CHIANG MAI

Considering it was a 16 hour journey all in all I actually arrived around lunchtime feeling pretty good, sleeper trains appear to do exactly what they say on the tin!
Got into the main drag and got myself booked into a hostel and a 2 day trek before pretty much straight away - they were recommended by LP so I knew I was in danger of getting something half decent.

Chiang Mai as a place itself (besides the trekking) is pretty cool all round - the climate is a but more bearble than Bangkok without half as much of the smog, and there are also a few 'nice' type shops selling all kinds of stuff, without so much of the in your face sales techniques that all kids under 10 years old seem to employ.

The trek itself the next morning was a lot less hardcore than I expected, and we only actually did about 2 or 3 hours walking on the first day.
Thrown into the whole bargain (20 pounds) for the 2 days was elephant riding which although I really wasn't that arsed about actually turned out to be quite a good laugh, although I did have the biggest baddest Mofo elephant who pretty much kept smacking into all the other ones and going off on it's own random wanderings!
Glad the little seat thing on top of it had a proper bar on it or I would have ended up in the drink or the bamboo within about 30 seconds!


Rest of the day involved trekking the rest of the way to a village and stay overnight with one of the hill tribes. The tribe name was actually called the 'Karen', and depsite being tempted svereal times to ask, I don't think there were any rival 'Dave' or 'Colin' tribes operating within the area. Although it was flippin freezin at night there, and hardly an authentic experience, the village stay was a good laugh with loads of decent food cooked on the fire and a ruck of Thai rice whisky....think I now have a way to try and reduce the alcohol bill on my trip without cutting back on the intoxication - nice!

Second day basically was the hike back, with a stop at a waterfall for a (freezing!) swim and some more food before some bamboo rafting. Bamboo rafting, like sleeper trains also does exaclty what it says on the tin - rafting on strung together bamboo!
The water wasn't very deep, and the currents nothing too major, although the guys running clearly made an S.B.E of gigantic proportions by making me be the gondolier / steering person at the back of our raft!
After colliding with rocks a fair few times I got the hang of it, and the others (3) on board were fairly confident of me not sending us all into the drink. However, the Czech dude from our trekking group decided to rock the raft for a laugh and he basically just tipped the whole thing at an angle.....my steering stick thingy kept me and the guy next to me onboard but the poor American girl with us got launched into the water fuly clothed! Amusing.

A couple of scary ass mini waterfalls to raft down followed and that was it - like I say not the most authentic type experience I'll ever have but it was still a good craic doing the whole village / elephant / rafting thing so was pretty pleased.


Will update again once I've got into Laos, all being good I should start the mission there tomorrow.