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hello hello everyone,
i havent exactly been keeping upto date with the blog entries. so im going to do 2 separate ones now for the 2 journeys i've made in the couple of weeks.
so when i last blogged i was on the khao san road, which co-incidentely i am on at the moment. we made the slog of the 13hr bus rideup to chiang mai where we were greeted by a heard of tuk tuks that were of the same company, nice place. so with no other choice we wentwith them to fairly nice guesthouse with pool. tom and coco were desperate to get to laos on the slowboats as soon as possible. they made their plans.
meanwhile the owner on niceplace, a man that soon gained the nickname 'crazyman', told me and the other travellers about a 3day trek in the north of thailand. to me it sounded perfect, so i went for it with the prospect of elephant riding, bamboo rafting, and swimming beneath a waterfall. i made plans to meet tom and coco in vang vien in laos and said farewell for a few days.
the next day a group of 13 of us set of for a 3 day trek. there were 3 macho loud swedes; cezar, tobias, jon, 3 english college boys: tom, edd darragh,2 girls (1 aus 1 candian) travelling together; amy and bre, a loved up norwegian couple; iforget their names although we called him arnie and 2 english girls called sadie and beckie that i ahd got to know the previous day.
crazyman started the trek with a bottle of lao lao which is moonshine, tastes like petrol. after a reletively short journey of breakingthe ice we arrived at the elephant sanctuary where we were greeted by the elephants themselves. they are big beautiful creatures and within 10 mins of getting there we were sitting on their backs. sadie and becks got the seat on top and i rode on the elephants shoulders, which was cool-as but ruined my arse. i walked like i had a pole up my arse.
after the trek through rivers and the forest on that backs of those gentle giants we hopped on the truck andmade our way to the start of the trek. crazy settled himself on the roof, probably to recharge his batteries, and me and tom stood on the back and chatted about uni andlife and other stuff naive teenagers talk about.we reached that start of the trek which was meant to be a remote village, but treks like the one i was on turned it into a tourism centered village employing different way to evoke sympathy and make money. for me it was a sour note to the start of the journey.
we started hiking and it was a sad state of affairs, we were all in such bad states of health it was slow going, however after about half an hour we picked up the pace and made good progress to the second village where we would be staying.we decided to have an england vs scandinavia football match. lets just say it was unfair and biased because they had 3 more players than us but we only lost by one. but lets say no more about it.
we cooledoff down by the river which was bloody freezing, andwent back up for an evening of folk songs and watched the local children perform a song. it was lovely but the kids ranging from3 to 16 looked so bored withthe whole affair that i had to wonder what it must be like to be forced week i week out to sing and dance for money as a child. however the village had a much better quality of living than others in the surrounding areas. isuppose its give and take w\with their lives.
the next morning we set offor the big slog of a day. we hiked for like 3 and a half hours to a little house by a river where we had lunch then took a 2 min walk along this trecherous winding path to this little waterfall where we swam around and cooled off. we set off again for what was about a 4 or 5 hour trek to the last village where we ended up getting very drunk that evening and having very confusing games of s***-head that i still to this day dont understand the swedish rules.
we headed off the next day for a short trek and then hit the river for bamboo rafting where i spectacularly got my pole caught between a tree branch and the riverbed and got launched off the back into shin deep water. i didnt feel particularly cool at tht point.
wedrove back to chiang mai, and that evening went out on a spectacular piss-up at a place called therooftop reggae bar where there were drinks like sex on the roof and tequilla shots that were actually tripple shots. that night became a mysterious blur which i rmember very little of.
the next day we all went paintballing to say goodbye as many of us heded different ways that evening. it was a very messy affair with 2 of the scandinavians (arnie and cezar) havig been in the army. it got very competitive and ended up with becky and sadie with massive bruises from where they had surrendered and got brutalised thereafter by arniewho claimed that he thought they were bluffing so that they could shoot him!!
so our time in chiang mai drew to a close we agreed to meet up at the full moon party. there was only 1 bad thing about that trip and that was that the driver on the trek stole my camera; i left it in the front with becks and sadie however we all forgot to pick it up and when i asked crazyman about it he did that thing where he suddenly lost the ability to speak english and when i searched the cab it wasnt there. cest la vie, its really the pics that i'll miss not somuch the camera.
that evening sadie becks and me departed for vang vein in laos to meet back up with tom and coco....
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