Trekking through Northern Thailand
Ok, this is going to be a long entry with lots of pictures. I wasn’t able to upload my pics over the past week, and didn’t have the time to sit down and right a proper blog entry, so here it goes…
So I finally left Bangkok (you really only need a few days there) and took the long bus ride up to Chaing Mai. I met the rest of my tour group…quite an eclectic group of people (click on the pictures to view the larger size):
Jeff (yellow shirt): an Irish guy my age who just spent 8 months on a fishing boat off the northern coast of Australia, he had some incredible stories of things he’d seen while on the water!
Mossimo (first on the right w/ the sweatshirt): an older Italian real estate agent from Milan who loves everything American, haha. Every time we spoke it was in respect to a trip he had taken to the states, or a question he had about my life there. Really nice guy.
Nishi (first on the left): a Japanese man who just retired and was moving to Chaing Mai. He’d been to Thailand 20 times already and loved it…he was waiting on his wife to move down too, which will take 6 more months.
Sean & Eva (Eva’s sitting next to me, Sean is just past Jeff): an Australian couple who were complete free spirits and just traveling around Southeast Asia, seeing where it took them.
So our first day began with elephant riding! This was definitely a great experience…it lasted about an hour. I was surprised at how high up we were, and it was kind of scary at first. Then Jeff (my co-passenger) offered to buy the driver a beer, so he returned the favor by offering to switch seats with us and let us each take turns ‘driving’ the elephant! There I was, sitting on the elephant’s neck without a saddle or anything to balance…I could feel her legs knocking up against my bare feet as she walked, so cool. I didn’t pay the $25 to buy the picture of us on the actual elephant, but Sean and Eva took a few pictures of us and will email them to me soon, so I’ll post them when they come in. In the meantime here are a couple pictures of me and an elephant….
Alright well the fun is over, and the trekking is on. Now, I consider myself to be in ‘reasonable’ shape, but this first day was SUCH hard work. Think steep hills, think little rest, think sweat coming out of every inch of my body. Yeah, not so pleasant. If it wasn’t for the amazing views of the mountains all around us, I would have wondered why I was doing this to myself. Just when I thought I was going to pass out, we stopped along the river:
It was so nice to take a break and cool off for a bit. Then we hit the path again for more hiking. After cursing myself for signing up for this journey and plotting ways to ‘pass out’ and be carried the rest of the way (by the way, the entire group was completely worn out and complaining…it wasn’t just me. So before you call me a wimp you should go to Chaing Mai and try it yourself, haha), we finally reached our stop for the night—Ka’ren village:
I’m not sure if it was the exhaustion, or just being out in the middle of nowhere at the mercy of my tour guide, but this instantly became my favorite place on earth! It was amazing to stumble through the forest onto this tiny tribal village…a place where they have everything they need. Totally self-sufficient. Completely out in nature. No electricity. Hours away from civilization. I looked around at the rest of my tour group and I could see it in their eyes. “This is the life.”
We had a REALLY good dinner that they cooked from the kitchen:
Then we helped a couple of the men from the village gather wood from the forest to start a fire. We all sat around the blaze and admired the night sky, told jokes, and exchanged travel stories. Next thing you know all the children from the village came around the campfire with their parents and started singing us some of their traditional songs.
I really wanted to stay in the Ka’ren village. I’d heard that in the past some travelers had decided to divert from the tour and live amongst the people for a week, sometimes even months. Honestly if I had had an open schedule, I would’ve stayed in Ka’ren for a while. There is something incredible about living off the earth, in paradise and without a care in the world about whether or not your shirt matches your pants. Ah well, I took away the lesson of living life simply, knowing again how futile materialism is.
I awake and it’s early morning in Ka’ren. I’ve had my coffee and it’s time to say goodbye:
The second day of trekking wasn’t nearly as bad as the first! At least half of it was downhill or steady at this point…we’d already made our way high up into the mountains:
I was standing on a termite hill in this picture. Burma is just behind me! So the trekking ended with our final stop for the day at the waterfall village. This place was astonishing. It was one man, living all by himself right next to a gorgeous waterfall and pond. He went fishing along the river each morning, and hunting with his self-made gun every afternoon. The scenery was fantastic, but I was more intrigued by this “wild man” who truly defined the term.
That last picture is of my hut where I slept. It got extremely cold in the night so I had to curl up in two sleeping bags with blankets over me, under a mosquito net, on a flat wooden surface. It was great though!
The next day was a short trek downhill to go bamboo rafting, which I don’t have any pictures of either…mostly because we weren’t allowed to bring anything on the raft with us since it would get wet. And again, I thought the price for the photo they took of us was highly unreasonable. You’ll just have to take my word for it. It was an excellent experience.
Alright, well I went to the island of Koh Chang afterwards and had a great time there, but I’ll post that info and pictures soon…I’m a bit blogged out at the moment, haha. I’m headed to Seoul tonight, I could not be more excited!! Can’t wait to discover my new home! Will post again soon.
Much love!