April 11-12
Man, it sucks when you haven't blogged in a while and now I have to write from memory. So I got to the north of Thailand safely and found a great little hotel in the center of Chiang Mai. Thank goodness my dates worked out well, because the Treks were not running this whole week due to the Songkran Festivities (Thai New Year).
I really wanted to do a 2 night, 3 day trek but that wasn't available-- so I ended up getting a 1 night, 2 day trek. It seems that everything works out for a reason because what a FABULOUS 2 days it was!! There were originally 5 of us in the truck and we made our way to see the Long Neck Village. This village seemed to be set up primarily for tourists but it was still pretty interesting to see. These women and young girls are originally from Burma and have migrated to the Northern area of Thailand. They have these gold rings around their necks to stretch them out. I ended up trying one on my neck and could not believe how heavy it was! It is believed that back in the day, when these Burmese people lived in the forest, it was thought that if a lion attacked them, their necks needed to be protected and therefore, they started wearing these golden rings.
After the Long Neck village visit, we picked up the rest of the crew. The lovely spacious truck was too good to be true!! In total, there were 13 of us. It's funny how some tour groups utterly suck, and others connect immediately! Well, this was a group that just seemed to connect from the get-go, and as they say, the rest is history!
We stopped briefly at a local outdoor food market to pick up a few things and then made our way to the elephants, where I was able to ride an elephant through the jungle! The ride was definitely bumpier than I expected, but thoroughly enjoyable! After the elephant rides, we began our trek. I wish I had brought more water, as most of our walking today was uphill and it was fairly hot and humid. We walked for about 3 hours.... did I mention that it was all uphill??
About half way there, in the middle of the Northern Thai jungle, a man had a cold water and beer station set up for us. I truly didn't appreciate my cold water until after we began walking up the steepest hill yet and realized that this man was not too far behind us. He had packed up the rest of the water and beer and was carrying it all on his back. Unreal.
We finally made it up to the hillside village--our accommodation was a beautiful bamboo house, where we shared a wonderful dinner, some evening games, and a some of the local children also came to sing for us. Overall, a great exercise day, a big check next to one of my 'must do's' which was riding an elephant in the jungle. I also met some amazing new people. How much better can life get?
Man, it sucks when you haven't blogged in a while and now I have to write from memory. So I got to the north of Thailand safely and found a great little hotel in the center of Chiang Mai. Thank goodness my dates worked out well, because the Treks were not running this whole week due to the Songkran Festivities (Thai New Year).
I really wanted to do a 2 night, 3 day trek but that wasn't available-- so I ended up getting a 1 night, 2 day trek. It seems that everything works out for a reason because what a FABULOUS 2 days it was!! There were originally 5 of us in the truck and we made our way to see the Long Neck Village. This village seemed to be set up primarily for tourists but it was still pretty interesting to see. These women and young girls are originally from Burma and have migrated to the Northern area of Thailand. They have these gold rings around their necks to stretch them out. I ended up trying one on my neck and could not believe how heavy it was! It is believed that back in the day, when these Burmese people lived in the forest, it was thought that if a lion attacked them, their necks needed to be protected and therefore, they started wearing these golden rings.
After the Long Neck village visit, we picked up the rest of the crew. The lovely spacious truck was too good to be true!! In total, there were 13 of us. It's funny how some tour groups utterly suck, and others connect immediately! Well, this was a group that just seemed to connect from the get-go, and as they say, the rest is history!
We stopped briefly at a local outdoor food market to pick up a few things and then made our way to the elephants, where I was able to ride an elephant through the jungle! The ride was definitely bumpier than I expected, but thoroughly enjoyable! After the elephant rides, we began our trek. I wish I had brought more water, as most of our walking today was uphill and it was fairly hot and humid. We walked for about 3 hours.... did I mention that it was all uphill??
About half way there, in the middle of the Northern Thai jungle, a man had a cold water and beer station set up for us. I truly didn't appreciate my cold water until after we began walking up the steepest hill yet and realized that this man was not too far behind us. He had packed up the rest of the water and beer and was carrying it all on his back. Unreal.
We finally made it up to the hillside village--our accommodation was a beautiful bamboo house, where we shared a wonderful dinner, some evening games, and a some of the local children also came to sing for us. Overall, a great exercise day, a big check next to one of my 'must do's' which was riding an elephant in the jungle. I also met some amazing new people. How much better can life get?
Day 2
The next day we all had breakfast together, and began to make our way down. Personally, I found going down harder than going up. Cardio wise, of course going upwards was a bit more difficult, but going down on the steep hills was bad on the knees! About half way down, we made it to this amazing waterfall, where we all cooled off for a while. After that, we were taken down to the river, where we went river rafting. I am a little embarrassed to call it rafting, because the river was so still that we barely rafted. LOL.
Along the way, there were hundreds of locals who were all close to or even in the river, beginning to celebrate the Song Kran festivities. Local children were splashing water on us as we went by and being part of this day, up in Northern Thailand was a memory I will keep forever!
After the rafting, our group jumped on a bamboo raft, which pretty much took us the end of our trek. Another group lunch together, and we were loaded back on the truck to make our way back to the city.
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