Amazing day in the mountains

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Just had the most amazing day ever! We booked a one day trek up to the mountains which lasted from 8:30 til 6 and managed to cram so many unbelievable things in!
We got a minibus with 6 others up to the mountains of chang mai, there was an Austrian couple who were pretty geeky, a cool Australian couple and some really nice girls from england. One of the English girls was a teacher in bangkok and the other had been traveling all over the world for 10 months so we had loads to talk about.

It took about an hour to get up to our first stop which was a trek through the jungle up to a mong village (not as in mongoloids it was just their tribes name) The village was so deprived, it had huts built out of bamboo and very few luxury items, they did have a village truck and scooter though! The people were really friendly and there were a few little stalls we could buy their handmade products such as pencil cases and cloths. The trek was really hot and sticky but the scenery was breathtaking, there was very low cloud coverage and we were up at about 700m. The jungle was really green as it was rainy season and made for very fun slippery trekking. We also had to cross the most rickety bridge ive ever seen, very Indiana jones-esque!

After this we took a short drive to the elephant camp. The elephants were amazing, there about 6 of them in all on the camp and they were very friendly. We started of by climbing on to their backs and went in convoy through the river and round a jungle trek for about an hour. We were sat on a seat placed on their backs but we wewre allowed to climb down and sit on their necks and heads at times which was surreal. They are so leathery and a lot hairier than i expected! A baby elephant came along with us on the trek and we were riding the mother so it was always following us. It was so mischievous and kept running off, lying down and trying to play with the other elephants. After the trek we got the chance to feed them bananas and stroke their trunks. Their little nubbin at the end of their trunks is so funny, its like a little finger! The older elephants kept bullying the little one for its bananas so we made sure it got some.

Following this we stopped for some traditional thai lunch at a really dody place but the food was really nice, just rice, omelet, fried vegetables and chicken.

We then set off to see another tribes village called the karen tribe, which was very similar to the first tribe but all their houses were built on stilts so they werent affected by flooding or snakes! We were shown some really cool plants were if u touched them they closed themselves up!

After this we took a short drive up to the waterfall trek, which only took 10 mins and was absolutely stunning. The waterfall was about 25m high and split in to 3. We got the chance to take our clothes off and go under them. It was so slippy going over the rocks to get there and a few people slipped but it was so refreshing after being hot and sticky all day. The water was a lovely temperature but did sting a bit after a while because it was coming down at such a velocity! Stunning scenery, managed to get loads of photos! So Jo is going to upload them on to facebook.

Still need to mention the rest of the treck including bamboo rafting but we are just going to pop out to meet Pauls sister for dinner so we will finish up later!

Love to all!! x x

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