Going Up!

Sliding down Mor Paeng falls

As you know, after leaving Bangkok, I headed north to Chiang Mai for a jungle trek!  Chiang Mai is a much smaller city than Bangkok and the city centre is encompassed by a canal, which is pretty nice and the outskirts of town are all jungle and mountains--my kind of thing!

The jungle trek was incredible.  Despite the brutal heat, we walked 3-4 hours/day and stopped at waterfalls/rivers along the way to swim and visited tribal villages that live in the jungle.  On the first day, we stopped by the school and played soccer with the elementary students for nearly 2 hours!  I absolutely loved that.  Then, we spend the night with a family in hut in the village.  It was just our group of 9 trekkers and while the accommodation was far from 5-star, it was authentic.  Beds were nothing more than a very thin mattress on the floor with a mosquito net and pillow.  Dinner was cooked over a wood stove, just as the tribes really do, but they still managed the make a delicious curry!  The place we stayed had a passion fruit farm too, which was so delicious.  On the second day, we had lunch at a beautiful hut overlooking a rice terrace and then we camped right next to the river, which was a great place to wash and cool off! Both of our guides were from the village and they were extremely friendly, as were all the village people we came across.  They live very simple lives and work hard, but seemed very happy.  It's incredible they do so much farming in the heat with hand tools! Unfortunately for them, this is the monsoon season now, but they're in a drought, meaning their rice which feeds their families is not growing.  However, we had great (but hot) weather during the trek, however the next day in Chiang Mai poured down.

View from Pai

On the 3rd day of the trek, we got to ride an elephant for an hour and bamboo raft for a bit.  Riding the elephant was okay, but I did feel a bit bad that the elephants are likely not treated well.  Bamboo rafting was great fun, though, and the rafts were extremely impressive how sturdy they were made strictly of tire as straps and bamboo rods!  All in all, the jungle trek was amazing and really started the change my perception of Asia/Thailand!

Motor bikes!

After Chiang Mai, I headed north again to an awesome little town called Pai.  This is a small, hippy-ish town up in the mountains.  The first day we just walked around the 4 blocks of town, but they have several markets including a "walking street" which is just a street lined with stalls selling souvenirs and food, so you can just walk down the street (hence, the name) and browse/shop. Pai is surrounded by beautiful landscapes though, so the next day we rented motorbikes and cruised around.  It was unbelievably fun and gorgeous!

We checked out 2 waterfalls, one of which you could slide down (Mor Paeng) and one you could cliff jump from (Pom Bok).  Pom Bok falls were buried in a canyon, which was stunning. There is also "Pai Canyon" which is far from the Grand Canyon, but still really pretty and we went to an overlook.  Even just driving around though through the rice fields with the steep, but jungle-covered mountains was great fun.  For $5, this was one of the best things I'd done in my travels!

Hanging with an elephant!

Now, I'm on another night bus tonight and leaving Thailand, heading across the border to Vientiane, Laos!  Indonesia was great fun on a tropical island with great friends, but Northern Thailand has really changed my opinion.  I've met some extremely nice people and gotten to see how beautiful this country is, but as always, time to move on to the next adventure!