Chiang Mai Jungle Adventures
Trip Start
Aug 31, 2008
1
19
27
Trip End
??? ??, 2009
Chiang Mai,
Thailand
Friday, November 21, 2008
After another lovely, joyful, oh so comfortable overnight bus ride, we arrived in chilly (well for Asia) Chiang Mai. Somehow Nice Place hotel has some sort of monopoly over the bus stop and had full access to all of us weary travelers. They taxi-ed us to their hotel, gave us some tea and a hard to turn down trekking/hotel offer, and we were signed up and back to bed for a much needed nap. We spent the rest of the day cruising the town and laying by the glacier cold pool. Very touristy town with lots of rolly suitcase type travelers. The night market was way over priced until they realized we were ol time backpackers and would whisper normal Khoa San prices to us. We went to an amazing Indian restaurant for dinner and the guys headed off to a Thai boxing match (see my brothers blog for that one), while Nadz and I checked out the shopping and headed to bed early, only to be awoken by our boys in the middle of the night, and Nadia somehow escaped a near dunk in the pool (not without waking up the entire hotel).
The next morning we were up and packed early to head off on our trek 3 hours north in the jungles surrounding Pai. They dropped us off in this mountain village where we got to visit a school and hang out for a bit. We then did a short hike into the jungle to the next village where we would stay for the night. Quite the place. Our home for the night consisted of one large bedroom (kind of like a raised barn with 15 beds on the floor), a common/ living area and a kitchen. Nadz, my bro, Mike (birthday boy!), Daryl and I walked around the town and suddenly found ourselves playing volleyball/soccer with some local kids, one of whom enjoyed trying to throw whatever his 3 year old arms could lift, at us. Once he ran out of items to throw he chose to smack our bums. Pretty hilarious. After shaking up the town a bit we returned to our abode and helped out making dinner which ended up being a scrumptious yellow curry dish. One of our new Aussie friends surprised Mike with a birthday cake which was pretty damn good as well. We were then entertained by the village kids with songs and dance, and then they turned the spot light on us and we had to entertain them with a very Chang Beer influenced, song and dance. We chose "Lion Sleeps Tonight" (how creative), and "Happy Birthday". I'm sure we blew the little Thai children away with our talents. After signing some autographs, we settled in with some rice whiskey aka death in a bottle. Not your typical Old City/ Queens birthday night hey Mike?! Sleep was quite decent minus the very drunk Irishman that seemed to be constantly lost in the room....
Our Nanaimo crew split from the rest of our trekking group the next morning to hike a few hours way up. It was worth it in the end when we met up with a family of elephants had got to ride the rest of the way on the backs of Stampy and Peanut, while their baby daughter ran crazy all around them. Very entertaining little girl. At the end we did some bamboo rafting and headed back into Chiang Mai. That night we hung out a Canadian owned pub and met some new friends as per usual.
Last day in Chiang Mai we headed out to Tiger Village (or something like that) and made more new friends with some tiger cubs. Nadia also made the wise decision to wear a zebra print sweat shirt which went over gloriously with the full grown tigers....oh Nadz. Quite the tourist trap to say the least. Not sure if I would recommend it. That night we began our 3 days journey to Luang Prabang in Laos... oh the adventures to come J
