Just finished an overnight trek into the misty mountains of northern Thailand. They are absolutely breathtaking. (We'll add photos later, forgot the adapter) The clouds settle below you once you reach around 1000 meters (3,000 ft). They stuffed 14 people into the back of a pick-up with bench seats in the back for a three hour ride into the mountains (Mitsubishi,not a full size) We stopped at a fresh market so the guides could pick up food to cook for us. I don't think the health department has stopped by there in quite some time. The markets in Hong Kong were tame compared to these. Once the dropped us off, the three hour 'walk' they told us we would do turned into a five hour pretty difficult hike up the mountain, wading through river beds and walking on trees that had fallen across the river. Once we finally arrived the view was amazing. Rice patties and cornfields appeared on the mountainside through a mist that made it seem like a dream. We shacked up in a bamboo hut that they called our 'hotel'. They had blankets and mosquito nets laid out for us on the bamboo floor. All of the huts were lifted off of the ground on stilts. There were pigs, chickens, and dogs running rampant around the village. I was, however, quite upset about the authenticity of the village people. They were described to us as wearing traditional garb with bright colors shiny jewels, and were supposed to be disconnected with the outside world. Some of the huts had motorcycles, running water, solar panels, and tv antennas!!!! Oh well, what can you expect when they have 2/3 tourguides shuffling tourists throught their camp every day. We did get an excellent meal and the villagers played the guitar and sang for us around the campfire. It was pretty hard to sleep since it seemed like the animals made noise all night long. This was the first time that we really got a chance to hang out with some other tourists for the first time. We might meet up with a couple of them down south. The trip down was probably even more treacherous because we were going down steep inclines and it was pretty muddy from the day before and the river crossings were pretty hard. We stopped at a beautiful waterfall on the way. Once we got to the bottom, we hopped aboard a few elephants and rode them for an hour through the trails. It was a little freaky. I didn't know elephants could walk up and down the mountains on small trails like that. Every time they stepped, we seemed to sway over the edge a little bit!!!! Ours stopped to eat on the side and Lindsay thought that it was going to take off down the mountain so she started screaming. The guy driving? the elephant, a spindly little old Thai with the build of a skeleton, had to poke the elephant in the head with a knife to get him back on course, then looked back at us and started laughing. We white water rafted to the next destination for about an hour, got pretty soggy. The last stretch was more calm so they dropped us off on a bamboo raft that was poled along the river to our final destination. We have a one night layover in Bangkok again, then we're off to the sunsoaked beaches on the east and west coasts of the southern peninsula.