"no whiskey, no sleep"

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his is kinda an old entry I wrote most of a while back. stuff about cambodia soon I hope!-

The last entry ended in Chiang Mai, the northern thailand captial. I've spent most of the time from then till now in chiang mai, although right now I'm on the border between thailand and cambodia, having taking consecutive busses for 15 hours to get here! As usual with border towns theres little to do here - so a good chance to catch up with the blog.

The rest of thailand was as awesoime (perhaps more so), as the first half. I wish I could stay in thailand a bit longer - its a really nice country and I;d only just started to get to grips with the language and culture. You really only get a snapshot of a country in two weeks, which is one reason I'm looking forward to my time in cambodia. Still, Ive found thai people as hospitable (perhaps more so?) as the chinese and vietnamese people,'and really good fun to drink with, although if I here "çhuaan di" once more [colloquial thai for 'cheers' - usually an invitation to down the thai whiskey they just poured you] I think I'll be sick! Off to the land of cambodia tomorrow - I have a five hour drive in the back of a pick up truck along unpaved roads with potentially quite a lot of others for company - so I better get some rest soon!

I spent the first few days in chiang mai (thailands 'northern capital') with a couple of german girls, exploring the city and beyond. The city itself is kinda ruined by the hordes of old weestern men with pretty (and generally much, much younger loooking) thai women - who we had good fun scowling at from the street as intrusively as possible every evening. Around chiang mai, though, seems a hell of a lot nicer than inside it as we soon found a few cool places pretty close to the city. We met some friendly thai students at the top of a waterfall and went to probably the nicest restaurant Ive ever seen. It was made completely of bamboo (even the toilets!) and was all open plan, and the balcony we sat on overlooked a part of the waterfall which was floodlit through the evening. Food wasgreat as well, and afterwards we went to a thai kareoke bar and sank some more beers with the locals. We even sang a thai kareoke song with an english chorus (the beer here is 6.4% - blame that!).

I met up with four of the others in the intervol group a day later, and we went on a guided trek for three days almost straight away. It realy was three of the best three days ever - we stayed the first night in bungalows truly in the middle of nowhere, where the only shower was the waterfall and the only light/ heat source was the campfire! the second night we spent in a karen village (the karen are a hill tribe population in northern thailand), under the hospitality of a local man and his three wives The tour guides were pretty funny (one of their mottos, "no whiskey, no sleep", seemed to sum the nights up perfectly) and made the trip. Trekking on the last day in monsoon rains was pretty fun as well, climbing over rocks, waterfalls, fallen logs etc. for three hours. In the meantime the trek included bamboo rafting, elphant riding and a few scenic waterfalls and some reasonably heavy nights
drinking. If anyone is reading this and is in Chiang mai wondering which company to trek with, I really really reccomend the banana guest house in the old quater.

The final two of the intervol members - kate and katy, caught up with us the evening we got back from the trek. Heavy drinking ensued, and the days bewtween that evening and now have been primarily spent recovering from an especially nasty hangover, trying not to feel too ill whilst travelling on cheap ass bussess which play what must be the worst pop music in the world all through the night.

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Photos

Becci overlooking chiang mai
worth the climb - just as the tour guides promised!!!

togtether, in the middle if nowhere!
"cheese"(y) :-)

wife and daugter
this was one of our hosts' wives, with her daughter. awwwww.

the group
from the left, danni, becci, kalpz, our host, danni (with hands all over) kong (our apprentice tour guide), a random boy and yon (half cut off) - the 18 year old with a life threatenipng growth development condition (but still smiling).

-fin-
the end of the trek - after trekking through mud baths and monsoon rains on the last morning.

crossing a stream
this is just to prove that we were actually in a jungle! (as the other photos seem to miss this...)

Comments

[Tree]

Wow! Everything looks awesome, please hug lots of trees... Take care and keep enjoying (and sharing) man!