On to Cambodia- Tamara

Our time in Chaing mai was concluded with a lovely trek into the jungle of Thailand. We left at about 9:00 in the morning into the back of a truck with 6 other people for a 2 hour drive... Thankfully, we had a few stops which included a picture perfect waterfall, the water was quite cold but not to cold for us Canadians. The next stop was at some hot springs, now being that it is about 35 degrees celcius, the hot springs did not seem appealing but, eventually our group all got in and found that it felt quite nice and made it seem not so hot outside. It was after all this that we began our trek, we began hiking on very moderate and simple trails complete with bamboo, vines, fruit trees as well as trees that tower higher than I have ever seen. We walked through 3 hill tribe sights and got to see how these people live. Our guide grew up in a hill tribe and said when he was little he would walk 2 1/2 hours to school everyday... and I don't think he was joking. We walked about 9 1/2 km to our final hill tribe sight where we would spend the night in a bamboo hut. It was a beautiful sight right along the river, sure enough as we arrived we could see people building a bamboo raft that we would be using the next day as well as people bathing in the river, chickens- everywhere and of course puppy dogs. But, what went surprisingly unnoticed were the elephants that were just behind our hut. Bah, it was amazing! The evening concluded with one of our guides playing guitar and singing for us- again, amazing.

The next day we were woken up at about oh, 1:00 am by the roosters that were clearing confused as to what time it was, then again at 2:00, 3:00 and yes 4:00, and then I think at sunrise as well but they may have quit by then. Despite the roosters, we all had a fantastic sleep. We all woke up to traditionally dressed hill tribe women ferverently trying to see us jewellry and elephant purses, we all caved.

After breakfast it was time for our elephant ride. What is funny about Thailand is that everyone seems to have a pretty casual approach to everything, the elephants didn't seem to be behaving very well but no one seemed very concerned about it. The elephant I was supposed to ride kept walking away from the platform, no big deal, they just told me to get on. The elephant that Paul and Darcy were on was about 45 years old and the one I was on was about 9 which I think for elephants are the rebellious teenage years. All the other elephants followed promtly in line while the elephant I was on continually would go off the trail and start eating. My guide was walking on the ground beside with a chain around one of the elephants legs, sometimes he would pull on it and grunt at the elephant trying to cue it to keep walking or go a different direction... the elephant won every time... it would eat until it finished, it would go the direction it wanted, it would pick up dirt for a while, it would break a branch off of a tree and hit itself on the head with it... but eventually it would always end up back with the other elephants. We rode for about 2 hours all along and in the river, it was delightful. Elephants are quite majestic and seem to have sad yet captivating eyes.

We then got onto our bamboo raft which turned out to be more fun than I ever thought. Although we did not go on super fast or rough waters there were several times when we thought that the raft would flip, the raft would break or that our guide had abandoned us... but all was well, we all arrived safely, well, except for Paul who at one point got his bamboo pole caught in some rocks on the river bottom which ended up with him getting clothes lined and launched into the water... haha, luckily for him no one really saw it and so everyone thought he jumped in the water on purpose. We were all expecting trekking to be fun, but it was far more fun than we ever imagined.

We left Chiang Mai on the 11th, we were all sad to go but the epic must go on. We arrived in Cambodia on the 12th... but that my friends is another story...!
I did forget one thing, we were walking in Chiang Mai and saw two dogs behind a gate, one was lying on its back sunbathing with all 4 paws in the air while the other came over to sniff me, he was very friendly. But, while Paul and Darcy were distracted by the sun bathing dog who we wern't sure if it was actually breathing, the friendly dog went over and sniffed Paul, then lifted his leg and promtly started peeing on Pauls foot. I must be honest I saw the whole thing coming but I thought Paul was watching, he didn't realize until the dog was near finished. And then by that time the mysterious sunbathing dog was up and both dogs looked quite pleased with themselves. We're pretty sure it is a tourist scam.