Trekkin’

The people I met on my first night in Chiang Mai had invited me to a lake they were going to the next day. In the morning I was feeling the effects of the last couple of days being constantly on the move so decided not to join them. Instead I strolled around and got my bearings.

I bumped into Tom, the travel agent from the night before, who took me to his office and pitched a variety of treks and other things to me. He was a really nice guy so I didn’t mind that he was doing a sell job on me. By the end of the day I’d tracked down the girls and signed us all up to a trek starting the next day. Whilst we were gone I got Tom to organise our Laos visas – after the mission surrounding getting the Myanmar visas I couldn’t be bothered with the hassle this time around.

The trek was a two night three day affair. We had a really cool group. Everyone got on well and we had heaps of interesting conversations. We ended up hanging out with two of the guys, Ben & James, for most of the rest of our time in Chiang Mai.

On the first day we did some bamboo rafting. I though it would be boring but it was gold – especially since I was up front trying to steer the thing with 3 others hangin’ tough behind me. It got pretty intense when we hit the rapids. At one stage I didn’t steer us away from a rock in time and I went flying A over T into the water. Luckily I got away with a slightly bruised hand – not bad since I landed on a bed of rocks. No wucken furries.

The rest of the trek consisted mostly of walking though jungle or rice fields for a couple of hours then swimming near waterfalls for an hour then repeating it all again. Good stuff.

On the first evening we stayed in a bamboo shelter on the bank of a river. The next night we stayed with a hill tribe in their village. They cooked up a storm for us. Yummo! After seeing the kitchen they had to work with I won’t be complaining about any kitchen I have to deal with again.

Got to hand it to these tribes people for their inventiveness. Check out the dish rack.

After three days of soaking up nature’s beauty we headed back to Chiang Mai.