Friday morning was a pretty early start for my 2 day hilltribe trek adventure. To be honest i didn't really know what i was getting myself into and just signed up to do it as it seems most people travelling in the north of Thailand do these types of treks and every second shop on the street is offering some sort of trip. I can get pretty lazy in the heat so it seemed like a good idea to get some exercise, and exercise we got!
Before the actual walking part started we were driven in a pick up truck for around 45 mins to an orchid farm (kinda boring unless you're into plants and gardens!) then much to my concern we were taken to a snake farm. I had heard about these places and was a bit nervous about going in but didn't want to be a woose! There were a few different cages with cobras, pythons, King cobras and other species - absolutely disgusting creatures! They then have some crazy snake guys put on a show, so everyone is ushered into a small arena and told 'if you scared, sit at the back'. Needless to say i sat as far back as possible, didn't fancy being hit in the face by a snake! The guys were trying to make the snakes angry, throwing them around, swimming with them, and kissing them?! One of the men had lost a finger, no guesses as to why that was!
Afterwards we picked up some dinner at the market, drove to the beginning point of the trek and had some lunch then it was trek time. I don't know why but i was expecting a nice ramble in the jungle, turns out it was hardcore uphill trekking and in the heat i was pretty much soaking with sweat by the time we got to the top. We stopped quite a few times on the way up, as everyone was walking at different paces. At one point, me and another girl thought we heard a tiger or a panther growling..absolutely shit ourselves and i was looking for the nearest tree to climb. Turns out the villages in the jungle have motos, and it was an engine's noise quite far away - felt like an eejit after that!
After about 3 hours we eventually got to the top..the villagers seemed completely unimpressed by us. Then again they probably have groups like us about twice a week staying with them. It's crazy the way they live, there's chickens and dogs and pigs all running around and they don't use electricity, which means candles (i was so glad i had a torch!).
They showed us our hut for the night which was basically 2 rooms - one for sleeping and one for eating. They also showed us the toilets and showers which were just a row of shacks and the shower was a pipe with freezing cold water. Stupidly i was one of the last to shower and had to do it in the dark, so horrible and it's made me appreciate i will never have a shower worse than that ever again. We then sat down to a meal of green curry and rice which was delicious and we had a wee jam session as they had a guitar and a few people could play. It was such a nice evening then i decided to venture to the toilets in the dark with my torch. I was obviously going to check them out before going in and the first one had a big spider on the wall (not as big as my hand, but big enough!) then i checked the second one..another lovely spider on the side of the toilet. I wanted to cry and ended up squatting in the shower instead! In hindsight i shouldn't have taken a torch at all!
We were all pretty tired so after a massage went to bed at 9 for the most uncomfortable sleep ever on the floor of the hut. There was the initial fear of spiders (and dogs!) but afterwards i just really wanted to sleep and eventually drifted off for about an hour and got woken by cockerels at 1 or 2am, the rain pelting down on the roof, someone with a torch (who i was convinced was a tribe person robbing us while we slept) and just general uncomfortableness. Safe to say i was a walking corpse the next day and had to do the hike all the way back down again!
As it had rained the night before we were all looking forward to sliding down on our arses most of the way. I think only a couple of people fell though, i made it the whole way to our waterfall stop and slipped on a rock landing like a tortoise on my back haha. We had our shower of the day under the waterfall which was amazing, then trekked for another hour to the elephant camp.
I love elephants and was pretty excited about the ride but i wasn't so keen on how they treated them and wouldn't ever do it again i imagine. One of them had an injured foot so only one girl got to ride it but it was so slow ans struggled the whole way, poor thing! After that we had lunch and it was time for the white water rafting - which for me was the best part of the whole 2 days!
We were split into 2 groups, 5 of us in one raft and 6 in the other and took off down the river. It was pretty choppy since it's rainy season so most of the time i was hanging on for my life trying not to fall out! About halfway both rafts stopped and the guides told us the next part is so dangerous we need 2 guides per boat and alot of people fall out. Then told us to walk the rest of the way if we were too scared..i was pretty scared by that point but once again didn't want to appear like a complete shit bag so stayed in the boat. Turns out the next part was great fun and no-one felt out (great team!) so we made it back in one piece!
So that was pretty much the end of our 2 days and we had an hours drive back to the city..such a great experience but i think alot of it was made by having such a good group of people. It could have been pretty boring and hard work if you didn't have a laugh along the way!
