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Chiang Mai
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After a long & bumpy night on the sleeper train we arrived in Chiang Mai and were shuttled to our hotel for the night, People Place.
After not sleeping too well on the train we had certainly booked ourselves into a long day ahead, we would be doing elephant riding, bamboo rafting & going to a kickboxing match that evening, I guess we thought we would try and do as much as possible while we had the chance.
Our guide Jimmy picked us up at around 10am and we set off on the long journey to the countryside to meet up with the elephants. We didn't realize it was going to be an hour and a half journey out into the country on a converted flat bed truck with bench seating and a tarp top, even worse was witnessing a couple of dead people on the road after being knocked of their scooter, an advert for condoning obligatory helmet law if ever we saw one.
After finally arriving at the elephant sanctuary we were given the lowdown on the Asian elephant's characteristics and how they were being protected from doing illegal logging work on the border. We waited for our elephants to come back from the previous hike whilst playing with the baby elephant that was hanging around the camp. We didn't really notice the elephants coming back until at one point they were right behind us about 1 foot away, a bit unnerving to have a two ton animal sneak up behind you.
It was time to mount our steeds, which was a fairly painless process of climbing a platform and then just stepping onto the elephants back and taking a seat, then being locked in place with a bar, a bit like going on a rollercoaster. We then stopped by the banana platform to get in some treat supplies; little did we know we would be paying a few more visits to these.
It immediately became evident that our elephant wasn't stupid and definitely didn't forget, as every five paces she would stop, the trunk would come up and we wouldn't move any further until a banana was provided. All very amusing at first but a little tiresome in the end as it was taking ages to get anywhere, elephants don't have the nicest breath, plus we were going through more bananas in cost than the ride itself !!
We also had a companion in the form of a baby elephant and every so often a trunk would reach out from below trying to snaffle a loose banana, all very cute as Helen would say, until the baby grabbed her foot and nearly pulled her from her seat, no injuries, just a trail of elephant snot across her foot, yuk!!
We rode around the countryside for about an hour, going up and down hills and through the bush and 6 bags of bananas later we were back at camp, happy to be back in one piece and not too wet after the watering hole. We shouldn't have been overly worried about getting wet though, as next we would be doing the bamboo rafting.
A short drive away we arrived at the rafting centre, no lifejackets or helmets required, we boarded the rafts made from about 10 sticks of bamboo lashed together. We set off down the river, Helen with Karin and myself with the only other guy on the trip, Nick, and the four girls making up the party of eight. Only a couple of minutes in and we were punting the rafts ourselves and splashing the other people in the group, the raft guides being more competitive than us. It appeared that the guides liked to turn the rafting into a game of shunting, splashing and trying to make each other get stuck on the banks or rocks, which was fine by us and got the camaraderie going. People were hopping from one raft to another, splashing each other and generally being idiots and it didn't take long until we were all soaked through, some of us ending up in the water. This was a really good afternoon on the river and hopefully the pictures from the underwater camera come out well when we get them developed. We then set off on the hour and a half journey back to then city to meet up with the rest of the group for dinner and a vii to Wat Thrapet, a bit exhausted, but all smiling after a great day of experiences.
We quickly got changed and headed upto Wat Thrapet which had a 300 step climb to the top. The views were good especially as we could see the wall of rain headed towards us.
We had a look around the Wat and then watched the monks chanting at 6pm for their daily worship, finishing with a go on the lucky sticks to see what our fortunes held.
We had dinner at the local night market, which was very nice, and to the backdrop of some traditional dancing, it was just a shame it had been raining earlier and the market wasn't that busy. The five of us who were going to the kickboxing had to rush a bit to meet Jimmy back at the hotel for a lift to the kickboxing stadium.
We got to the kickboxing stadium in time for the first fight which was what seemed to be between two thirteen year olds. Not that this made the fighting any less serious, one of these young kids knocking the other out in the final round, they were really vicious.
All this was to the background of some crazy Thai music by a drummer, guy clanging some bells and an old dude playing some weird type of oboe, with spit dribbling out of the end - gross!! Not quite fight night in shed no.1, but we sank a few Singha's nonetheless.
We watched about 6 different fights, all very competitive, but didn't make any bets as the system was a bit confusing and it was like a stampede in there. It was definitely worth going to watch, but as we were quite tired and wanted to catch the end of the night market we left about half way through all the fights.
Back at the night market, the people were just packing up and there wasn't a whole lot of nice stuff on offer, so Helen went back to the hotel whilst I got a back massage before bed, at $3 for an hour you'd be stupid not to! After a long but really good day, we collapsed, ready for the drive to Chiang Khong the next day, our meeting point for the boat down the Mekong River.
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