Chang, Chang, Chang... Mai

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After a somewhat difficult night’s sleep aboard the overnight train to Chang Mai we arrived at the hotel around 7:30am. We had decided to do a Thai cookery class which involved a trip to the local market to buy all the ingredients then to the cookery school and we were shown how to cook phad thai, green curry, tam yum soup and sesame prawn toast. The class was a lot more fun than I was expecting, I might even give a few of the recipies a try when we get back home.
That evening we visited the Chang Mai Night Bizarre which is a 1km square market which sells everything imaginable although it is mostly to tourists, I didn’t see too many local Thai’s around the market stalls. I ended up getting a new pair of sun glasses and a pair of board shorts for a couple of pounds each. Pam has been quite keen on getting a tuk-tuk since she arrived in Thailand but I’d heard the ones in Bangkok where all out to rip you off, but the ones in Chang Mai seems a lot more reasonable so we ended up getting one back to the hotel.
We started our 3 day hill tribe trek early the following morning first off visiting an amazing waterfall then starting the trek properly with a good 45 minutes uphill climb in under the midday sun. It quickly dawned on Pam and me that what the guidebook described as a moderate fitness level that was required may have been a little more strenuous than we were anticipating. It took about 5 hours to get to the village we were staying the first night in, but it was well worth the effort, we had a quick tour round the village and shown a few local trades and customs. The village was a lot bigger than I was expecting and our guide Pun-Pun explained how all economy works with all the villagers sharing any money that is made like a big happy socalist family. We spent most of the evening sitting around a campfire singing Christmas songs to a very out of tune guitar (with thanks to music maestro Taryn). We stayed in little Bamboo huts that where up on stilts and were a lot more comfortable that they looked, that is until about 4am when all the animals ain the village decided to sing us a song lead by the cockerels.
Our second day of the trek involved another 4-5 hour hike through the jungle. The first couple of hours where quite good and mostly flat, it wasn’t until about 3 hours in that we were faced with another massive uphill climb and then an equally difficult decent. The last hour of our trek was made a lot easier by the cunning use of elephants. We had a lunch of 2 minute noodles and got strapped into the seats on top of the elephants. I say strapped, what I mean is a very thin piece of string. The guy sitting on top of the elephants head didn’t seem to have much control over it as our he just seemed to do whatever he wanted including getting incredibly close to the edge of a cliff just to get at some bamboo.
Our elephants dropped us off 10 minutes outside the village we were staying in that night, this one a much bigger community although by the time we got to our shared hut some of us were a too exhausted to go for another tour of the village and instead opted for a swim in the nearby river followed by a few games of cards. We spent our Christmas Eve very similarly to the previous evening with another bout of campfire karaoke this one helped along by a bottle of local Thai rum which we’ve both got a bit of a taste for.
We were given an option for the last day’s trek (Christmas Day): we could either do another 6 hour trek or pay 300 baht and take a bamboo raft the 40km downstream. All but one of us opted for the rafting which may have taken the villagers a little by surprise because they had to add 4 or 5 more bamboo poles to strengthen the raft. Even with the strengthening the raft sat about 3 inches below water level and once we got in the ‘rapids’ it could go down to about knee depth. Aside from the rapids the river ride was quite relaxing and we saw a number of animals including water buffalo, elephants and somewhat surprisingly a king cobra.
The ride back to Chang Mai in the back of a pickup truck was quite difficult with about an hour of bumping around on dirt tracks then another couple of hours on the road back to the hotel for a well earned shower and couple of hour’s kip.
That evening was the last real night we had together with that group so we headed into Chang Mai for Pizzas and maybe a few buckets, we found a restaurant and bar up on the roof that helped with all our needs and ended up in a tuk-tuk with flashing lights and happy hardcore blasting out speakers.
We had most of boxing day free before our overnight train back to Bangkok so a few of us headed over to nearby Tigerworld, which basically has a number of tiger of varying ages and for 300 baht (£6) you can go in and play with them for 15 minutes. We opted for the 7-9 month old cubs, it’s something Pam’s always wanted to do and despite one of them nearly taking my arm off, it was a pretty good experience.

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Comments

[lizzyw]

Hat
I love your chef's hat! Brilliant. Lizzy