After Bangkok I headed up to Chang Mai for a spot of trekking. The bus was 12 hours so had a Xanax and woke up in Chang Mai having had a wonderful nights sleep with everyone else looking shattered... good old liberal Thai pharmacies!
One of the boys I met at the last Full Moon recommended Julie's Guesthouse so stayed there for the first night but didn't book a trek with them because the sour Thai bloke running it wouldn't knock the price down at all and wanted you to book a trek with them in order to stay there! Headed up and down the street and eventually met the legend that is Ginny! After a half hour chat which involved her getting the family photos out AND knocking the price down by 300 baht we had a deal. I told a few others from the bus ride and we all booked with her. So Simon (UK), Danielle, Katy (Canada) and myself all headed off the next day.
There was a definite language barrier within the group and we all ended up in little cliques. There was us four, 3 germans and a swiss guy, and a French couple who barely spoke to eachother let alone the rest of us!
First stop was the elephant riding. If anyone can say they had fun while a 13 year old fucker (think Mao/Stalin in the younger days) with a metal hook smashes a chained up elephant (who doesnt want to do anything the boy says) on the head, they're sick! I can honestly say that I've tried it and it's not for me. It's a good job the elephant covered me in mud to disguise me crapping myself while it headed toward a twelve foot drop! I sat at the back for most of the time hoping for both our sakes that the animal would just do what the little fucker wanted it to, for both our sakes!
After the elephant riding we had lunch and headed up into the hills to stay at the tribe village. The walk was a killer, and the trainers Ginny gave me left some nasty blisters so I chucked them and wore flip flops for the rest of it which aren't the easiest things to hike in.
The village was kept seperate from where we all stayed which is probably for the best, but we didn;t get to talk to the villagers too much aside from the offering us massages... the scenery was amazing though.
The rest of the group other than us four were only on a 2day trek so they left early in the morning and we didn't see them again. We headed off to a few waterfalls for the day, and to kill the time whilst we walked through the Jungle me and Simon gave the girls a bit of stick for being Canadian...which they hated -especially the whole clubbing baby seals joke which followed on from their enjoyment of the elephant riding.
We had a swim in a couple of the waterfalls and then hiked to the 'jungle camp' - a hut by the river.
On the last day we headed off for white water rafting, which was pretty tame compared to New Zealand, but that was probably for the best considering the Thai guys safety talk consisted of 'I hope you can swin'.
The next day I headed off to Pai after a few people had said it was pretty cool. It's a bit too quiet for me though, I just want to get to Laos and go tubing now. Had a good few weeks off the pish and doing cultural things, seen enough temples now thanks, but its my last chance not to feel hungover so I rented a bike out and headed to waterfall. Big mistake! It turned out to be a lot further away than I thought, and completely up-hill. You could see the look on the Thai's faces as they turned around to watch me struggling up the hill, it said: 'what is that sweaty white boy doing?' Might get a scooter out this afternoon to kill the time before I get the bus to Huay Xai to catch the slow boat to LAOS!
Don't expect any updates any time soon ;-)
No comments:
Post a Comment