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Published: February 18th 2007
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The train.....DO NOT EVER TAKE IT IN THAILAND. Spend the extra money and fly. It was the most unconfortable thing of my life and we got in to Chiang Mai 2 HOURS late. Once again Thai time, you must remind yourself of this constantly. So even though we got in late it was sill 930 in the morning and we couldnt check into our guesthouse yet, so we dropped our bags there and went shopping at the day market. I love the day market, things are much cheaper than at the night market. So we shopped, then checked in, showered, then went to lunch at a great mexican place then we walked around the city and explored. it was a great day. then we hit up the night market for some more shopping and massages. After and exahusting day we were ready for some sleep, or so we thought.....
Around 530am I got up to go to the bathroom and I hear this really loud crashing sound and I saw 2 black things with tails. First I thought ninjas had come to get me (I have this dream alot) then I thought they were huge rats. I leaped on to
my bed and screamed. I realized they were cats but I wasnt going anywhere near them, I hate cats. So I'm screaming and sitting on Mary's bed and we are trying to figure out what to do. We thought we cold scare them out by throwing oranges at them and leaving our door open. Well that didnt work so we sat there in terror of these stupid cats in our bathroom, nevermind that I still had to pee. So we sat and kept thinking and one of those stupid things peeped its head out the door and we freaked out again. Well by this time we heard someone opening the front gate and lo and behold it was the owner of the guesthouse. He was still weaering the same clothes from the night before....what was HE doing?? Never mind that, I ran to tell him about the cats to see if he could get them out. Well he was pretty angry that our bathroom was ruined to he found the first cat and chucked it out the door then he kicked the second cat out of there. Then while he was cleaning it up he was yelling about how much
he hates Thailand and how nothing ever works there. He told his wife he was packing his bags and moving back to Sweden. Then he said he was taking thier daughter with him and if she tried to stop him, he would kill her. He would throw her in the river cause she cant swim and she would drown. It only got worse when we heard the child crying and the mother scream "dont hurt me!!!". Mare and I definatly felt uncomfortable witnessing this domestic dispute. So we went to sleep only to wake up a few hours later to go on our trek.
Our trek was awesome. We headed about an hour south of Chiang Mai with 6 other people. The first thing we did was ride elephants for an hour. It was the craziest, funniest, and scariest thing I've done in a while. Our elephant was huge and he was a pig. We were so high up I honestly thought I would fall off and die. Well our elephant had some behavior problems too. He did not listen to our driver, he just wanted to eat everything. He would bother other people to try and get food
from them. Also he would only eat sugar cane, he apparently did not like bananas. But it was a great time and we were laughing the entire time. After the elephants we started hiking to a village and the waterfall. We stopping in a Hmong village then we hiked to a waterfall we could swim in. I was so excited until I got in and the water was FREEZING. It took my breath away, and I forgot how to swim, I choked on water and thought I was going to drown, so I decide to get out of there asap. After that we contiuned to hike to a Karen Village where I bought some braclets from some cute kids yelling 5 baht, 5 baht. Then we proceeded to lunch which was fantastic. In fact is was stir fry veggies, very much like the "chinese" food in America. Which by the way is nothing like the chinese food in china or taiwan. The food here in Taiwan nasty. So I will be making an effort to rename the chinese restaurants at home to Thai restaurants. The Thai food is awesome, but more about food when I talk about the island. So
after lunch we went river rafting on bamboo rafts. This might have been the funniest thing ever. We were on a raft with a couple from Canada. The guy had to be the driver in the back and we have a guide in the front, the girls got to sit in the middle and enjoy the scenery. Well, our poor guide, I think he got real mad with us. We kept getting stuck cause we are fat north americans. We beached ourselves a few times. and everytime we would just crack up. We also began to sink the raft as well. We were so far behind the others and when we finally got to the end we were defintaly the wettest too. Thankfully we nearly missed capsizing the raft, that would have been the icing on the cake. After that we headed home.
That night we went to visit the orphanage again, cause Mare wanted to see it. I loved seeing all the kids again. They just make me so happy.
The next day we had a flight back to Bangkok so we could make our way to the island. Well we got on the plane on time
and we took off as normal. Then the problems started. Our navigation system failed.......yes the planes navigation system failed meaning our pilot had no idea where he was going. Are you panicing yet, cause I wasnt, I was asleep for the first part. Well our pilot was flying the plane up and down and side to side so he could look out the windows for a place to land. There was a big dip and I finally woke up and I was like WHAT IS GOING ON, and I felt the landing gear come out, I looked out the window and we were close to the ground but no where near an airport. I thought this was it, I was never going to make it to the beach, my life was going to end. I was praying and crying and flipping out at the same time. Other people on the plane were feeling the same way, some how Mary kept it together and tried to help me keep it together, but i hate flying and this took my back to my very first flight to europe when there was a bomb threat for our plane and we had to go
back to the airport. but we were going side to side, i did not think we would be ok, we had a very rough landing, but the plane stopped way away from the terminal in Chiang Mai. Many people decided to get off, but we stayed since I thought a bad flight could not be as bad as the stupid train. So after a long delay we took off and got to Bangkok in one piece only for more adventure and problems to begin.....
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