I am in Chiang Mai, Thailand country side, and i love it.
I am staying in a gueshouse hostel called Ben Guesthouse and they make you feel right at home as they are soo friendly!!For 1.90 a night with ensuite.
We have just come back from a trekk through the Jungle. We got picked up and stopped on the way at an Orchid farm which is good if you like that sort of thing!! then on to the snake show which was hillarious where they were pretty much throwing snakes at you and catching them just in time so the snakes dont have chance to get a proper hold of you...it was really funny and the Snake men were doing generally all sorts of strange things with different breeds of snakes.
We then went to the Long Neck Karen Tribal Village, which is where the ladys have gold rings around their necks, they add one every year after the age of 10 thus giving them a rather long neck!! Strange as when we were watching them work it did look as if it was restricted them an awful lot as they couldnt really bend down properly!!But whatever floats your boat!
We then got driven to the base of a very big mountian, had lunch, given some bamboo sticks and started walking, the first bit was uphill, which was fine as i thought we werent possibly going to walk ALL the way to the very top of the mountain...well...we walked for 1 hour in the blistering heat up hill with very few flat bits and had a very well earnt 10 minute break.
We started to walk again and it was soo steep it was no longer walking but climbing, when i looked up i could not see an end to this rediculous climb of a walk, i then found it very hard to breathe and decided to stop, but found after i stopped that i still couldnt breathe i got very frustrated indeed and wanted this stupid walk to be over!! Every peak that we came to was never the top untill about 2 further more hours of walking just uphill in 30 degree heat we reached the tribal village.
We were shown to our long house made of bamboo and reeds and decided where we were sleeping. We had to have a shower after our hell of a climb up here and found the toilets and showers to be together in 2 little huts, squat toilets and a very basic shower all made our of bamboo. We had the choice of showering in the one hut with not one spider but a whole cluster on top of each other to make what looked like one very big hairy spider or the shower with the bee that lives in it, i got the one with the bee...lets say we did not have great experiences and did not stay in long enough to get very clean.!!!
We had dinner and chatted with our group that we trekked with and would be doing everything with which was 2 girls from Isreael Maya and Leore, a Korean lady called Park, Yuka, Hero-Mu and Shigar from Japan and Leena and Daniella from Germany...it was a very good group.
We then slept in the long hut and got woken up by a chorus of 500 cockerels all crowing unbelievably loud for hours, one after the other.
We had breakfast and started walking which made me hyperventilate at just the thought of walking another step but it was all down hill but due to the steepness of the climb you had to concentrate very hard on where you were walking.
We reached a water fall and had a swim then continues to the Elephant park and got to ride an elephant, they feel very rough skinned with very coarse hair sticking out, but its trunk kept sucking at me and its ears kept flapping it was the cutest thing ever!!
The we did white water rafting which was really good fun, we were in a boat with Maya and Leore and Shigar which made it even better as we got on well with the 2 girls. The bamboo rafting which was meant to be relaxing but we got stuck on the rocks and even broke a bit of the boat on the rock, our guide fell in and so did Shigar!!
Was so much fun/ very very tiring!!
