Trekking in Chiang Mai

On Sunday I left for a three day trek in northern Thailand, outside of Chiang Mai. We stopped at a market to get some things and then made another stop. We were in this village and I figured the driver needed to get something so that was why we all got out. We wandered around, saw some kids and older people doing their thing and stayed for about 20 minutes. It wasn't until after it was over that I realized that this was an actual stop on the trek. I found it to be a little strange that we were taking pictures of people in their natural setting- I don't know, it just felt a little invasive. I couldn't imagine tourists coming to my town and taking pictures of me cooking in my house. But apparantly they were used to it as people came trekking through their village every day. I also learned that the Longneck tribe up near Chiang Rai were all but disappeared as they were forced to return to Burma. You know the ones with the bracelets up their unusually long necks? There was only one Longneck tribal family left up there and that was for tourism purposes.

We continued on where we stayed in another tribal village that night. That didn't seem so invasive as we looked at it as a bed and breakfast of sorts. We started of as 12 then dwindled down to 7 of us in our group, from Canada, the U.S., France and Italy and we all got on really well (pictured above). The next day we went for an elephant ride, it was so cool!



They are just the most amazing creatures and it was hard to settle on just a few pictures as I took so many. We rode for an hour and then trekked to our next destination, an overnight campsite at a waterfall. Well not really a campsite, both nights we stayed in a dorm style hut with mosquito nets around each bed. Oh and never mind the quirkiness of the Tokyo toilet, the Thailand squat toilet is nothing I should write about. Makes me appreciate what I have, that is for sure! In the evenings we did what you do when you are camping, one of my favorite activities- drinking beer and playing cards. The second night besides our tour guide, the person who managed the waterfall campsite, Lut, wanted to play. There were too many players and not enough cards so we had to think of a game where everyone could play so Kristoff, the very entertaining Frenchman, suggested Assasin. You decide on a card, say its the Ace of Spades, to be the Assasin. You deal out a card to each player including that card and whoever winds up with it is then the Assasin. If that person winks at you, you announce you are dead while the other players try to guess who the Assasin is. So, we were trying to explain this game to Lut who speaks very broken English.

He thought he understood the game and this time Matt was the Assasin. He winked at Lut and instead of saying "I'm dead", he got out a frying pan. I thought he was going to either hit him with it or make him wear it as a hat. Instead, he wiped the bottom of the pan with his finger and put it on Matt's face like it was Ash Wednesday. It was pretty hilarious. So much for translating card games. I can only imagine what he would do if we let him play A**shole with us.

The next day we trekked an hour again to the bamboo rafts which was another highlight. It was a mellow float down the river although we had some instances of nearly falling out a few times. We really enjoyed it and it seemed like it was over just as soon as it began. Since I couldn't bring my camera because it would get wet here is a picture of some random people starting off as well as me walking through rice fields.