Like I mentioned in my last entry lots have happened since that faithful train ride to Chaing Mai. I have parted ways with my British friends and headed over to this resort called Thana which is THE destination place to stay in for all Israelis traveling to Chaing Mai. The place was suggested to me by my friend whom I mentioned before. He kept talking about this amazing 4x4 three day trip that comes out of that guest house. So upon arriving to the city I went and signed up to the trip. When signing up the lady who was taking my money told me very carefully "Just so that you are not surprised, most of the people on this trip are from Israel" to which I replied that I did not mind one bit. And indeed I took the itinerary from her in which she wrote my name in and the only country of origin besides Israel was USA, under my name. After going though the names and counting 47 girl names out of the total of 70 people I figured that I doubly don't mind being in Israeli company for 3 full days :)
The next day when I got to the pick up place I got assigned into a car with 5 other girls. Like I already said, I wasn't complaining. The trip itself was amazing, I couldn't have asked for more. The girls were super fun and we sang and laughed for the majority of the drive from place to place to place. Our driver was this Thai guy who introduced himself as Potato (he did look a bit like a potato, something that I choose to keep to myself) after some talking he turned out to have another job as a cab driver in Bangkok. I will leave it up to you to imagine how much fun the drive itself was. A little bit about the activities that we undertook. On the first day we went to a snake farm where we saw this guy take on two cobras and then milk one of them right in front of us. There were a few other poisonous snakes but the cobras made the biggest impression on me. I will post some pictures later as I have no way of connecting my camera right now. Afterward we did the elephant show and riding, then visited the Kayan Hill tribe, that's the long neck women with the gold rings around their necks. Very cool stuff, just not much to say about it as you have to see the pictures. After that we went to do some white water rafting. It wasn't very exciting compared to the 5 level rapids that we do back home but because the guys I was with in a boat were messing around I got pretty scared for a second or two when we stopped on a rock with the prospect of flipping over and ending up finishing the rafting on my own not very appealing. In the end everything ended rather peaceful. I will let the pictures talk for them selves. At night I was assigned rooms with one other guy who was traveling by himself. What are the odds that he would turn out to be Russia, well not too low but still. Great guy who just finished an EE degree from the Technion in Haifa. He actually left for Thailand right after his last test, how fun must it be for him. We sat down with a bunch of other girls and guys in a circle in this cafeteria got a few beers and sang Israeli songs until the wee hours of the night. I could only join in once or twice since most of the songs they were singing were not familiar to me but I felt really proud of myself none the less, having not spoken Hebrew in a consistent manner for over 10 years I kept up with the singing and the conversation rather well. The next day I got to feed some peanuts to some monkeys. Those are the most adorable creatures I have met so far but scary as all hell once they get even a little bit irritated, even the smallest ones. The guides had really long bamboo sticks to drive the aggressive ones away. It was really funny to watch one of them after I gave him the whole basket of peanuts that I had sit there and very methodically pick out the good ones from the bad ones. I really saw an imagine of myself in a cubicle doing a very similar job ;) Next was a visit to the golden triangle. For those of you who don't know what it is that is the place where Burma, Thailand and Laos intersect (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Triangle_(Southeast_Asia)) We took a quick boat ride to Laos for a few hours to go shopping at a market. I honestly don't think anyone but tourists visits that market but it was very fun, and private, and really really cheap. Oh, and something else that I found very peculiar. They had a bear cub locked in a cage behind the market bungalows. No idea why or what and I figured it would be best to keep my questions to myself. The day afterward was one of the highlights of the trip, we took the beasts that we were so far riding on paved road on, the Jeeps I mean, off road. As some of you already know this is the rainy season in Thailand right now and they don't call it rainy for nothing. It rains pretty much every day, something that is extremely annoying if you want to get a tan but very conductive to getting your car stuck and dirty in knee high mud. Which was exactly what we would have done if not for our amazing driver potato. All the rough driving in Bangkok definitely paid off when he had to take us through the jungle.
Sorry for the obnoxiously long paragraph but I was trying to summarize a week long of activities in as few sentences as possible. Right now I'm sitting in an internet coffee in Pai, which is a small city 3 hours north of Chaing Mai. I stayed here for two nights at this little bungalow on the river. The river flooded both nights and I had to track through knee high water only to get to the bridge to cross the rest of the river. Pretty disturbing/disgusting experience considering the clarity of the water. But an experience none the less. Lets just say I have marked off another thing of my bucket list. While I was here I met a bunch of Dutch people from Amsterdam and we all rented scooters to drive around. Went to see some water falls and the country side.
I have booked a bus ride to Luang Prabang which is a city in Laos. The ride is supposed to take over 12 hours. Dreading the prospect of it already. What I am looking forward to is getting a job there for a few days; something that the people that I've met, who have been there, suggested. Just as a side note - these malaria pills are the freaking devil. I've been having crazy ass nightmares.
Well that's about it for now. I gota run to the buss station right now. Hope everyone is doing great back home!!
