CHIANG MAI pt2

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Thursday 24th February

We've organiased a tour via the hostel which see's us sharing a pick up truck with two french families of two adults and two children. One mum speaks good enough english to have a conversation with so we manage to get by via her translating for us. Our first stop was just out of town at a Butterfly farm whish was pretty poor as we seen two butterflies as we walked through the netted enclosure. There's an Orchard farm next door which was marginally better so we walked around the rows of flowers and made our way back the truck where we waited from the frenchies to come back.
We're all back inside the truck and tanking it down the motorway towards our next stop which was a visit to the The Chiang Dao Karen Long Neck - Padaung Village which consists of about 6 families with around 8 ladies

The Karen Long Neck Hilltribe Padaung belongs to the Kenmic group in the Tibeto-Burman language family.
The Padaung escaped from the Kaya State in Burma to Thailand in the mid to late 1900's and are actually refugees of a political turmoil. They belong to the Karenni sub-group of the Karen People, which are still fighting for their independence in Burma.
The Padaung women famously wear brass rings around their necks. This distorts the growth of their collarbones and make them look as if they have long necks - which they don't. This row of brass rings do not actually stretch their necks but in fact squash the vertebrae and collar bones. A woman generally has about twenty or more rings around her neck. This neck ring adornment is started when the girls are 5 or 6 years old.

The atmosphere in the Chiang Dao Long Neck Village seems pleasantly relaxed and there's no pressure to buy stuff as we walked through the huts and shacks. The women are either sitting weaving new garments or just sitting around with smiles on their faces and are happy to pose for photos.

Its toasting hot now as we continued driving through the hills and we start seeing large elephants walking around the fields and also on the road in front of us. We seemed to be more excited than the young children on board about the prospects of riding on the back of an elephant. We hopped off the truck and headed for a group of elephants huddled under a stilted house.
Standing high up in the house we can touch the elephants which are really friendly and show no signs of misuse which was a sigh of relief. There's three elephants here for the ten of us so the two families get an elephant each. Jill and I are sharing with the oldest boy of the group who is about eight or nine years old.
Lucky for me I am to sit on the elephants neck while jill shares the seat with the young kid which is perched behind me on the elephants back. It feels prickly and leathery as you touch 'Nellys' neck and ears and she slowly starts to walk off with the other two elephants in front of us. Our handler is always nearby commanding Nelly, keeping her in the right direction and he kindly offers to take photos of as he instructs Nelly to stop, which she does without any fuss.
We climbed up and down some very steep hills which were no match for Nelly who gets us slowly up and down without even breaking sweat. Its a bit edgy being up here as you have to clench your butt cheeks and tightened your grip because you get the sensation of falling off as the balance get tipped to one side.
We head off down to the river and took a nice trek along the banks of the river for around a mile before stopping to buy a bunch of bananas for 50p. The neck is not the most comfiest of places to sit on the elephant and Im starting to get a sore arse big time.
The elephants been flapping his ears every few seconds the whole way which is a blessing as its keeping my legs cool and once Nelly's realised Ive got a bunch of bananas in my hand her trunk comes up suggestively. Scoop! there goes a whole banana in one! Crunch! crunch! crunch! and up comes the trunk! Its just aswell we have about twenty bananas in our bunch and we start to ration them as she has already had a banana rush and is plodding along quite briskly now. She stops and we hear the inevitable plopping noise of dropping poo.
Its another half hour before we arrive back at base where we give the young french lad our last bananas so he could feed Nelly himself. We are impressed to how tame the elephants are as we stand beside then patting them without any worries and we just wanted to take them home with us.
A delicious lunch of chicken pad Thai was followed by a short van journey to the other side of the park where we begun our jungle trek. The trail was rugged in places and every so often we encountered a wooden bridge or a fallen tree which we had to climb across in order to proceed. About a hour later we had reached our destination at a pretty little waterfall and we were shattered by now as the heat is almost unbearable. The rest of the group went for a swim in the pools below the falls while chilled out with drinking as much water as we could.
We waited for everyone to get changed before setting off on the hour walk back to base and its was slightly easier getting back as we were downhill most of the way.
Once at base we wasted no time at all by getting ready for our whitewater rafting trip down the river and once we sorted out our lifejackets, helmets and pumped the boat up we set off carrying the two dingys towards the river.
Jill and I are in seperate boats. Its not long before we rafting down the torrents between rocks and in a sense we are fortunate there has been a drought recently as the water is not as fast and high as it normally is. We navigate through some rapids which are hemmed in by large rocks and we do our best to bounce off them and keep paddling. Its pretty exciting in parts and as long as it stays like this it should be fine.
Our guide is at the rear of our dingy steering as we all paddle in sync, or trying to, and its not long before we catch up with some other dingys. All of a sudden a water fight breaks out and we're all splashing our paddles and annoying each other by flipping water into each others faces.
We entered into a mellow phase of the river which was twenty minutes of calmly floating quietly downstream with smiley faces. Whats that noise im thinking? The smiley faces change to scared faces and we head towards the noise of rushing thunderous water which could only mean one thing....Rapids!!! All of a sudden we''re paddling for our lives as our guide shouts orders and the rocks are coming thick and fast. 'Forward!' 'Backwards!' 'Forward!"
Theres a couple of plunge pools to overcome and we're now facing backwards, paddling backwards and wondering where the hell we are! Its great fun and after the storm there's the calm and we're now sat at the rivers edge hoping for a nice break.
Our guide pops us onto a bamboo raft and proceeds to float us down the rest of the way on the very mellow, flat and wide part of the river which was a great way to end the river section as it gave us time to reflect on the days activities.
We reached the base about a hour later and our driver was waiting for us with our bags and camera's.
The two hours journey home was a pain as the roads are really busy with Mopeds and the stench of fumes is choking everyone. We are glad to see the hostel appear as we say au revoir to the others and hit the bar for a well deserved beer. Later we grabbed some Thai curry at a road side stall and it was fantastic and one of the best we've tasted yet. £4 for two curries and two beers, loving it!
We're moving off on our travels again tomorrow and we've somehow forgotten to arrange visas for vietnam so we're doing an express service online in the hope that the visas are waiting for us in Ha Noi Airport.

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Photos

Butterfly Farm.
the one and only butterfly we saw!