Joining the Trekking Circus

An awesome and well traveled friend Amy rightfully informed us that trekking in Chiang Mai (versus smaller cities like Chiang Rai or Pai) can be a bit like a tourist circus and it kinda was but we had only planned on a few days in northern Thailand and Chiang Mai city is worth the visit so had to go from here. And because March is one of the hottest and smokiest months (they burn all their fields now to make way for new rice and crops to be planted in the upcoming rainy season...kinda depressing environmentally actually), I'm glad we are only here a few days.

Haze:

But anyhow, we did sign up for the two day trekking adventure to a hill tribe village. Yes, we have already joked about them being Village People. In the morning, we picked up our crew and headed to the hills. After lunch, we started a pretty strenuous uphill trek, thankfully interspersed with jumps in the water, and arrived to our Lammu village by late afternoon.

Although we weren't the first, and won't be the last, to trek through here, the people, especially kids, were friendly, though we were sad to see how trashy the area was.

Even with incredibly basic living accomodations of thatched huts and small woodfire stoves on the floor, the mom still cooked up an amazing curry and vegetable dinner. Then it was singing and guitar playing by the campfire, along with roasted bananas and beers.

Erika and I were pretty beat (post St Paddys still) so headed to our mosquito-netted thin mattress on the hut floor early.

And our group was kinda a dud. Two French couples (who spoke almost no english and wouldn't stop feeling each other up), young Danish girls and a Spanish-Japanese couple who were nice. With as many chickens, pigs and animals roaming around, I knew they'd be cockadoodledoing early and they sure were.

After breakfast, we left our village people and trekked down, stopping at waterfalls, before arriving at our elephant camp.

Though we had already had a fun elephant ride in Laos, there was no way to avoid another one here so now we've rode these large mahouts in another country.

The baby one tried to join us for lunch:

Next was whitewater rafting which was hilarious.

We joined a German couple who were much nicer than our couples and provided the funniest moment of our whole adventure. Of course our rafts were of pretty poor quality and after banging over some big rocks, we finally almost all went overboard. I ended up in the middle, lost my paddle, and as water filled up the boat, we heard a noise like we were losing air and the German man freaks out and yells, "We are sinking!!!" In which Erika and I crack up and can not stop laughing. If you're not sure why, you'll understand after you search YouTube for 'what are you sinking about'. This was also a running joke in Germany for the past two years.

After surviving the whitewater portion, we boarded our bamboo rafts to complete the now much calmer leg of the journey.

Our guide soon decided we should do all the rowing now and we subsequently got lodged on a few rocks but overall, it was a pleasant and unique way to raft down the river.

As we boarded our tuk tuk for the return journey, we commented how happy we were to have not chosen the three day option as the smoke really inhibited some of the amazing views that may be worth a longer trek during a different season. An Indian dinner, a stroll through the night market and foot massages and we felt like new again!