The One Day Trek

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Chiang Mai is known as a launching pad for hiking treks through the nearby mountains. These excursions often include visiting hilltribes, riding elephants, traveling down rivers on bamboo rafts, and of course, hiking. Some are several days long and include camping.

On Thursday, February 1, we went on a one day trek. The adventure started around 8:45 a.m. Saai met me at my Bed & Breakfast, and we were soon off in a van packed with 8 other tourists, a tour guide, and driver. If you do the math, you’ve already figured out - that’s 12 people in 1 van. An odd mix of people too. The group was dominated by 6 middle-aged Italian men, two of whom I would dub, “trouble”. In spite of this, we did enjoy our trek, and spoke a fair amount with the Thai female Tour guide and a middle-aged Turkish man.

After an hour drive, we arrived at a small elephant camp (6 elephants) in the mountains. This was my first experience riding an elephant (first for Saai as well). The elephants had a platform strapped on top of them to make riding more comfortable and stable. They allowed two riders per elephant, although a few also had a "driver" that sat directly on the head/neck of the elephants. One thing I noticed quickly is that the elephants ate almost constantly during our ride. They used their trunks to grab bamboo to eat along the mountain path, and bananas were fed by tourists back at camp. They also were fairly good at managing the sometimes steep terrain.

From there, we hiked to a waterfall, and through two small hilltribe villages. The more interesting of the two was the Karen hilltribe village, where we observed an elderly woman making dinner and Saai got a lesson on weaving by their traditional methods.

The final part of the trek involved traveling down a river on bamboo rafts. I really thought this would be pretty mellow. Floating down a lazy river. How exciting can that be? Umm, well, the water level was fairly low, and rapids on a bamboo raft are entirely different than on a typical white water rubber raft.

Our group was split between 3 rafts. The typical setup is for a local Thai man to stand in front and guide the raft with a pole that he uses to push off the bottom of the river, and/or protruding rocks. The rest of the passengers are in the middle, with the exception of a volunteer who stands in the back of the raft with another pole to assist the “captain”. I was that volunteer on one of the rafts. Complicating matters on my particular raft was that it was partially submerged most of the time from the weight of the 5 people on it. Thus, there was very little sitting, and lots of balancing while standing. Whenever the pole would get stuck, I had a couple of seconds to pull it loose before the river carried me too far. If I was unsuccessful, I was going to end up taking a major fall. That I did, twice, although I managed to somehow partially stay on the raft. Others weren’t so lucky. You know things are interesting when the local Thai “captains” are getting thrown overboard. We all got wet, and we had a blast.

What’s a one day trek cost? Ours was 900 baht per person (approx $25), and included transportation and lunch.

Now, thrown in between the Flora expo on Tuesday and the trek on Thursday was a relaxing Wednesday in Chiang Mai. Saai and I got a Thai massage for 150 baht each. That’s about $4 for 1 full hour. Nice.

Afterwards, Saai and I celebrated our 1 year anniversary at the very place we had our first date - The House Restaurant. It’s a high-end International restaurant on Moon Muang Rd near Soi 8. We had the front porch to ourselves on this visit. It was great.

That’s all for now! I’m a little behind on the updates, but I’ll wrap things up upon my return to Los Angeles. Do I have to leave???

Look! There goes Dave!

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Photos

Elephant
Hop aboard...

Snack time...
Saai feeding bananas to an elephant.

Rafting
We lost a pole, a person, some clothes, but otherwise, everything is normal.

Saai with a hilltribe girl
at the smaller hilltribe village we visited

Riding Elephants
5 elephants heading through the mountains

Down the river
Launching point for rafting...

Weaving
Saai weaving under the instruction of a Karen hilltribe woman