we got on we found out we were all too fat as it was sinking so we had to get off whilst they added extrat support for our weight! The boys were expected to help out so they got poles and a huge sense of manliness helping out! Until we crashed into a rock and began sinkign again, and the guide lost his pole so he took si's and parked us up then went off into the jungle to find some bigger ones, leaving us sat on a sinking boat in the river! Luckily they did return and we stet off again with our boat being not quite so sturdy but we were keeoing our head if not our feet above water (literally sat down holding on and the water was up to your chin!) the guide chose this brilliant point to tell us that last summer a raft crashed and they all had to be rescued and pointed to the smashed bamboo around the rocks..made us feel loads better! But it was brilliant fun even feeling s***ty as i did. We were soaked when we got off for dinner but that was no matter as next we were white water rafting! They couldnt take us to the waterfall and stuff they had planned to cus the river was too dangerous but we did get to do a little bit and it was brilliant! loved every minute of it! We had to lean commands and what to do if you fell out etc etc and we played a game called helicopter. This involves all of us sitting on the back of the boat with 2 paddles. the captain ties a string to the front of the boat and you paddle round in a circle really fast so the boat spins and the front end comes out of the water...the aim of the game is to fall out. Those of you that know me know i had no intention of going into the grimey water that the elephants were pooing in the previous day so i held on for dear life and in the end all fell out but me and Si, even though the captains tried to pull and push us out no way Jose! But the whole experience was brilliant and we had such a good time can't wait for new zeland to do it again!
After this it was home, we were all nakered, wet, and hungry! So ew got back onto the truck to take us the hour and a half back to Chiang Mai. When we got home it was shower, food and bed! It was only later that we realised the true extent of the wetness...all our stuff was soaked through and it sunk...and i mean everyting was wet and we had to spend all evening in the laundrette doing it all! so we decided that we wanted a bit of luxury for a couple of days..we deserved it! And we moved over to Spicy Tahi Bacpackers hostel and got a double room with a bathroom and aircon...bliss! They also had free internet and a massive screen TV that you could watch movies on. Was quite expensive but what the hell, expect the bathtub didnt fill up and the TV was always taken by a girl obsessed with House (an amaerican drama series) so we never got to use it Staff were brilliant though really helpful and we just chilled out.
We went to this thing called monk chat though which was good fun, you go and speak to the monks they tell you about buddhism so you get to learn and they can practice their english, you learn loads and its really informal. Although they spoke mainly to Si (cus im a girl and they arent supoosed to look at me) they were really friendly.
Apaprt from that we chilled for a couple of days, before heading back into town. We got a baragin of a hotel room half price! We met back up with our Brasillian mates and sat with them while they had some quite painful looking tatoo's then went to the sunday market. It was huge, absolutley massive! We wandered round for about 2 hours and i got some fisherman's trousers (yey...even though they look huge on me so comfy!dont know how the Thai's, who are smaller than me, wear then and dont look riddiculous) a few other nicknaks. Then we had a bevvy with our friends before they left to fly south and had an early night. Next morning we got up early and went for a cooking lesson!
We had a really good time it was in an old teak house and we went to the market to learn all about ingredients and we cooked Pad Thai, a soup, a curry (and we made the paste from scratch), spring rolls, a salad, chicken and cashew nuts, sweet and sour chicken, mango and sticky rice and banana's in coconut milk. We got to eat it all so we were stuffed by the end of it all but it was brilliant had a really nice day and they uploaded our photo's onto the website which we are going to try and put on our site. We are probably only going to uplaod a few so the website to have a look is http://www.chiangmaismartcook.com/gallery click on july and on 2nd july 2007 and they're all there so Delia watch out!
Our final day in Chiang mai came to an end we checked out the night bazar and met up with Tasha to say our farewells before we headed up to Pai (pronounced Bai) where we are now!
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