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Published: March 27th 2009
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After Koh Tao, we took the ferry back over to Koh Pha-Ngan and spent a few days there, our last night being the half moon party which was as expected. Some of the group stayed in the island until the full moon party the following week, but I was flying out the next week so couldn't really stay for that, and also I had always planned to go up to northern Thailand and do some trekking, so from Koh Pha-Ngan a friend from the group, Kate, and I took a ferry to the mainland and an overnight train up to bangkok and a connecting train up to Chiang Mai, the main city in the north. This was another 12 hour train so upon arrival we were knackered! My friend from school, George, is up near Chiang Rai (even more north) teaching, and he came down for the weekend to Chiang Mai and met us at the station, and already had a hostel room for us all so that was great.
So we spent the first day or two looking around Chiang Mai, a cool place, a mix of shops, bars and old temples. We booked to go on a trek but
just for the two of us, it was a two day trek and George had to be back to teach in school on monday morning. We parted ways when the taxi-truck came to pick us up and take us with the rest of the group for the trek. They started off by shipping us to an orchid farm to look around for 20 mins and then on to a snake farm... we were beginning to think this wasnt going to be much of a trek and more of a tourist day trip, which was not what we wanted. We sat anmd watched a cobra show, in which the guys would do various stunts with snakes, including taking two cobras and getting really close and dodging out of the way when they tried to attack, and diving into a pool with a huge boa constrictor and wrestling with it. Turned out to be quite a good show, still wasnt great to see the way they treated the snakes. After this we were taken for lunch and then we began trekking, up through the forest/jungle which was great. After around three/four hours we arrived at the place we were staying for the
night, a supposed tribe village, although we'd heard that the tribe only move down to the village when a group is coming and make it look like they live there (friends who'd done longer treks said they visited a few of these villages throughout the trek and mysteriously saw the same faces popping up in different villages...) The walk up was great, really great scenery as we walked along a huge valley,stopping at a small waterfall to cool off halfway. That night the guides cooked us food and we had a good evening sitting out and talking, the guides even got a guitar and a drum on the go which was fun.
The next day we were up and away by half 9 and trekked down to a big waterfall and stropped there for 20 mins. We then walked on and arrived around lunchtime at some type of center where we had lunch, and then went off for a spot of elephant trekking. This was good fun, and after this we donned lifejackets and helmets and got into rafts and went white water rafting (not as extreme as it may sound, river was low so not too many fast bits).
Boa Constrictor wrestling
The guy jumped in this pool after throwing the huge boa constrictor in and emerged with it a minute or so later After this we got on bamboo rafts in groups of three and were left to punt ourselves down the river to a point where the truck picked us up again.
I had wanted to do a bit more actual trekking but it turned out to be a great couple of days, we all got on really well in the group and got really good value for money with all the activites we did.
One more night in Chiang Mai and then an overnight train to Bangkok, where we met up with various people that we had made friends with over the month, Marcus, our thaintro group leader, a girl who we were on the trek and two people I'd spent quite a lot of time with in India amongst others, so we had a good group for the last few days. We spent the last few days doing what there is to do in Bangkok, shop and chill out in the day and go out at night. We had some really great and funny times and it was a shame when it came to the last night and last day and I had to leave Thailand, but again was exciting
because next stop was Hong Kong and China!
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