Today we are travelling from Chiang Mai to Ko Samui, which involves two flights and plenty of waiting in airports, so it gives me a great opportunity to write my next blog post. My last post ended when we arrived into Chiang Mai by train on Monday afternoon and since then we've had three amazing days in the jungle.
02/12
We got picked up from the train station and were taken to our first guesthouse, MD House. This was in the old town within the surrounds of the moat, so after having some English style lunch in an Irish Bar (you've got to do it at least once while on holiday!) we went for a walk around to see what the old town had to offer. We seemed to have poorly timed this with the end of the school day as the streets were filled with children in school uniform clogging up the pavements and driving around on scooters. Everyone seems to drive a scooter here and every corner you turn there is a 'scooter park' full of them. We didn't really see much within the old town apart from a couple of small temples, lots of small random shops and a few schools.
In the evening we went over to the new town to visit the Night Market and have dinner. We found a nice river side restaurant and had a 'Thai savoury basket' that included a selection of Thai delicacies and an edible basket (but we aren't sure what it was actually made of!).
03/12
On Tuesday we set off on a 2 day trek in the jungle.
We were picked up from the hotel and met the people we would be spending the next two days with; 2 brothers from Belgium and a German couple, all similar ages to us.
We drove out of Chiang Mai for about 1 hour and after picking up some supplies from the market we reached the starting point. Once we had covered ourselves in mosquito spray we set off as a large group of 16 following a couple of guides. We had a brief stop for lunch (rice wrapped in a banana leaf) before arriving at a waterfall. We all got changed into swimming costumes and went for a swim in the cold, refreshing pool created by the waterfall. It was a nice change from being hot and sweaty while walking.
Shortly after setting off from the waterfall we split off in to our separate groups and six of us were led further into the jungle by 'Rambo'. After a couple of hours of walking we reached the hill tribe village we would be staying in that evening. Rambo introduced us to our hosts and then left us to get to know each other better while the Thai hosts cooked our dinner. The six of us spent hours chatting about our countries and comparing life at home. The German couple were pig farmers, one working as a breeder, the other preparing the pig for slaughter. It was fascinating learning about the world of pig farming.
After a lovely home cooked meal, that thankfully wasn't too spicy, we sat around a camp fire drinking beers with Rambo and the Thai hosts. The bamboo kept the fire burning long into the night and after several beers the conversation soon turned to politics, particularly the topic of Scottish Independence and the Thailand protests. It was interesting to how people from different countries see the situations differently.
04/12
After spending the night the night sleeping in a wooden hut in the jungle under a few blankets and a mosquito net, we were up early to set off on the second day of the trek. Before we set off I had my first experience of using a squat toilet. They should warn people to focus on squats at the gym before coming to Thailand as there were moments I was worried it was going to get messy!
After a couple of hours of walking we met up with a new group and we all climbed onto the back of a pickup truck to go to the Elephant riding centre. It was quite a short but interesting journey as everyone held on tight and hoped that their bag (that had been carefully balanced on a rack above the drivers cab) was going to survive the many bends and hills.
Once we arrived at the elephant rides I was glad to see that I wasn't going to have to try and climb on top of a kneeling elephant but instead you got onto a seat off the top of a platform raised to the elephant's height. We got on, bought a bag of bananas and sugar cane (to feed the elephant, not for us!) and plodded off into the jungle. The ride was quite fun and included a few 'roller coaster moments' going up and down steep banks into and out of a river and lots of stopping to feed our greedy elephant and to buy more bananas. He was never happy with just the one banana or sugar cane at a time. However this did mean that he had enough energy to overtake a couple of other elephants on the home straight!
After the elephant ride it was a quick change into swimming trunks and back on to the pickup truck to go to a nearby river. We then went on a relaxing trip down the river on a bamboo raft. Well, it was mostly relaxing. The moments a largish spider landed on my back and cold water splashed on my lap during some mini rapids wasn't so relaxing. We also got to see a snake siting in a tree over hanging the river. That stayed far enough away from the raft for me to stay relaxed.
Afterwards we headed back to our hotel in Chiang Mai, now BMP Resident, to recover from all the walking. That evening I learned that even if Thai food doesn't say it's spicy, assume it will be, and that having several large bottles of Chang Beer (at 6.4%!) is not a very good idea...
05/12
Yesterday we went back into the jungle for Flight of the Gibbon. This is a high wire adventure through the jungle canopy amongst the wildlife. There were about 30 zip wires all of different lengths and at different heights, with the longest one about 800m long. We had a fun couple of hours travelling from tree to tree and even got close up to a family of Gibbons play fighting with each other. The little baby was so cute!
Once we were back on the ground we went to look at a local waterfall. It was several mini waterfalls one after another, meaning the path kept going up and up, higher and higher. The further up I went I was trying to get more artistic with my photos as there's only so many photos of water you can take before they all look the same. So I've got 'waterfall through trees' and 'waterfall through leaves' for you to look forward to when I upload my photos...
We were back in Chiang Mai for the evening and decided to go on a Thai food cookery course. It turned out that there were only four of us being taught so it was great value. We each made three dishes to eat: green curry (making the green curry paste first), Pad Thai and a prawn soup. They were all really tasty, mainly because I'd made sure mine wasn't as spicy as it should have been! There were lots of random Thai ingredients used so it might be difficult to recreate them all at home, but I'm going to try and make the Pad Thai again. It's so easy to make and definitely my favourite Thai meal so far.
Leaving the cookery class nice and full we headed to the King's birthday celebrations taking place in Chiang Mai. We wern't sure what to expect but a few people had recommended we go and check it out. It was mainly Chinese lanterns being let off and people singing while holding candles. The British Queen isn't lucky enough to get that when it's her birthday! We headed back to the hotel for our final drink in Chiang Mai, making sure I avoided the Chang beer!
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