Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
So we survived the overnight train to Chiang Mai, in all honesty it was no where near as bad as i thought it would be, it defintely felt like something out of the war and was very clinical but still was fairly clean and a lot more comfy than expected. Thai people unsurpisingly drive trains much like they drive everything else- like crazy people (this is also much like how they 'drive' elephants lol). Despite this we all slept pretty well. Once we got to Chiang Mai we took a tuk tuk (that did make us stop-thank god lol!) to the hostel. The hostel we are staying in is called Diva's and its actually lovely, so cheap but nice and clean and we have our own room too, the people who run it are lovely too and have even bothered to learn our names :). After settling in we went to get some food and then attempted to play a few drinking games at the hostel, after this us and a few others headed to the hostel across the road for some more drinks (Everyone here pretty much just drinks chang-thai beer, its 6.4 percent so quite strong however being thailand, you never quite know so some of them are like 5 percent and others could be 12 percent alcohol). After a few drinks we decided we were hungry so headed to a food stall for some pancakes with bananas and chocolate in them, they were yummy as, then off to bed.
The next day we had a bit of a lie in then went for a walk around the city not of course before stopping at all the major tourist attractions of boots and starbucks! After this we did a bit more exploring then brought massive amounts of fruit (so much so we were actually full on fruit-i didnt know this was possible lol). After this we then decided to try one of those fish spa's where little fish eat dead skin off your feet until they are soft. It was urm interesting, definetly not relaxing but juts kinda tickled and felt odd have fish nibbling at your feet, a good experience and my feet were crazily soft after but maybe not again lol. In the evening we headed to the night bazzar and got some food at this resturant where some 60 year old men on a 'golfing' holiday (so they said anyway lol) insisted on buying our drinks for us a little creepy but still nice. We then went and did lots of shopping (still cant get over the cheapness of everything here) and then back to our hostel.
Friday we were up early as we were going on a two day trek today. The van (it cant really be described as anything else) came to pick us up. There was a group of us which consisted of an englsih girl, 3 spanish guys, 2 argentianians, 2 girls from swenden, a french couple and a german guy and of course us. The first stop was a butterfly farm and then onto a market. After this we headed to the thai jungle to start the trek. The first part of the trek was amazing, we spent our time balancing across logs, jumping over streams, walking through mud and pushing our way through massive branches and plants, by this point i had already fallen over 4 times but it was just part of the fun. We then stop for a lunch of noodles wrapped in bamboo leaves and then onto the proper trekking......Oh my god, 2 hours pretty much up what seemed like a virtical hill, the thai men that were guiding us went up so fast as well none of the group could keep up. Eventually after what seemed like 19497420 hours we made it to the top, only of course to just go back down the hill again lol, this part however was much nicer. Its crazy though as thai people dont have any great ideas for saftey, we were trekking along so many paths at the side of the jungle, all it takes is to slip then your gone off the edge, and tripping up is very easy with all the rrots etc... on the ground, lucikly no one died though so its all good! Finally we arrived at the elephant camp where we were staying for the night. It was pretty amazing, elephants just randomly roam free around you, so cool. By this point we were baking hot so after a bit of persuasion/pretty much forced grabbing by the thai men we jumped into the lake for a swim. Then for a shower and some dinner. In the evening we all sat round a camp fire, whilsit the thai guides thought it would be funny to chuck crabs at us and then burn them on the fire (surpisingly we didnt find it that funny lol). We then headed to bed in a very doggy looking hut hanging off a hill.
On saturday we woke up to look over the jungle and elephants wondering around beneath us, can honestly say it was one of the best things to wake up to ever, felt like we were in the middle of Africa or something. We headed down to be told we would be washing the elephants so we headed into the muddy lake with buckets to do so. The lake was horrible your feet literally sank into the mud at the bottom however washing elephants is so much fun, after a while the thai guides told us to get on the back of one so me and kirsty climbed onto one and went for a walk out the water around the site bare back, oh my god it was scary and i swore i was going to fall off but so much fun too and one of the best things ive done so far. After this we then went for a trek on the elephants up a very doggy looking hill, all it would take would be for the elephant to slip and that would be it, so dangerous but so cool lol. Chrissie and Kirstys elephant went crazy half way through once it saw i dog and started going crazy, going around in circles, making lots of noise and trying to sit down, luckily it soon calmed down though, i think everyone else was very glad they werent on that elephant lol. After this we went for a walk to a waterfall and then onto white water rafting. After some doggy white water rafting (we kept getting stuck between rocks) we went on to do some bamboo rafting with a very odd thai man who insisted in washing me and this other girl in our group called Gemma, he kept washing our arms for us whilsit we jokingly shouted almost rape, he didnt quite understand us so just laughed along and repeated lol. After this we headed on the van back to Chiang Mai totally knackered. In the evening we headed for a foot massage which was funny as im really ticklish and a little but odd at times, they came very close to certain places they shouldnt lol, but was in all relaxing. The next day we got up early and headed up further north to Pai.
- comments