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Published: January 8th 2008
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We finally left New Zealand and all of the friends we met behind and landed in the city that never sleeps, Bangkok. Bangkok is one of Southeast Asia’s largest and most vibrant cities and is ten times bigger than the countries next biggest city. We landed at 2am and got on the first bus to Khao San Road. The bus stopped and the driver told us that Khoa San Road was just around the corner, was it hell!!! 10-15 minutes later in a taxi we arrived!!! We walked around aimlessly for around 30 minutes trying to find somewhere to put our heads down and after we walked down the street checking out all the guest houses we stumbled across one we liked, we looked in to see if there was anyone to serve us when a dog though it would be funny to empty his bladder on the floor, right in the middle of the reception area, we both looked at each other and decided this wasn’t the place for us!!
The next day was a bit better, having found somewhere to stay we decided to arrange some travel to get to Chiang Mai, as this was the base for
the trek we were going to do. Chiang Mai is the largest and most culturally significant city in northern Thailand and is home to some of the largest mountains in Thailand. We visited Wat Phrathat Doi Suthep, this is the most famous temple in the area, standing on a hill to the north-west of the city. Its builders allegedly chose its site by placing a relic of the Lord Buddha on an elephant's back and letting the elephant roam until it came across a place where it trumpeted and circled before lying down. When we arrived at Chaing Mai we were taken to a guest house and it all seemed above board so we decided to stay there, we met our guides and they went through with us what we were going to be doing for the next three days on the trek. Our guides were called Rocky and Jin, they were pretty cool, and quite funny.
The start of the trek took us about 50 minutes from Chiang Mai, we got off the truck and were greeted by a herd of elephants, and we were quickly chucked onto the elephants and started moving toward a path that had
been cut out in the woods. We were on the elephants for around 30 - 40 minutes. The elephant trek wasn’t how I expected it to be but I thought things can only get better!! After my thought it hammered down with rain we took cover but we had to be somewhere else to have something to eat, so we were loaded onto the back of a pickup and taken down the road to a small roadside café, when we arrived there we were soaked through to the skin. After we had eaten we started the trek, the scenery was amazing, just like something you see on nature programmes. We walked through rice paddies and villages, we stopped at one to play a game of football, or actually to watch football as my legs were knackered. In the evening we stayed in a quite remote village and Rocky cooked us up a storm in the kitchen, we ate and then we started to play a few games involving wiping soot on your forehead if you cocked up!!
We woke early in the morning and had a cold shower, by the way we didn’t choose to have a cold shower,
that’s all they had. But it woke us up pretty good. We started walking around 10am, the walk today was quite challenging, we stopped at a spot over looking a valley for lunch, put it this way, you would have views like that in any restaurant. We walked for a further 2-3 hours and arrived at quite a big waterfall with a few huts next to it and we were told that this is where we were staying the night, we were all sweating pretty bad so all of us jumped in the waterfall with all our clothes on. We had an evening meal and then we just sat and chatted to each other, when we were met by a chap that just walked out the woods, so random. He was trying to sell us these horn type things, we all had a blow in them but we couldn’t master it like him!!!
The next day involved floating down a stream on a raft made out of bamboo, Jin was steering the raft, or trying to, when we arrived at the rapids he jibbed out and said we would have to walk down and let the raft float down
the rapids, we were puzzled by this as all the other rafts were flying down the rapids? Only to find out Jin cant swim!! Phil and a few of the other lads took the raft down the river and they were fine. At the end of the bamboo rafting we jumped into a truck and drove back to Chiang Mai. When we arrived we jumped straight into the shower and put a load of washing on.
We decided to get on the next bus to Pai and chill out for a few days. When we arrived there we booked into a place where they had a load of huts. The next day we hired motorbikes out and did a tour around Pai, we went to a few waterfalls and local sights, and mainly drove around aimlessly till we had to take the bikes back. We got another bus back to Chaing Mai and then on the next bus to Chiang Khong as this was the gateway to Laos.
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