friday 18th aug - chaing mai day 1 of the hilltribe trek... at 830 after breakfast we left the hotel in chiang mai and headed for another local market. started the trek at the international park of thailand and headed for a big waterfall. after some more sweaty trekking we had a picnic lunch of noddles before the hardcore trek for 5hours over all kinds of terrain...rainforest, jungle, steep hills, mud, through rice paddy fields. finally arrived at the hilltribe village at 6 and started to settle in. all 12 of us slept in a hillttibe hut which was very very simple....mats of the floor with holes in the wall ready for bugs to eat us, was like sleeping outside. we then took it in turns to use the shower room....u cant really call it that...it was a wooden hut with a hole in the floor for the toilet and then a container with water in...for a shower u just had to stand over the toilet and tip water over ur head! had a meal with the villagers at 7 then played poker before headin to bed bout 8ish, we were all knackered from the trek. in the middle of the nite amie and i needed a wee so we had to negiotate getting to the hole in the floor in the pouring rain in the pitch balck...i need electricity!! saturday 19th aug - day 2 of the trek was woken up at 5am by the villagers chickens...im sure they hate me. after breakfast we set off on our way. we trekked uphill to a waterfall where some of the group had a wash. arrived at the second village in the afternoon covered in sweat, dirt, mud, tired and sore. loving this trek but dont think i could manage anymore than 3days. the terrain is so difficult to walk on as its mostly uphill but we are all keepign each other motivated. u have to concentrate on every step so ur brain hurts at the end of the day too! had lunch at the new karen tribe village and settled in and realised that todays hut was even smaller than last nite, its very cosy! once the mossie nets are up there is no room to get out! at 3 we all went for a wash in the stream which was quite dirty as there has been alot of rain, i had to do it to prove to everyone that i can slum it! didnt feel very clean after my 'wash'! then had to walk back to the village with no shoes on so got covered in mud. after that we headed into the village to meet the local tribe and look at their houses...cant believe how they live. there are so many animals running around...pigs, dogs, chickens. they keep pigs as they sacrifice them at special occassions. lots of the young girls have babies as they get married really young. a big group of the children from the tribe came back woth us and we cooked their tea for them, they were so excited about having a proper meal, they apprecaite things so much. after tea we all sat round candles as it gets dark so early and the children sang us songs and tried to learn all our names. we then sang them english songs (they loved bohemian rapodsy)! think they thouight we were freaks. went to bed early tonite as all tired and nothing to do in the evenings without electricity. was difficult getting ready for bed in the pitch black and tring to put up mossie nets, didnt have a very good nite sleep tonite but this trek is so worth it! sunday 20th aug - day 3 of the trek woke up earaly this morning and went outside to find that the local women had turned outside into a big market tring to sell all their handicrafts! started the trek at 8 with very sore legs and tonnes of bites. we stopped at a river and had a break for a while before heading up a tiny mountain path...this part was so scary, im sure we should have had harnesses. we were so high up and the path was sooo narrow, one step wrong and we would have fell off the mountain thing. arrived at our meeting point after lunch after completing 35km of trekking over difficult terrain, me and amie feel very proud of ourselves!!. after lunch (which what a surprise was rice...after this trip i vow never to eat rice again) we went for the elephant trek through the jungle. we didnt really enjoy this as much as we thought and the trainers werent very nice to the elephants. there was a baby elephant that followed us and at one point, the daddy elephant (who jo and alex were on) went mental, it made noises like a dinosaur, we thought there was going to be an elephant stampede. amie and i really worried as we didnt have a driver on our elephant. jo started crying as it was really scary, we could have all been crushed. the ground was so muddy too that we thought the elphants were going to fall over, glad to get off them as they are so high and u hav no control over them. we then thought that a bamboo raft would be safer than an elephant. was good fun got soaked as we went through the rapids, luckily our driver was very skilled so we didnt topple over like most other people. ....glad to get back to the hotel in the evening for a shower and to look in the mirror after 3 days without one! went out for a western meal in the evening yaya no more rice, had very nice cheeseburger and cherry pie (adeola it was goooddd!). went out for some well deseved drinks at a rooftop bar after some shopping in the market. really worried about getting all my purchases home, dont know where im going to put them!! monday 21st aug - chiang mai up at 10 this morning and headed out for food after packing. walked around chaing mai for a bit , not much to do here then headed back to the hotel. left at 230 to catch an overnight train back to bangkok. the train was so minging for 14.5 hours, very dirty only a squat toilet (which is difficult in motion), loads of bugs. boiling hot and dirty beds. was also very very noisy, surprisingly i had an ok nites sleep, arrived in bangkok at 5am