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Published: June 23rd 2006
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Our time in Chang Mai has been a really good time. A note to anyone planning on doing one of these treks or seeing temples in Chang Mai... I hope yer in shape :P
We arrived Tuesday morning and checked into our guest house before we headed off to go see some of the temples around Chang Mai. (BTW, any filipino's heading to Chang Mai, stay at the Dasa House. The owner is married to a filipina, and there's a bunch of them living there.. I could tell by their accent that they were from the Philippines. The only thing that I don't like about it, is that it's like a 20 min walk to the main strip where backpackers stay.)
We had our own tour guide taking us around, and we went to the main temple in Chang Mai. It was like 366 steps to get up to it! Man, it was a work out... But the view was AMAZING! We were all blessed by this monk, who wrapped our wrists with some strings which is supposed to bring us good luck... Thus far, Chang Mai hasn't brought ME (Nick) much good luck, but I'll get into that
The stairway to heaven...
And it's ONLY 366 steps to get there a little bit later. Bryan sat down right in front of the monk, and said that he got DRENCHED because what the monk does to bless you is put a bundle of sticks into water, and then he flicks it all over you... Bryan got most of the water all over his face, poor guy... Hah... We walked around the temple and did all that good stuff...
After the temple, we were taken to all of these different factories where they make stuff like Thai Silk, and jewelry and such, but it got kinda boring, and we were all really tired and eventually asked our tour guide to bring us back to our guest house and we chilled for a couple hours before heading out for dinner at the Riverside Bar & Grill. After eating, we went to this night club called Bubbles, which wasn't all that great once they started bumping the techno beats, but we stayed a while and stumbled through the streets of Chang Mai trying to get back to our guest house... When we finally arrived, the front door was locked! We thought we'd have to scale the building to get in, but after walking
Bryan getting blessed
And drenched by holy water at the same time around the side, we found an easy way in.
The next morning (Wednesday), we started our 2 day 1 night trek through the jungle. We saw another temple (and another 150+ steps!) and a waterfall (I bailed BIG TIME walking along to rocks to get closer to the waterfall, if I wasn't wearing my bag, I'd have cracked my head open), and had this 2 hour hike we had to do before finally getting to our destination which was at this really tiny village. To pass the time, we played this game called Tokol. It's like a cross between hacky sack (with a plastic ball) and volley ball. After a while, we started to get the hang of it and had a good time playing.
This stop was by far the most 'roughin it' we've had to do on the trip. It wasn't all that pretty... The saying of the day was 'deet n dirt'... Good times, good times... That night, I reached into my bag to pull out the mickey of Sang Som that I brought with me, only to see that it busted when I fell... AWESOME! So everything in my bag stunk of Thai Wisky...
Good times? You bet! Hah... The mirror that I brought with me also busted... So much for good luck from the Monk that blessed me...
Waking up the next morning sure didn't feel all that great. I had the HUGEST kink in my neck and felt like crap, but whatever... It's part of the experience. After having a little bit of breakfast, we ventured on another 2 hour hike through the forest where i fell down two more times! I thought the bracelet was supposed to bring me good luck? None of the other guys fell down, so it must be working for them, but not me... This hike was pretty rough since we were all kinda tired from hiking the day before, but the views that we got to see were amazing. We stopped at another waterfall along the way.
After our hike, we got picked up and taken to a place where we got to ride some elephants. That was kinda cool... And totally sketchy at the same time! We all thought that we'd fall off the things, and we held on for our lives whenever the elephant went up or down a hill! The elephant
dude that me and Will had was BRUTAL with our elephant... He was smackin the crap outta the poor thing... After our ride, we got to feed the elephants some pineapple. That was pretty sweet.
We left the elephant place and went rafting on a bamboo raft. This was fun times to do. Just kickin back and letting the kid steer the raft down the river was fun to see, but wasn't really much of anything to write about... The only real thing I can say about it... Is that we saw a dead dog floating around... A little gross? Ya... We thought so too...
After getting back from our trek, we were totally stoked to be able to have a shower. It felt SO nice to get clean. We felt kinda bad for these Quebec girls that we met on the train that were going on a 5 day trek and then another 3 days after they got back! 2 days was good enough for us!
That night we ended up meeting our Trek guide at this place called Utopia and played pool and had more Sang Som buckets.
Today (Friday), we took an all
day cooking course, which started at 9:30am and went until 4pm. I think we were all in agreement that it was probably the most FUN thing we've done so far this trip. We learned how to make Pad Thai, Green Curry, Basil Leaf chicken, spring rolls, and a bunch of other things... The food was SOOOO good, we couldn't believe that WE cooked it, and how easy it was to cook! I think we might end up having a 'Thai Night' when we all get back home and cook up a bunch of eats for everyone and have some Sang Som buckets!
After the cooking course, we were all SOOOO tired from everything we've done so far, we all passed out for the past 4 hours, which leads us to now.
The plan for the evening is to head down to the night market and see if I can do some shopping since I won't be going back to Bangkok at all, and then taking it easy tonight... No going out, no drinking tonight 😞 Oh well... Hah...
Tomorrow, we leave on a plane to Phuket, but aren't staying there at all. We'll take a boat from
Phuket to Ko Phi Phi and spend a few nights there, before heading to Krabi, and eventually working our way to the east coast of the island.
Sheryl... There's no time for me to get to Pi while I'm up north here... I'll have to save it for the next time I come to Thailand. We wanna get to some beaches! Heh...
Hope everything is going good at home! Thanks for the comments, everyone :D
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Murr
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curry making
ill bet raj showed you guys how to fucking rips up some wicked curry. Also, my favorite pic is of the river raft you guys are all on. that is dope man, the water is so murky who knows if there were crocs hey.