We woke up the next morning to plates of toast and eggs. landon and i both avoided the eggs like the plague because really, who the hell likes eggs? but really, it was more like: we were both getting over food poisoning and eggs seem to be a contributor to food poisoning. that and i hate eggs.
we watched the village people wash the elephants in the river as we ate our toast. after eating, of course we were bombarded with cheap souvenirs in which i think i only bought a elephant statue. on to the elephants. this elephant ride was way better than the ko lanta elelphant ride, mostly because we got to walk in and out of a river. unfortunately the elephant handler on our elephant spent the first chunk of the trek on his goddamn cell phone. not even safe from the blasted things on a nature hike! it was really annoying, and he was exceptionally cruel to our elephant. i know i'm no expert on riding and steering elephants but what he was doing was unnecessary, to be sure.
after that was all done it was time to board the bamboo rafts! this ended up being my favorite part of the trek i think. long and narrow with a teepee formation in the middle of the raft to have our bags hang off of. 2 in total. 2 guides, each at the front of each raft, with landon, the german couple and i on one and the finns and the dutch girls on the other. guys at the back to help steer with girls in the middle to.... uhm.... relax. the bamboo sticks we used to jab into the river to help push us along or veer us from rocks ended up being really rough on the hands, but what's a nature trek without a few bruises etc? there would be longer periods of calm waters and short bursts of rapids which were obviously more exciting. there would usually be rocks jutting out everywhere in the rapids so the guide would have to be particularly quick in succesfully navigating. one burst of rapids was so intense, we crashed into a rock and i flew forward and nailed the poor german girl on the head with my bamboo stick. we were to raft for 2+ hours. about half way through our guide wanted a break so he let me and the german guy alternate as the leader. i ended up leading most of the way til the end... it was really fun! i had us stuck on rocks a few times and crashed once or twice and it made me respect the guides much more for it looks easier than it is. by the end i was much better and it was really fun to worm through rock mazes in rapids. at times, people would jump off and go for a swim but the dutch girls got leeches....
that was pretty much it for the trek, we shored up at another village where a truck was waiting for us and we were all really tired on the way back into town.
the last few days we spent in chaing mai were rocky and landon got her own room at one point to give ourselves some space. when we were together though, we rented bicycles one day and explored the city a little, ventured to the chaing mai zoo another day and saw tons of monkeys, a couple emus, white tigers, giraffes, elephants, lions, peacocks, hippos, rhinos and koalas(not to be confused, those koalas and rhinos ;p)
i got to feed the giraffes and a jaguar. that was pretty cool.
the zoo was decent but the map they give out was terrible and navigating was a bitch. we got really tired by the end of the day and went home.
that night we decided to go to our first theatre in asia. we saw "the curious case of benjamin button" one night and "watchmen" another night. our time in chiang mai kind of tapered off into laziness, really. we never ended up doing cooking classes and i never got a massage. i keep telling myself i'll get one after my treks in pai and mae hong son.
our bus to pai was 200 baht. i can't wait...
