so here's a quick update on our trekking shennanigans, a longer update will come next time...
we organised a 3 day trek through our hostel to the south west of chiang mai, having started super early on the wed we had a damn gd breakie to send us on our way and left making oiur way first to a local market so our guide could get all the food for the next 3 days. There were 9 of us on the trek 2 germans, 2 aussies and the rest english :) along with our thai guide (guide NOT bride!) (Mon)tri. Our first stop was at the market where Henry bought an interesting viser (sun hat thingy/ you'll c in the pics which will follow). We then made our way into the hills for some elephant riding, where we got to spend an uncomfortable hour on our elephant who went by the name of Chironda, pretty hair raising stuff going up and down steep hills feeling most of the time that we were going to fall off and get squished :) having got back in one piece we thanked the elephant by feeding it a dozen or so bananas which it guzzled quite happily. we then drove for about an hour to a cave, pitched up and had some lunch and then went caving where we saw thousands of bats and quite a few LARGE spiders. we then drove for an hour or so and began our trekking in the hills for a gd 3 hours where we finally arrived in the pitch black at the village we were staying at that night. the villages were basic to say the least, the pics following will explain better than words but no electricity, glorified holes in the ground for loos and bamboo beds (no matress) made for an interesting night. we did however soften the primative way of life by trying jungle whisky and jungle tea, both an experience!!! We also got to chat to some locals, and Tri was great at telling us all about the local way of life as well as showing us a cucumber the size of a watermelon.
On the second day we got up early, started trekking by 9am stopping only briefly for lunch and arriving at our second nights accomodation which was pretty similar but right beside a river as it was the rafting camp. the 6 hours of trekking with leech attacks had left us pretty tired but a swim and a wash was seriously in need so the river was greatly appreciated. having all got to know each other a lot better, the cards came out and a few games of shithead were played alongside copious beers (see pics). another late night and another super early start left us on the 3rd day with the rafting, this had to be the funniest as we had no idea what we were doing, there were rocks everywhere in the river and our raft had suffered some heavy damage after about 10 minutes of working downstream. We made it to the end an hour later minus one pole for steering, 3 bamboo lengths broken, one guy with a badly scrapped back (where a tree took him out as he didn't duck quick enough) and Henry having lost his watch. On the way down we did get to see some awesome water buffalo and had to steer clear from some nests of huge wasps - great fun all round.
we finally got back into the truck after a short walk and after driving hours on some really crap roads we got to the view point of the highest mountain in thailand which was cool. finally before heading back to the hostel we went to a waterfall in the national park which was something spectacular to say the least, even though we did get pretty wet and somewhat muddy. anyway that just about sums up the 3 day trek in short, photos will add to this though im sure so we'll try n upload them asap. More thumbnails ...
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