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Published: March 31st 2010
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Once we arrived in Chiang-Mai,we spent the day chilling out watching The Office,whilst I hoped the cold would subside in time for the trekking. Unfortunately this was not to be, the next morning Tom and I had had no sleep due to the coughing and whilst everybody else headed off to buy alchohol for the trip we went to buy medicine and red bull (and a little alcohol, of course.) As soon as everybody had stocked up on their provisions we set off in an open backed jeep to the hills of Chiang-Mai. The trek began gently with us ambling across streams in the roasting heat, getting to know the other people on the trek. After an hour, we stopped for lunch in a little thatched hut, and watched a sow and her piglets running about the hut and splashing in the mud, being chased by an over zealous puppy. After lunch the real walking began, and although it wasn't terribly strenuous, it was absolutely roasting hot and I was weezing the entire time - i kept stressing to people that i had a bad cold, really paranoid that they must have thought i was quite weird. The scenery on the
first day was quite barren, the hills had been made really dusty by the scorching sun. During the walk our guides were telling us about the poisonous snakes and spiders that live in the hills of Chiang-Mai, not long after this, I heard hissing and looked down to see a snake dashing across the path right where I was about to step. Another truly heroic escape from sure death!
Five hours later we arrived at the hill tribe village where we would be staying the night, we were all relieved to dump our stuff in a massive wooden hut where we were sleeping and take a freezing cold shower outside, where there were body building ants climbing all over the taps. After dinner we all sat around a camp fire whilst our guides told us about the culture of the hill tribes. Unfortunately we didn't really get to see or intergrate much with the hill tribes as we had expected, but i suppose it's understandable that they don't want to spend every evening entertaining tourists. After a while Tom and I started drinking home made whisky buckets with Andy, Katie, Danny and Danny who we had met on the
trek. Whisky buckets are made from Thai Whisky, Thai Red Bull (which is lethal) and coke. This was my first experience with whisky buckets and I don't think I realised quite how strong they were. It wasn't until I was lying down with Katie looking at the stars and started hallucinating that she was somebody else on the trek, that I realised I needed to go to bed. One by one we stumbled to bed with Andy making a grand entrance by falling flat on his face, tripped by the bamboo flooring.
The morning after the night before arrived: we awoke early with stonking hangovers, not the best way to begin a gruelling eight hour walk. After downing litres of water, we were marched straight up a perpendicular hill, desperately regretting the previous nights alcohol and feeling a little like death. On the up side - the whisky cleared my chest up magically. After the beginning of the day, the gradient slowly eased off as the hangovers were gradually sweated out replaced instead by gnawing hunger. The scenery was much more interesting, walking through forests and stopping for lunch overlooking rice paddies. After about seven hours we were all
beginning to lag slightly, tripping on rocks and slipping on huge dried up leaves. We eventually reached our campsite, and went for a refreshing/absolutely freezing dip in the river that ran alongside, watching as the guide caught tiny little fish in his hands to use in a soup for dinner. We had a fantastic dinner that evening and once again sat around the fire as the guide began to catch frogs, offering to roast them for us before nipping to the guides hut for his nightly puff of opium (a longstanding recreational tradition in the hill tribes) coming back with his English slightly muddled but much smilier than before. Eventually the beer cans began to crack open at which point, with my stomach heaving, I decided to call it a night whilst Tom continued on with the best of them.
The next morning everybody set off with a bit more spring in their step. We were only walking for two hours before we reached a huge waterfall, in which we went swimming - trying to push as close to the fall as possible being obliterated by the force most of the time, before trying our hand at some tame
cliff jumping. Once dry,we headed off for the long anticipated elephant trekking. This involved two people sat on a wooden makeshift seat whilst the guides sat on their heads. We continued our tradition of stupidly buying food for the animals we were meeting, once again it was the dreaded bananas. Our elephant set off, but once it realised we had bananas it would stop and lift its trunk up taking four bananas at a time and storing them in the rolls of its trunk, if we did not feed him four bananas he would refuse to move. The problems began when the bananas ran out - the elephant began to roar deafeningly and stamp about until our guide fell of his head. This left Tom and I stuck atop a ginourmous and very angry elephant - quite scary! Eventually the guide managed to appease him and climb back on and after a small amount of spraying spit and water all over our legs, we spent the rest of the trek in relative peace. Although being interesting, I don't think it would be an experience that i would like to repeat again, as you couldn't help but feel a bit sorry
for the elephants having to cart tourists around all day and they didn't appear to be particularly overjoyed by the prospect, but each to their own.
The last stop on our trip was to try bamboo rafting, which involved 5 pieces of bamboo strapped togother with 4 people sat on top and one man with a long piece of bamboo to push us through the water. Our guide happened to be a relatively old man who spoke no english. We got off on the wrong foot almost immediately when Tom picked up another bamboo pole and began helping to row the raft, this was met with deathstares. Then the idyllic float down the river turned into a water fight with the other groups, resulting in one of their guides jumping over and flipping our raft - soaking all of us including our guide, who wasn't best pleased! All of the wet fun culminated in us being forced to buy our guide a beer for all his soaking troubles, before heading back to town in the jeep to have our first proper shower, more beers and a good sleep before making our way towards Laos.
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