The Adventures of Doug and Bec: Thailand

After an awesome trip to see the Tigers we decided a trek was next on the cards. Unfortunately it rained all night and all the next day and resulted in all the streets around our guest house being flooded. For this reason we decided to put the trek off for a day, which would restrict us to a two day trek rather than a three day which we originally intended to do.

The day of our trek came around, and we packed up all our gear to store it at the tourist agent as like many hotels in Thailand, ours charged to look after out bags. We were collected in a covered in Ute, which seemed to be the run of the mill transport for tours in Chiang Mai, about 9 am and proceeded to pick up several other guests. In the end 9 of us piled into the Ute, including three guys from New Zealand, two girls from the UK, a girl from Canada and another from Chile… definitely more of a mix than most of the other things we had done around Asia.

Once we were all on board we headed out to the local markets where the tour guides collected what we would have for lunch, and the rest of us had half an hour to explore the markets and buy various fruits such as mangosteen, lychees and mango.

The first part of the two day trek was an hour long elephant ride. Unfortunately this ride was on seats on top of the elephants, rather than in a saddle or bareback, however still very enjoyable and the elephants were in very good condition and seemed fairly well looked after, much to our surprise. Once on the elephants we headed up a hill and had a short ride through a bit of bush area and part of a little village before heading down to a creek which we continued along. The elephant that Bec and I had was the mother of the two baby elephants that were part of our group, and we were being followed by the father who was a fair bit smaller than the mother. The elephants definitely like their food, as ours continually stopped to be fed bananas from a bag that we had bought. Even though we had platforms to ride on, the guide allowed Bec to ride bareback much to her excitement!

After the elephant ride in the scorching heat we headed for a short walk to a waterfall where we had a lunch of fried rice, and our guide cooked up a massive spider for us to try which he had found on the way, which apparently tasted like chicken. After the lunch we were told we had 20 minutes to take photos of the waterfall which had a bit of an island in the middle of the stream. Bec and I decided to try and walk out to it, and what started as Bec seeing how deep the water was, resulted in her getting quite drenched. In the ended we both ended up in for a swim, and shortly after the rest of our group came in as well for a dip. The water was fairly nice and current not to strong. The waterfall was definitely a lot better than the one we had visited on Koh Lanta a fortnight before.

Luckily Bec and I decided to do the following 7km walk in our wet clothes, as shortly after leaving the waterfall the downpour began which I think actually made the long uphill walk a bit easier as it kept us from getting too hot.

While heading to our destination for the night, our tour guides stopped frequently to show us things such as giant centipedes, ants that we could eat, plants, butterflies and also to demonstrate skills with the sling shot and at making things out of leaves such as hats, umbrellas and containers. During the walk we had some good discussions with all of the fellow trekkers, both about our travels and our home countries.

We arrived about 5pm to the village where we were staying, after our main tour guide told us “one hour to go” every half an hour for most of the afternoon! Our accommodation consisted of a large timber shed type building with a balcony overlooking rice fields in a valley, and once there we settled in for a few beers and a rest before having a very refreshing…. (ie; quite cold) shower before dinner. Once again the trekking dinner was amazing. We had a large stir fry vege dish and yellow curry chicken which we could not get enough of. After a long day it was perhaps the perfect meal.

The rest of our night consisted of chatting, drinking, drinking games before one of the best sleeps I had had in days... until the roosters began at about 5am…. Day two had begun….

After a basic breakfast of boiled eggs and toast (great for the three of us who don’t eat eggs) we split up as the guys from NZ were on a three day trek, and the remaining six of us headed back through town for an hour long walk to another waterfall. This one was much more spectacular; however the pool at the bottom was not very deep. Once again our 20 minutes here turned into what felt like an hour. The water here was much colder than the previous waterfall, but we all got in and enjoyed a swim and took a heap of photos.

The next two hours of the walk consisted of a lot of talking between us all while walking, and we picked up some great places to see in UK and France, and learnt a bit more about each other. We had done quite a few things with other travellers over the past weeks, but this was by far the best group we had been with.

Just after noon we arrived back at a village and were collected by the tour Ute which took us up the road to have a much needed Pad Thai lunch before the afternoon bamboo rafting activity. We had been warned that due to all the rain the rafting may not be running, but luckily the water level had dropped enough for us to continue.

The rafting was about 10 minutes from where we had lunch, and we all stripped to our swimmers and got on the long bamboo rafts and headed downstream. The water was running very fast and there were quite a few obstacles including rocks which our guide tried to tell us were crocodiles… The rapids were fun on the rafts, but due to their length, we were very stable going over them all. I also saw a lot of evidence about how high the water level had been, as plastic bags and debris were stuck about two metres about the water line.

After about 15 minutes of relaxing on the raft Bec and Claudia (from Chile) decided to stand up, which ended up being quite fun once the guide tried to make us all fall off the raft and purposely steered us for low hanging branches so we had to duck. After about half an hour we pulled up on the bank and we were told to get off and walk up the back, as there were some large rapids that we were not allowed on… but after some convincing Bec and I were both allowed to head over the bigger rapids with the guides… however in the end they were not as big as they looked, and we could have all stayed on the rafts.

After the rafting trip we all got back in the Ute and headed back towards Chiang Mai for the night. We arranged to meet up with Denise from Canada for a beer later that evening, and went with the two girls from the UK (Laura and Laura…) back to their hotel to get a room. Unfortunately they were booked out and we ended up next door at the Britannia, which ended up being one of the better places we had stayed, and a lot cheaper than most! The drinks later with Denise ended up being a short event, as we were all a bit tired to enjoy it, and we headed back for bed at about 9pm, before getting a quick surprise visit at our room from the Lauras (surprise as we didn’t think they knew which our room was).