Back from Trekking :o)

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Hello!
We are back having made it through the mountains by 4x4, foot, elephant, and bamboo raft!
We stopped off at a village and a waterfall in the morning to break up the drive from our walk. Our guide tried to get us to try delicacies such as ant eggs, grasshopper etc at the village.. no thanks, though some of the guys on our trip did - nothing worth writing home about apparently! The villages have ladies out in force selling homemade water bottle holders, jewelery etc - its hard to say no, so we have brought a thing or two!

The walking was really good, through small forest tracks maybe the width of both feet and with very steep steps cut in sometimes (if you are lucky) and dry leaves to slide down on if you aren't so lucky. The first days walk was done without our bags as some of the guys on the trip were injured after watersliding/swinging somewhere so took them on the 4x4 with them to the village for us. The second day = sweaty back! 😊

The villages we stayed in were both fairly small in size one with about 25 houses and one with 50. We stayed in a bamboo hut on hard(ish) mattresses all together, slept well the first night as we were still tired from the train journey, second night was more interrupted by lads snoring!

We got to go on an elephant ride through the river and on some very small tracks (definitely not elephant sized!) Getting onto the elephant was possibly the hardest bit - we had to step onto the head and then the neck of the elephant from the balcony of the bamboo hut before we could get onto the seat. Once on the seat we got rocked from one side to the other as the elephant walked along, and more disconcertingly forwards and backwards as we went down into the river and up back to the paths! The elephants seemed pretty hungry stopping all the time to eat - we had a few branches flung our way!

Yesterday evening we got to visit the local school in the village, not during school hours, after them though. There was only a school in one of the villages and children from the other one (aged 5 up) have to walk 7kms to school on monday, stay there all week and walk back on friday. There was a big game of football going on outside and other children walking round with wateringcans - not too sure why, others sweeping and playing marbles around the yard and some cooking the dinner in massive pots. Eventually some of the girls came up to us to look at our cameras so i gave in and let them have a (supervised!) go with mine, there are some funny shots i will put up sometime!

The bamboo rafting this morning was brilliant. Just some bits of bamboo strapped together with a tripod on for our bags to hang off. It is definitely best to sit on these rafts so swimwear comes in handy as you get fairly damp doing this! We rafted for 3 and a half hours, 18kms down the river to where we met the 4x4 to take us back. It was fairly peaceful on the river with just the odd song from the local guides and lots of birds/insects being themselves!

So now we are back in Chiang Mai and going to a night market this evening for a wander. Back down to the heat of Bangkok tomorrow to meet our next tour group (9 in the last one, another girl from england +group of Australian friends!) and head south through Malaysia to Singapore!

Thats all for now will see when we can update next! xx

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Comments

[Uncle Simon]

Hey - You're Having a Great Trip!
Good to see all the places you've been - When you get to Singapore - Visit the museum on the island on the south of the island. I think all the flashy electronics are on Orchard Road - Long time since I was there! Uncle Simon