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Chiang Mai part 2
Hello everyone,
just back from our three day jungle treck, which involved white water rafting, leeches and mooneshine. Day one- we where picked up at our hotel and thrown onto the back of a taliban style pick up for our two hour drive to the jungle, thirteen of us squeezed into the truck, (sardines). When we got their we began our four hour uphill trek, wading through rivers, balancing on upturned tree's, scaling through canions, walking through bushes, thorns, spiders webs, ants nests; following a mad thai trekker named "GOOD", (see pic with James). What can we say, an experience. When we eventually got to the top of the mountain we stayed with a hill tribe called the Lahore. We all enjoyed the rest of the night on the moon shine singing with our tour guide Good.
On the second day we awoke to the sound of pigs screaming, when we asked Good what all the commotion was about he informed us that their was to be a marriage in the village and the screaming was lunch being prepared. Good took us down to see the family getting ready for the big day, we were expecting to see the bride sitting their looking fab, getting her hair done; was we wrong. There she was, with the rest of the fam like some thing out of the texas chain saw masacre, covered in blood sorting through the earlier screaming pigs intestines. (see pics). The rest of that day was more or less the usual you know, swimming in a few beautiful waterfalls, washing in rivers, singing and drinking more moon shine, great!
On the lastday we walked back down the mountain towards civilization; well, slipped, tripped and fell. That afternoon the plan was white water and bamboo rafting. We all put our belongings on the truck to meet us down the river, put on our orange helmets and our life jackets. Before setting off in the dingies Good gave us a quick run down of what we needed to do. LEFT- everone lean over to the left, RIGHT- everone lean over to the right, GET DOWN- hit the deck and ON THE JOB- get back rowing. These were the only english words our two Thie boatmen knew. Just as were about to get in the boat one of the group informs us that on the foreign office website it states that three people have been killed this year doing the same type of thing in Thieland. We then turn to our guide (Good) who is asking us, 'any last requests.' He was really funny!
As were rafting down the river all was going well, the other's from the group were in two other dingies and we were splashing them as they wen't past. As were approaching more rapids (quite big one's) we noticed that the boat in front had tipped upside down, all's you could see was little orange hats bobbing down the river. Then it was our turn, really scary moment, but we were fine, James thinks it was because of his expert sea man skills. As we got to them bobbing about in the river to pull them out they were the colour of boiled sh**e, cuts and grazes all over them and each carrying the odd leech. eeeee!
Further on down the river we were stopped, stripped of our life jackets and hats and hurried onto the bamboo rafts, half of the group refused to get on as they were so freaked out by the earlier events, but we were fine. All in all a great experience and thanks to our new Thie friend Good.
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