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Published: April 10th 2008
Wow. it has been days of the most adventurous adventures in awhile! starting where I last left you....in Bangkok-had some mango and sticky rice from the street and icecream for dinner which was wonderful. Then i got on my bus to head to Chiang Mai. We left way later than planned and it was not the most comfortable thing. I sleep so well on sleeper trains that i was hoping buses would have the same effect. not so much. didn't sleep one wink, but it was ok. got eaten my some bugs and survived the ride. oddly enough, the bus stopped at 1am for a 1 hour dinner break. that makes no sense to me. we got in around 6:30am and instead of going to the actual bus station, the bus takes us to a gas station. and not to get gas. they drop us off and shuttle us into these big vans. sorry dad-i had to go, even though i thought they may steal my kidneys. it was too early to do anything else! we all knew this was some kind of scam, but at 6:30am after a night of no sleep, you really don't care. the vans then bring us to a guest house which actually looked pretty nice, but for principle i didnt want to stay in a place that was forced upon me. i headed to a hostel that i had been recommended to by someone i had met weeks back and it is great! i got in, got my bed, chatted with some people about giving elephants baths and went to sleep for a few hours. upon waking up, i headed out to explore the town. it was super hot, but i managed to walk around for almost 5 hours, only stopping to eat the best veggie sandwhich ever! it had actual super grainy bread and avocado! i was really excited! i walked by a bunch of the 300 temples here and they were really nice, but i didnt feel like being cultural and didn't go in any of them. horrible! i then went back to the hostel and went to dinner with a bunch of people from here. i went to bed by 10 and slept wonderfully, not even hearing any of the others who came home much later than me!
i got up the next morning to begin my 3 day jungle adventure. from the brochures, this seemed to be much more hardcore than our other 1 night jungle trip from phuket and i was hoping that would be true! it turned out to be amazing!! i was in a group of 9 people to start and we trekked for about 5 hours the first day. this wsa not any old trek....think up a mountain (12 zillion times steeper than los liones!), with a backpack (not all my stuff, but 3 days worth) and for many many hours! it was great! i knew i'd be feeling it the next day! before reaching our final destination, we stopped at a dirt soccer field where we had a game of tourists versus locals. it was so hot, but so fun. i somehow was not too bad, but overly aggressive. i kicked a few small children by accident when they were trying to get the ball from me. luckily, there were no rules! and we won! by a lot!! we then got to our cabin (which was great-bamboo suspended on stilt like things that you could probably fall through at any second!) and took the best shower-freezing cold direct from a pipe that was completely out of control! i had some major wardrobe malfunctions once again...i accidently packed 3 extra pairs of shorts and 1 shirt. oops. after washing my shirt i had worn all day, i dropped the one i had been planning on sleeping in in the mud. so i had to either wear the sopping wet one, or the muddy one. i went with the mud. luckily the other one dried by the morning. this happened 2 more times with that same shirt-it just loved the mud! day 2 the other ones did an elephant trip, but i didn't since i had already done that. i hung out and did some yoga in my very unstable cabin until they got back. we then trekked another super amount, but this one ended at a waterfall! it was wonderful! i jumped off a 6 meter rock that you had to take a running start in order to clear the rocks and land in the small area below. it was a bit crazy, but so fun! we had the best time swimming and jumping! we then left 6 of our group who were only there for 2 days. the 3 of us then joined up with another group (who we decided we should hate just because they were new!) turns out, the new people were a bunch of people i had met in my hostel, so we un-hated them. we had a really fun night of singing, chatting, drinking in a second unstable hut! i was terrified the many candles used to give us light were going to tip over and catch our bamboo house on fire!
we got up in the morning to head back down to the waterfall which was a wonferful way to wake up! it was good after not sleeping too well-its hard when every time you move, the entire cabin shakes. we then had breakfast and then went back to the waterfall. it was great watching the local kids playing in the waterfall-they are fearless-jumping, playing with fire and never getting hurt! we then went for another few hour trek to meet up with our ATV's before lunch. we headed to lunch on ATV and then had some lunch, although there were so many chickens running around the i was convinced they were going to peck my legs under the table and give me bird flu. we then left most of the group (now 4 of us) to go dirt biking! this didnt work out as planned but ended up being hilarious! there were only 3 bikes and being that i can't drive one, i went on the back of the guides. there were big stickers warning not to ride with a passenger due to serious risk of death and injury, but i figured they knew what they were doing! ha! the others were 2 on one and one on the other. one was automatic and one wasnt...long story short, the manual one was totally messed up and kept stalling and the auto one broke down. don't worry-they fixed it with a stick, which surprisingly only lasted for about 5 more meters! when the manual one wasn't working, the guide got really frustrated and kept yelling at the Canadian girl to stop driving like a 'ladyboy! it was so funny, being that she's a girl! we ended up missing our whitewater rafting with the rest of the group since it took so long! the best part was-since the new year's starts tomorrow, the village kids were already into the water throwing. my guide would stop in front of the kids yelling "Firang! Firang!" and they would dump buckets upon buckets of water on me! no wonder the bikes broke!
we ended up having our own white water rafting trip, but being that this is the dry season, there wasn't much white water-just a lot of rocks!!we got stuck on just about every rock, other than when we would pull over to the side of the river and find a friend of our guide who would make us drink whisky. yuck. we then took a bamboo raft down much of the river which was so peaceful and great!
we then headed back to town and i was so happy to change out of my wet clothes since i hadnt been dry for more than one second in 3 days. we were driving down the street in the jeep and the windows were open. those kids are amazing....again with the buckets of water, but they had perfect aim! it went right into the windows so strongly that it sadly knocked my icecream cone right out of my hand and across the car! oh and my only serious bodily injuries were when i completely rolled my ankle trekking (uckily i have no ligaments left anyway), fully subluxed my shoulder trying to climb up a waterfall, sliding on my front down the waterfall when my shoulder subluxed and slamming everything into the rocks, and having a gushing bleeding toe when it slammed in the raft in the not so white water. not so bad!
we arrived back and i finally took a real shower and headed to a buffet...i was so hungry (due to the icecream incident) that the plain spaghetti tasted fabulous-i didn't even mind that most of the pieces crunched!i also had bad french fries dipped in chocolate cake and mushroom sushi.
tomorrow begins the real start of the festival- i cant wait! fun fun! i probably wont be dry again until i leave thailand! i am going to attempt to take some dance and yoga classes while here and bathe an elephant! one of the guys staying here is a chef and we are going to make homemade ravioli tomorrow if we can organize it! yum!
ok if i can dry my hands off for a few seconds...i will fill you in on the festival soon! Sawasdee Bemaka!!! Happy New Year!
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katie
non-member comment
yay!
So that totally sounds like the jungle adventure that we were all hoping for! I'm so glad that you did all the fun adventure stuff! And an ATV? Seriously? You drove it and didn't die? I guess with 3 or 4 wheels, it's a little better, right? Happy New Year! Sawadee Bemaka! :) xoxo katie