The following was written 7-4 in a hill tribe village, somewhere in Northern Thailand.

5:36PM We climbed 1200 meters, almost straight up, during the hottest part of the day, in about 1.5-2 hours. It was hell. Within about 15 minutes I was dizzy and all my limbs were trembling.

It wasn’t the actual walk that got to me – my legs weren’t tired at all – but the heat. And dehydration.

It was worth it though, for the view. Rolling green hills wherever you look. We’ve been lounging around the village here for the past 2 hours. About 150 live here. All the buildings are bamboo. And on stilts.

I’m told dinner is elephant trunk. I think he’s joking.

There are dogs and chickens all over the village. The people grow corn to sell and rice to eat.

The following was written today, 7-7, during my failed attempt to leave Chiang Mai.

11:28AM Felt a lot better when I woke up this morning.

Last night at around 7PM I found the energy to get out of bed. I walked down to the 7-11 and bought water, bad chocolate chip cookies, and shampoo.

The shower this morning was nice. My hair feels somewhat normal after using the shampoo – Bronners makes my hair way too greasy.

Now I’m sitting at the bus station, with a ticket to Pai. I have no idea where I’m supposed to be, but the bus doesn’t leave till 12:30PM, so I’ve got time to figure that out.

I like Chiang Mai, but have spent far too much time here. Almost a week.

I hope I don’t start feeling sick again on the bus ride.

Last night I drank most of the water I bought, save for 4-6oz. In that I put 25 drops of Grapefruit Seed Extract and downed that. It tasted horrible, but, like I said, I feel better, so it must have worked.

1:00PM I missed the bus.

I swear the ticket said terminal 26, and everyone I asked agreed, but when I went back to the ticket window at 12:40, she said terminal 13. I guess no one but herself can read her writing. There weren’t any other buses to Pai today. I caught a tuk-tuk back to the inner-moat area and checked into another guest house for the night. Would like to get out of this city, but it looks like I’m in for another night.

The following was written in Chiang Mai, the night before my trek

11:07PM I’m tired and would like to go to bed, but I want to update this before I leave on the trek tomorrow.

I went to eat at a burger stand today. Good food, and they had plenty of funny signs making fun of Bush.

After that, I walked all around the inner-moat area. I ended up stopping at 6 different used book stores, but my daypack limited me to only buying 3 books.

At 5PM I caught a tuk-tuk to a Wat in the outskirts of town for Monk Chat. A monk about my age name Song (at least I was pronounced “song” – probably spelled something like Sawng) and I chatted for close to 2 hours about Buddhism. He cleared a lot of things up for me, and confused me more on others. It was a good chat, and I’d like to go talk with him again, but he convinced me even further that Buddhism is not for me. It’s so disconnected from the natural world.

From there, I walked to the clear other side of town for the famous Chiang Mai Night Bazaar. I managed not to buy anything, save for a spicy noodle dinner, but it was an impressive event. I wonder why we don’t have things like this back home.

I came back to the guest house at about 10PM and have spent the last hour packing. Trying to decide what to bring, what to leave here in my backpack, what to place in the sealed envelope. I’m leaving my passport, license, credit and debit cards here, along with most of my cash, but taking copies of the aforementioned and a little cash with me. I hope I won’t have any trouble leaving my valuables here. They’ve been fine here in my room, and will tomorrow will be locked away in a more secure location, but it still worries me.

I’m leaving my camera here, but will bring a journal with me (not this one – a waterproof one).

Off to bed.

The following was written 7-6 in Chiang Mai.

2:35PM Woke up this morning feeling sick.

Been on the toilet a lot. Would like to vomit, but can’t.

They moved me to a new room at 12. Sleeping ever since.

Speakeasy tells me I’m getting 232k down and 194k up. Slow, but this is one of the nicer cafes I’ve been in. Cheap, too.

I don’t know what I’ll do the rest of the day. Probably just read a book.

Teerapong Gunshum left their Google Talk logged in.

Looks like trouble at Critical Mass. The Seattle ride rarely makes news.

And a new Patrolling has been released! That will have to wait till I get back.

The following was written 7-3 in Chiang Mai.

12:44PM I got into Kristi House last night around 9:30PM. The front desk must close early because only the after-hours security guard was there. He spoke very little English, but managed to get me a room.

I can’t say I’m very impressed with the place. It’s more of a hotel than a guest house. The rooms are very plain and impersonal. I didn’t think of this at the time, but I probably shouldn’t have taken guest house advice from a smoker. Smoking is allowed in all the rooms here. But that doesn’t bother me – if it weren’t for the ashtray and sign that asks you not throw butts out the window, I probably wouldn’t know. What bothers me is the smell of the horrible strongly scented cleaner they must use to mask the smoke.

But for 200 Baht, it’s a very good deal. I have a queen size bed and a private bathroom.

After checking in last night I headed down the block to the Sunday Night Market, a seemingly endless row of craft vendors. Had I not been limited by the space in my backpack, it would be incredibly hard to hold on to my Baht. As it was, I just feasted on a variety of food and fresh-squeezed juices.

I seem to have lucked out in location. There are excellent restaurants all over the place. I’ll be putting on some weight here.

Today for breakfast I had a sort of noodle soup with chicken and vegetables. They also had chocolate milk shakes, so I indulged, even though I should be avoiding dairy.

This morning I signed up for a trek. 1,100 Baht for 2 days, 1 night. Elephant riding, white-water rafting, bamboo rafting, hill-tribes, and all of that. We leave tomorrow at 9:30AM. (Tomorrow is the 4th of July? It seems it was just the 1st yesterday.) I chose the short trek because I think I’ll be doing more of them as my journey continues.

After I get back from the Trek, I think I’ll spend one more night in Chiang Mai (not at Kristi). Then I’m considering following the “Northern Loop” itinerary in Lonely Planet till I get distracted and decide to break off.

One thing I’ve decided for sure that I want to do is stay at the Akha Hill House, a remotely located guest house run by the Akha tribes people. It sound like a nice place to stay and do little for a few days, plus they organize overnight stays in the surrounding jungle with guides who build huts and cook with bamboo. It’ll be like a Ray Mears TV show… kinda.

I’m enjoying Chiang Mai. It’s much calmer than Bangkok, and less smelly. It’s just as hot in the day, but a little cooler at night. Surprisingly, there’s an incredible amount of Farang here. Much more so than Bangkok. You can’t walk a block without seeing another white person.

The architecture of the Wats is very cool – sort of a Buddhist spin on Ronan from Lord of the Rings – but they’re small and all rather similar, so there’s little sight seeing to do here in that department.

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.