Finally trekking

Old city wall and moat around the old area of Chiang Mai
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A night out we wanted and that is what we got, eventually.  We spent some time wandering the backpacker area trying to find bars with people in them, when we finally asked a tuk-tuk driver to take us somewhere.  He took us to a night club, not really what we were after, but we managed to find an "entertainment" area close by, complete with muay thai boxing and lady-boy dances.  At least there were some people our age there - unlike the other bars we had seen which were all of the older-white-man, young-thai-girl variety.  We got chatting with a lovely thai girl (not one of those ones) who then offered to take us to some other bars on the back of her motorbike.  Not the best idea come to think of it as we had all been having some free shots care of the drunk bar owner, but alot of fun anyway.

Banana please?!
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The next day we were able to see some of Chiang Mai, to see it is a lovely city with the old part where we were staying full of atmospheric little streets, some too small to drive a tuk tuk through but they tried.  That night we went to the Sunday market, very cheap and good fun with lots of local food for sale and buskers.   And stocked up on some more fisherman pants - cheapest ever (thats for you Sean and Adrienne).

we have the best white water rafting in Thailand - people die on it every year

What a pretty colour...
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The next day I finally set out on an overnight trek, an all singing-dancing one including elephant rides, waterfalls, white water rafting and bamboo rafts.   Rach stayed behind to soak up some more of the city.

The trek was a lot of fun, the first day was just 3 hours walking predominantly uphill, with many river crossings and boulder scampering, like a good old fashioned Kiwi bush walk.  There was a lot of complaining about how difficult it was, but I was enjoying being out in the bush, the scenary was beautiful - bamboo forest and jungle, trekking most of the way beside rivers.  And we were only carrying day packs for heavens sake!   Once we got to the top of the mountain closer to the village where we were spending the night the jungle had been cleared to make way for crops, giving us a gorgeous view of the valley below and mountains around us, even if the slash and burn agriculture wasn't the most scenic.

Old stuff is all over Chiang Mai
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We stayed the night in a bamboo hut adjacent to a hill tribe village.  They had a shop for us to by stuff from, and in the hut the proceeds from the beer and water we bought went to a foundation to help with the education of the children of the village.  So we did our best to do our bit by drinking for the children!  Later that night we got Thai massages for the children as well.  This was the extent of the interaction with the village, to my relief as this aspect of the trip I wasn't too keen on.  After chatting and dinner one of our guides showed us magic tricks and we spent the rest of the night trying to replicate them.

On the elephant
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The next day we trekked down hill for 2 hours - not as much fun as uphill as the clay-like dirt was very slippery and I am not very good at going downhill at the best of times.  I managed not to slip over however, until we reached a waterfall and I slipped on a perfectly flat piece of ground, giving myself a beautiful bruise on my hip.  After that I was even slower.  Eventually we made it to the elephant camp for our elephant ride.

Our elephant ride was for about 40mins, up a track then around down by the river.  It was actually quite scary - there was nothing holding us into our seats so everytime the elephant went down a slope we had to hold on for dear life to stop us tumbling off over the elephants head.  Its quite high up there you know.

Waterfall on trek - and me smiling through the pain of my recent fall
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Next was white water rafting.  I was a bit nervous about this as I hadn't done it before, and our guide the night before told us about it saying "you are so lucky to be on this tour, we have the best white water rafting in Thailand - people die on it every year".  Cue nervous laughter and worried looks.  But in the end it wasn't scary at all, just alot of fun.  We had two guides in the boat with us who did all the work, and our guides even though slightly crazy (one of them liked to yell "oh my god" in a high pitched lady-boy voice and laugh like a girl after each of the rapids) were serious in the important bits.  Just as much fun was the water fights in the quiet bits with the other rafts in the river.

After the rapids we switched into bamboo rafts for the remainder of our trip down the river, though ours was more of a bamboo submarine as we were sitting in 20cms of water the entire time, hoping it wouldn't sink any further.  The rather large boy sitting infront of me would cause the raft to tip dangerously each time he changed positions, so that one side was completely out of the water while the other was 50cms under it.  He would then try to correct his error by jumping on to the other side, causing an alarming seesaw effect while we tried desperately to hold on and yelled at him to stay in the middle.  It was very funny.

On our last day in Chiang Mai I checked out some of the temples or Wats, as these are in a different style to the rest of Thailand.  I have to say my favourite temples so far have been the Laos ones, or maybe I am just a bit Wat-ed out.