After another overnight bus journey we arrived in Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand. A city in the loosest sense of the word, the atmosphere is relaxed and more like an overgrown village in the old town area, which is enclosed in a square moat. The main reason people travel here is as a jumping off point for treks in the surrounding hills, so we did just that.
We booked a tour of two days and one night from the Eagle House 2 Guest House (which we would definitely recommend as a guest house and travel agent). It involved trekking through a national park and sleeping in a hilltribe village. There was lot of walking on the first day, up and down steep tracks through the forested mountains, with some great views and tired legs on the way. Our group of nine slept on mattresses on the floor in a house made entirely of bamboo, in the hills. The hilltribe members seem to take it in turns to give up their house for trekkers, to earn some extra money. We had a tasty home-cooked meal and a few Chang beers by a fire, before settling down for an extremely chilly night of not much sleep!
After a hearty breakfast, some more hiking took us to another village where we mounted elephants for a lengthy ride through scenic river and forest. Ben rode on our elephant's head, turning his face in disgust every few minutes as the beast raised its trunk to blow hot smelly air and specks of mud at him. I think that this, as well as the stubble rash on his hands from clinging on and the painful inner thighs, meant that he was more grateful thanmost when the ride ended.
The final part of the journey was completed on bamboo rafts. Some nimble-fingered Thai men knocked up our boats in about 10 minutes, binding bamboo fibres around long bamboo canes. We shared our raft with an Italian couple, and a Thai boy did most of the punting although both the men were entrusted with lengths of bamboo to use when instructed.
We had all assumed that this would be a leisurely punt along a lazy river. We weren't that steady, standing in a row, legs apart with nothing to hold onto and all our bags strapped to a makeshift stand at the front of the raft. Then we approached the first rapids. The raft grazed a rock, lurched sideways and both Ben and I slid off into the freezing water. After we had scrambled back on, the Thai guy suggested that the two girls - that's me and the Italian girl, not me and Ben ;)- crouch down every time we come to a rapid. This worked for the most part although I did come a cropper a second time, when even the Thai boy fell over.
Then we came to a point in the river where some other Thai men waved us over to the bank. On a rock just ahead, their bamboo raft was completely smashed in two and its passengers were clambering onto dry land looking a bit shaken. At this point, we weren't too keen on continuing, but our boatmen simply strapped the stranded people's bags on with ours, lowering the boat further into the water, and set off into the white foam. Obviously we made it to the end in one piece - I was starting to turn blue with cold by then - and all in all it was a pretty fun and exciting end to our tour.
We returned to Chiang Mai that evening and left the next afternoon for our flight to Luang Prebang in Laos.
