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Chiang Mai Hill top Treking
Entry 14 of 42 | show all | print this entry |
Am getting picked up at 9.30am today for my trek, so i pack a day bag as lightly as i can and check-out of the hostel. I leave my main backpack in their secured luggage room and sit down to breakfast while i wait.
The jeep picks me up around 10 and we do a little tour of Chiang Mai before stopping at a hotel to pick up a big group of french tourists. I am just going through all my french vocab in my head when we arrive at the tour offices and the french group get off the bus and a group of 4 english lads get on! 3 French guys, and american and a dutch couple also join us and the trip is ready to start. I am really worried about the treking now as apart from the dutch lady i am the only female in the group and they all have longer legs than me!
I get talking to the lads and they are: Dave, Jon, Ed and Chris. Jon, Ed and Chris are mates from school and all live in Birmingham, Dave is a guy they picked up in Ko Pha Ngan and has joined them for the Chiang Mai part of their trip. They are all 22/23 and have just finished uni.
We arrive at the elephant park and all have lunch there together, then the group splits into those doing the elephant ride and those doing a full day treking. The lads are off treking with the american, Jo and the French Guys, (Vincent and 2 others whose names i can't remember) and the Dutch couple (again i can't remember their names!) and i go for the elephant riding.
We climb up the bamboo structure that serves as a platform onto the elephants backs and onto the elephants. Vincent and i are on the back of one elephant with our guide on the head. After about 10 mins our guide gets bored and suggests that Vincent rides on the head while he walks alongside! Vincent is stuck riding on the head for about 20 mins while our guide walks along in front singing and hitting the other guides with a stick while having a huge smile on his face! He is mad, completely crazy and it is great fun! Just as we are about to desend down a bank to cross a river the guide swaps Vincent and i and i have my turn riding on the head. It is quite hard work, you have to clamp your legs up behind the elephants ears and hold onto the top of his head, which is bristly and very solid. I ride on the head the rest of the way back to the camp and my legs feel like rubber when we get off.
But no sooner are we off the elephants than our treking guide hands us our bags and starts walking. He starts of at quite a fast pace and i am using all my determination to keep up and not complain. I am doing very well until we start the hill assent. We spend 2 hours walking up the hills and i have to stop the group a couple of times just so i can breath. Just as i think i am going to have to sit down where i am and die, the guide anounces that we are nearly at the top of the 3rd hill and have actually made very good time! My spirits lifted i make it to the top of the 3rd and final hill where we find a bat cave and invesigate. Unfortunately the path down into the cave has lots of spider webs around it so the guide won't lets us in very far and we don't get to see the bats, but there are some huge spiders on the ceiling!!
It is all flat or down from here to the village and we arrive at the village within the 3 hours that the guide had predicted at the beginning. The village is not what i had expected though, there is a concrete road leading up to big concrete houses with new 4x4's outside, it is very modern and wealthly!! Where are the bamboo huts etc?
We walk another 10 mins down the road to the camp, which is much more like it, bamboo huts with veranda's over looking a beautifull waterfall and really fires for cooking.
The lads are already here and after one look at me suggest the showers (the cheek!) they are cold, but so refreshing and i get out feeling human and so very very proud of myself. I managed the 3 hour walk without slowing down the group or worse, colasping!
The guys are playing a card game that i have never seen before and i convince them to teach me it. It is quite a complicated game, but i pick it up and we spend most of the evening playing and chatting. The guides cook us dinner, which is soup and rice-but after the day treking i will eat anything!
One of the local village boys comes to play with us that evening, he is around 10 and very smart, i teach him snap, though we never managed to get the word snap, so it was just the 1st person to gasp that got the pile! I also spend most of the evening tickling him, as you have to with 10 year olds!
I finally crawl onto the sleeping mat at 11 having lost 160 baat to the guys playing brag, it was a great evening!
The next day we get up at 8 for breakfast, which turns out to be toast and scrambled eggs, i eat as much as i can to give me energy for todays walk! The english lads have decided that their planned 5 hour trek is too much and they tag along with us for our 2 hour trek, but opt out of the rafting.
2 of the french guys leave us to carry on with their 4 day trek and the 8 of us and our guides start to walk. The local boy from the village (who has started to tickle me back! Damn these smart 10 year olds!) was back over breakfast and has taken a liking to us and decides to do the trek with us. Only he is doing it without any shoes! I manage to palm my bag off on to him for a short while, but he finds it too heavy so i have to take it back. It is fun to see him running up the track then turning and waiting for us, he is having great fun hiding behind fallen logs and climbing up the vines, our very own tarzan! We ask him his name and he says it is Boy, it makes us feel very english and we ask him to make us a gin and tonic when we rest!! Unfortunately there is none available, so we have to carry on with the walking. I am finding the assent hard work again today, but there doesn't seem to be too much of it and before long we arrive at the waterfall where we swim. It is great fun fighting against the water to get under the waterfall and then letting it push us down the stream. We take it in turns to splash boy and he is having great fun doing handstands etc. After about half an hour we have to get out of the water and carry on with the walking. Another hours walk and we arrive at the lunch spot! Whooppee we have finished walking and i don't ever have to do it again!!! So happy that i made it!
After lunch Boy leaves us and those that are rafting jump in the back of a jeep to be taken up stream. We don the horrible life jackets and listen to the instructions before getting in the boat. The rapids are fairly tame so we paddle hard into them to make us go faster. Unfortunately in one set of rapids we hit a rock sideways on and i am thrown from the boat along with the french guy sitting in front. I land in on another rock on my back and am still holding onto the boat and my paddle when i get dragged over another get of rocks, which causes the dutch lady to fall out on top of me!! It is all very scary for a short while but we are now out of the rapids and the boat guide pulls us both back on board. I have managed to keep hold of my paddle and the life jacket protected my back so i am feeling fine, The dutch lady dropped her paddle and also caught her leg on some of the rocks, it is already turing purple, but it hasn't broken the skin. So all in all we are ok! We paddle alittle further and exchange the boat for bamboo rafts. The 7 of us are all on one bamboo raft, which floats along the river about 3 inches under the surface. If you look at us from the bank it looks like we are sitting on nothing but water!
We end up back at the lunch spot and before long are back in Chiang Mai. I am first to be dropped off, but i have arrange to meet the guys at their hotel later for dinner and drinks, oh i need a strong drink!
At 7pm i jump into a passing Tuk Tuk and find my way to the guy's hotel, they are waiting outside having just come back from the internet cafe and we decide to go to an italian for dinner. The restaurant is situated in a small outdoor complex with other restaurants and shops, it is all very pretty and i am really looking forward to pasta!
We sit at a table outside, but after 5mins of being bombed by bugs, we move to an indoor table. I order pasta with Italian Sausage which is gorgeous and the guys have pizzas.
After dinner we decide to find a pub with dart board, the guys have been playing regularly and have a competition on between the Chang beer drinkers and the Singa beer drinkers. They are playing a game called cricket, where one team is the bowlers and they have to hit 5 bulls to get the other team out, and the other team are batters and they need to get as many runs as possible, any score over 40 counts as runs.
It is quite a fun game to watch and very quickly team chang is in the lead. Between each game we play killer so that i can have a throw of the darts, but really i am having too much fun watching the cricket and tghe argueing between the teams, it is really competitive and very very funny to watch.
As the beer flows team Chang's lead demishes and at the end of the 3 game series team Singa are successfull but by only 10 runs! It is midnight by the time we leave the pub and head to a bar. We find a little outdoor bar and order cocktails, they provide us with popcorn and Jon decides to see how many he can fit in his mouth, we get to 50 pieces before i get bored and stop counting! Show off!
We are told of another bar that is jumping at this time so we all pile into a tuk tuk and try to find this bar. We get taken to a street with loads of small games bars, full of pool tables and other games. We can't find the bar that was recomended but we wonder into one of the other bars so Dave can play pool and i can get a drink.
They have jenga and connect 4. Jon beats me at connect 4 first time round, but i soon manage to redeem myself before we quickly have to leave as some lady boys have surrounded Chris and are scaring Ed!
We head back to the open air bar and go into the club next door called Spicys. The club is packed with backpackers from my hostel and thai girls. We have a few drinks and dance a little before deciding to leave around 3.30am.
We walk back to the lads hotel so i can get a taxi back, but decide to play the card games i learnt on the trek and we finally crash out (having kicked one of the lads out of their bed!) around 4.30-5. I have to leave for Bangkok tomorrow to start my Imaginative traveller tour and i am going to be soooooo tired!
Where I stayed:
spicythai
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