Trek

The following was written 7-5 in Chiang Mai

6:48PM Where to start?

We spent the rest of the evening at the village playing cards and being impressed by Jungle Boy’s (one of the guides) magic tricks. That’s the only name he would give us, by the way. Jungle Boy. He deserved it.

The bed was a bit hard that night – just a blanket on the bamboo floor. They also provided another couple blankets and mosquito nets.

I’m all chewed up now. Not from the night, but the earlier evening.

I think I forgot to mention dinner. It was rice, curry, vegetables, and mystery meat (white, but had more flavor than chicken). And pineapple. Lots of pineapple. Given today and yesterday, I’ve probably eaten my weight in pineapple.

This morning they fed us breakfast of hard-boiled eggs, toast, and tea.

We started walking again at about 11AM. It was rather cool and misty (not to mention down hill), so was much easier than yesterday. The English girl had trouble with the slope – she slipped and fell a lot. I did once.

An hour later we were at the elephant camp and rode them around in a loop for 45 minutes. They didn’t seem to be treated very well. Not much worse than any animal in captivity, I suppose, but weren’t as happy as the Elephants in the royal stable in Ayuthaya.

From there it was on to white water rafting with another group. It wasn’t anything serious, but there were a few good splashes. Fun.

We beached the rafts after about 30 minutes and jumped on bamboo rafts, which was a lot of fun and incredibly wet. With the weight of people, the bamboo sinks a few inches beneath the surface, so you’re actually sitting in the river. The water was shallow enough that one probably would have stayed drier just walking down it.

They fed us lunch and trucked us back to guest house.

It was a good time. I’d recommend the trek to anyone who can walk.

My pack at the guest house had been untouched. Same with the “security” envelope, so that’s a relief.

After I picked up my stuff from Kristi’s, I caught a tuk-tuk to a hostel a few blocks north. When I arrived, they told me they were full. The tuk-tuk driver (who was the same as the one who drove me to Monk Chat, so we knew each other) offered to take me to any other hostel I wished, for free. But the second one I chose was also full. The driver didn’t mind, so I asked him to take me to another on the other side of town. It was more expensive, but I’d walked by it a few times previously and it looked nice enough.

They only had a room for one night, and I wanted 2. The lady at the desk said she’d find me another room for tomorrow. At least I have somewhere to crash tonight.

The rooms are similar to Kristi, but much nicer. There’s also a TV, which was a surprise. I took a long shower and did a little laundry in there too.

Now I’m eating a bit of dinner and afterwards I think I might wander over to the night bazaar again.

I’m not feeling very motivated to write in this at the present moment, but figure I ought to at least try to bring it up to date.

My pen is running out of ink. I’m also running out of soap. I think I might need to buy a hair brush, too.

I’ll try to find some internet tomorrow and post everything.