Chiang Mai

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We arrived at Chiang Mai airport and were picked up by a B.M.P residence minivan and taken to where we were staying. The first thing they did was try to sell us some more bloody tours, even before we'd checked into our room! We haggled with the guy and got a bus ride up to the border, a 2 day boat trip down the Mekong river to Luang Prabang and our Laos visas for about 4000 Baht, but decided to see how much it would cost us i we did it ourselves. I also find that having an agent booking everything for you is less exciting than doing it yourself. When you get to a place by your own means, and it has been a challenge, with a few hiccups on the way, you get a much more rewarding experience when you finally make it. Anyway, after a little research, we later realised that we could do everything above for about half the price on our own, so we did.

One thing that we had trouble with was finding out how much the visas cost when getting them at the Laos border and whether you could get them at Huay Xai, so for anyone reading this intending to do what we did, as of 23/07/2007, here is the answer:

You can purchase a visa when you cross the Mekong at Huay Xai for $35 USD from most European countries, with a $5 difference for some other countries such as Canada. You need to take one (not two) passport photo, and have the money in cash in USD. Also, don't forget to get your Thai exit stamp, as we saw one lad who'd forgotten his, and it was a nightmare to get it sorted out. The borders are open from 8am and close at 6pm. At the Huay Xai border, all visas are valid for 30 days, so there is no cheaper 15 day option at this particular crossing.

Anyway, we managed to avoid getting screwed, and were happy, for about 5 minutes, when we were told that the guesthouse, which had a pool, was full, and we were being sent to the overflow accommodation 5 minutes drive away, which did not have a pool. Typical.

It turned out that our new home, the B.M.P. House, was much nicer than the other place, and much smaller, and the lady on reception was really helpful and provided us with all the info we needed.

That night we headed into the centre of the town to have a butchers at the night markets, which were an endless street of stalls, pretty much repeating wat they sold every 5 stalls. Tshirst, watches, silks, weapons and music/dvds. This did have its advantages when it came to haggling though, as you could create a price war between 2 Tshirt sellers by telling one that the other one offered you it cheaper than them. I managed to get a Superman Tshirt for about 1 pound 50, bargain. Dan and Will bought a couple of Chang beer tops, an Larry scored the purcase of the evening, a Thai silk dressing robe for about 8 quid.

The next day we headed off on our 2 day trek, and met up with our group in the back of a van, where a 40 minute ride to the start of the trek turned into well over an hour, via the tourist police.

Apparently when trekking from Chiang Mai, the guides have to let the police know who they're taking trekking, and it gives the trip a bit more credability. We found this quite strange as if we hadn't been taken to the police on the way, we'd be oblivious to the fact that we needed to check in with them anyway, which made it a bit pointless. One useful piece of information we learned though, was that if you ever get in trouble in Thailand, 1155 is the direct line to the tourist police. I think I'm going to give them a call next time a Bangkok Tuk-Tuk driver tries to skank me!

The first day of the trek was an hours walk through a lot of rivers/streams to the first village/camp where we had lunch, and changed into our walking shoes and headed into the jungle. It was then about a 3 1/2 hour trek to where we'd be spending the night, following a river and ending up at a waterfall for a well earned cooling off. The waterfall was really refreshing and had wild banana trees growing around it. Surprisingly we had seen more snakes that day than in any other country all together. What was more worrying was the fact that the guides were unable to identify any of the snakes we'd seen, and just advised us not to poke them with sticks. We also saw some pretty nasty looking spiders, and one of the guides from the other group had picked up a bird eating spider along the way, and later barbequed it for his dinner, nice. Our guides were called Joshua and Yuan, Joshua being the older experienced guide with an awesome sense of humour, and looked a little like Mr Miyagi.

When we got to the camp we got showered (a pipe coming out of the wall in the toilet that you blocked with a piece of wood) and changed and cracked open the Changs. Dinner was prepared by Joshua and was some of the best Thai food we had had to date. After dinner we continued drinking, and ended up telling embarrassing stories followed by a few bad jokes before retiring to bed. One of the lads, Keith, had a true horror story which you hear of happening to a friend of a friend of a friend, but you never actually meet the guy, we did. I won't go into too much detail but it involved a rather beautiful Thai woman, that he discovered was not really a Thai woman, but in fact a Thai man, but it was too late! "I no lady!" was the last thing he heard him/her say. Fair play to the guy for admitting it, that's something he'll never live down. Whilst we're on that subject, what do you call an operation that transforms a woman into a man? An Adadictomy.

The sleeping arrangements were very basic, involving a thin roll mattress and a sleeping bag with a mosquito net that didn't keep out the spiders. The two South African girls dicovered what looked like a huntsman in their bed and being a nature lover, Keith decided to put it outside rather than squash it, which was my plan of action. He failed to catch it though, losing it in the bed covers, the girls didn't look amused.

Us 4 and one other American lad called James were the only ones doing the 2 day trek, the rest were on the 3 day route, so we had to get up extra early and were on our way by 8am. Yuan was our guide for the day, and we found out that he'd ony been learning English for 4 months, and was at an incredible level already. We trekked up a massive hill and down the other side, which was knackering as hell, and then walked across paddy fields into a small town where we were picked up by a pickup truck, where we sat on the sides of the truck and were driven where we had lunch. The next part of the tour was the bamboo rafting which was down a pretty slow moving river on a raft made out of bamboo, funnily enough. The rafting was pretty relaxing, with a couple of white water patches, and a cliff jump that we thought the rafting guys were joking about considering the shallowness of the water. After one of the natives jumped in, I got James to test the depth and took the plunge, but none of the other boys were brave enough, or stupid enough to give it a go.

After the bamboo rafting we headed to elephant trekking. The trek lasted about 40 minutes and it's 2 people to an elephant plus a guide who sits on its head whilst you're on its back. Mine and Larry's elephant was a bit of a maverick and kept taking the harder paths, up and down hills causing me to almost fall off at one point. We bought some bananas for him at the start of the trek and fed them to him throughout the ride. Every minute or two the elephant would stick his trunk in our faces asking for more food, but we had been advised to ration the fruit, so half of his request were met by the guide pushing his trunk away from us and making a lound grunting/groaning noise that Larry and I found hilarious and kept copying.

Dan and Will's elephant was called Buddha and he was huge. Our guide would tickle his belly from our elephant and blow raspberries, which made Buddha trumpet out of his trunk, which was pretty cool.

James had a baby elephant all to himself, with the guide walking in front of it. Along the way the elephants would also try to steal fruit from other elephants, and we had to fend off one elephant from behind that stuck its trunk in our fruit bag.

The elephants in Thailand that are used for trekking or working can only be kept until they are 61, and then they have to be released into the wild by law, and they can live well into their eighties. I can't remember the exact figures, but I think that Thailand has the largest population of Indian elephants of any country, about 3000 in the wild, and another 3000 or so working.

The trek was very different to what I'd expected, more like a pony ride at a school fete (not that I've ever done that) than the trekking throught rivers in order to get to a place only accessible via elephant back. All in all, it was a worthwhile experience that I'd recommend, from wht we saw, the elephants were well looked after, and although the trainers use what appears to be a metal hook to control the elephants, which may seem cruel, it is because of their thick skin that this in necessary, and the guides don't actually harm them in any way.

After the elephants it was time to head back to Chiang Mai where we hit the sack early doors after 2 knackering days and not much kip the previous night thanks to a demented cockeral that started cockadoodledooing around 4am!

The next day was an early start again for the Golden Triangle tour, which was a bit crap if I'm honest. Firstly none of us had really thought of the logistics of the tour, which involved a 5 hour ride to the Golden Triangle and a 5 hour ride back, which we would then have to do again pretty much a couple of days later to reach the Laos border. D'oh! Not a good start. The contents of the tour were also pretty naff. The first stop was at a long neck village, or rather a human zoo. The long neck people basically have stretched necks because of the brass coils they add to their necks. It is just the women that do this. These women were basically sitting in rows and westerners were taking pictures of them. The entrance to the village was full of annoying frog selling women like the ones in Bangkok. Up to this point in my travels, the only 'real' village I have seen that wasn't a money making machine is the one off Mantaray Island in Fiji. Having said that, the long neck tribe are pretty incredible to see, mainly because of the length of their necks, which are pretty long, but you kind of feel wrong taking photos of them whilst they sit there all day as a tourist attraction. The fact that our guide had a really bad grasp of the English language, but thought she was fluent didn't help us much when it came to finding out about the origins of the tribe. After a while we all gave up with her.

We then went to a Wat that overlooked the bridge between Burma and Thailand, which was quite strange. Usually we saw 2 border towns when crossing from one country to another, but this town, I forget the name, was half in Thailand and half in Burma.

We then went to a stone carving factory, which was really another opportunity for someone to try to sell you something you didn't want, although some of the carvings were really impressive.

Lunch was next, probably the best part of the day, an all you can eat buffet, where I think all the Golden Triangle tours gather to have lunch.

After lunch we drove to the Golden Triangle, which is basically the point at which Thailand Burma and Laos meet along the Mekong river. We got a boat across to the island that is part of Laos, having to pay 20 Baht for the privilege.

More market stalls and a shot of rice whisky in a bottle of fermenting king cobras later, we headed back to Thailand and back to Chiang Mai. Grabbing a few tinnies on the way back for the journey.

By the time we got back it was pretty late and so we headed straight out to the town centre, which was really dead, and myself, Dan and Will got beaten at pool by the Thai girls working at the bar :s I put iot down to an unfarmiliar table, that they were well practiced on. A woman selling fried bugs the size of my arm set up outside the bar, and as I went to have a look I got roped in to trying one of the grubs that some Thai girl had bought. It was bloody awful, cruncy on the outside and liquidy on the inside. I quickly followed it down with a chang to get the almost fishy taste out of my mouth. As none of us had cameras out, we decided to leave the huge bug tasting, followed by inevitable vomitting for another night.

Although the bars were pretty dead, we eventually found ourselves in a club called 'Bubbles' that was rammed, when that closed we headed to 'Spices' which was even busier. Whilst having a pee, someone grabbed my shoulders and someone grabbed my legs. Took me a second to realise that it was two dude giving massages in the bogs, a little strange, but it was pretty cool, and the neck cracking was awsome. The next day we realised that the tips we had given the massage guys could probably have gotten us a full hours massage with a young Thai woman, rather than a quick touch up by 2 men, who for all we know may have just been posing as masseuses, oh well!

The next day was a lazy morning (i.e. sleeping) followed by an evening cooking course, which was awesome. Firstly it involved driving to the market to learn about and purchase the food, then we headed to the kitchen where we cooked hot and sour chicken soup, pad thai, a yellow Thai curry, stir fried vegetables that we purposely set on fire, like you see on TV, and banana spring rolls. All of which were delicious apart from the spring rolls, that weren't my cup of tea. As usual, we all thought that our dishes were the best, but clearly mine was, the dude running the course actually laughed out loud at Dan's attempt to make a spring roll. He actually invited me back to run the next day's course for him, but sadly we were heading to Laos, so I had to decline the offer.

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