We were lucky enough to be in Chiang Mai for the Loi Krathong festival (we were mistaken about it being the Thai new year in the last post, due to crossed wires with our guesthouse owner!) During the festival people honour the Buddha with light (consisting of candles, fireworks and the loudest firecrackers you have ever heard!) and float lanterns into the sky and candle rafts on the river to symbolise the floating away of one's grudges and anger to start again from afresh. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of lanterns floating up into the night sky, which made for a spectacular sight.
The next day we decided to move on slightly further north to Chiang Rai, which we had heard offered much more rural, and more culturally-sensitive trekking opportunities than Chaing Mai. After an extremely bumpy bus journey, which almost rearranged our internal organs, we saw the sign for Chaing Rai bus terminal. Jumping off the bus, we wondered why all the other stupid tourists did not realise we were at our destination.....turns out there are 2 bus stations and we were at the one 8km out of town! A very kindly (wiley) tuk-tuk driver informed us of this and then drove us into town, where we saw our bus pulling up right in the centre of Chiang Rai!
After a few viewing of rooms (some rather basic backpacker accomodation at 3 pouns/night), we decided to push the boat out and spend 12 pounds on a very fancy guesthouse.
We booked our trek with a local charity organisation, as some of the profits from the trekking are put back into educating and providing services for the hilltribe villagers in this area.
We were picked up from our hotel and then caught a long-tailed boat upstream on the river for about an hour. We then transferred onto pachyderm transport (elephants!) for a 2 hour trek into the jungle. Elephants are surprsingly agile and danced their way along some really narrow paths that even Sarah would fall off. We arrived at a hilltribe village, where we were able to wander round the village and meet the many kids, numerous dogs, chickens and pigs and also have lunch. We then switched again to bipedal transport and trekked on foot along more mountain paths. Whilst we were probably never that far from a road or a village, at some points we felt like we were explorers discovering Thailand for the first time as we were hacking through the jungle!
We then arrived at another hilltribe village where we were to spend the night. The villagers are pretty used to seeing fa rang (white tourists) so they are just going about their daily business. The people in these villages are animists so they believe that spirits inhabit all things so you mustn't touch certain objects for fear of offending the spirits, which would then require lots of appeasing. We slept in a little wooden hut (John & I were allowed to sleep in the same room, which the villagers do not do after they are married, apart from at times they want another baby. So they normally have seperate men and women's sleeping rooms). The rooster alarm clocks woke us up at about 4am! But we slept pretty well all things considered as it was TOTALLY FREEZING!! John was fine of course but Sarah had on a t-shirt, 2 long-sleeved tops, a fleece and a bandana pulled down over her head. She then had a blanket and a duvet covering her. She is possibly the only person who could be that cold in a tropical country! In her defence, we were very high in the hills and the hut was a bit like camping as it was partially exposed to the elements.
The following morning started with coffee, breakfast and the sight of a snake that had just been killed by one of the villagers! It was to be chopped up and coocked as soup for lunch.
We started off with a hike through the jungle and came across a farmer harvesting pineapples. He cut one open for us there and then and it so delicious that even pineapple-hating John ate some. We arrived at a spectacular waterfall after that - the water was freezing but John just about managed to go in. Then we went to another Akha village before heading back to Chaing Rai for some well-deserved washing of both clothes and us.
We are hoping to cross the border into Laos tomorrow so the next post should be from a new country.
