Northern Thailand would not be complete if we did not do a trek. We decided to do a day trek instead of a two night, so we could venture up farther north to a smaller town named Pai. We stayed up until 4 in the morning venturing around Chaing Mai, only to get up at 7 the next morning to prepare to leave. Next thing we knew we were picked up Johnny Tsunami’s look-alike, LA’s next up and coming star, who was too cool to ever formally introduce himself. Stop 1: elephant riding….except for this time we had to ride the elephant without the trainer. Mildly confused when we were ordered to start walking on the elephant completely by ourselves, we “lumbered” along the paths into the forest. Luckily we stocked up bags of sugar cane and bananas because our elephant would walk five feet before stopping and spraying us with mud, spit, snot, you name it, until we fed him again. We realized the elephant was similar to us in this sense. One time, we had finished feeding the elephant, only to realize he wouldn’t budge, little did we know our friendly elephant trainer was peeing ride beside us. They seemed to be good friends, because throughout our ride the trainer would often speak to our elephant. An hour, a river, and bags of food later, we made it back to elephant world. All shapes and sizes, there were tons of elephants grazing along the road. We dismounted the elephant, hung around a little bit, say mama and the babies and then progressed further up the mountain. It was then when we realized, if we weren’t driving 200 mph bouncing up and down in a peace van, awkwardly moving on elephant back, or putsing around on a tuk tuk, we would know we were not in Thailand anymore. We had lunch in a local home-stay and then started our walk through the mountains up to waterfalls, and other villages. After taking a dip at one of the waterfalls on top of the mountain, we wandered along streams, and rice tiers until reaching another village.
It was interesting to visit a village on foot, other than bike or by van because you were really able to slow down and take it all in. From the outside, despite the intense gardens, these villages appeared to be a lot like those of Vietnam. However, the people did not seem as dated, for there was a lack of younger people within the village- apparently many children, and young adults, even though they are living under tree leaves-commute into the nearby cities for work, so they are able to support their parents and grandparents back in the villages. Our adventure continued when we got to the river, and were ordered to board our bamboo raft. To Birmy’s surprise, he was then handed a wooden stick on told to resume his spot, standing on the back of the raft to stir our boat for our ride down the river. This “boat” consisted of 7 bamboo sticks tied together by a tire. Standing on this was as difficult as trying to balance yourself on a tight rope, while it may have actually have been harder because there were rapids, rocks, and other drunk Thai Sunday rafters, wherever you looked. After wiping out once Birmy established himself in the back of the raft, all making it through a couple of rapids. Rapid number three did not go so well, since we were already going full force down the river until we heard a large splash and realized we no longer had Birmy. We looked back, and there he was, wooden pole in hand, flailing around the river. It was a very fun ride, dispite a couple of rapids, we passed many natives hanging along the sides of the river in floating bars, and huts to relax in. The now seasoned bamboo captain Birmy, now plans on orchestrating a bamboo rafting operation in the inner harbor.
That night we boarded another bus for what we thought would be a leisurely ride through the northern countryside. Wrong. We got into our van turned corvette and embarked on our adventure to Pai. 762 turn later (literally- there are t shirts to prove it), we made it. After this ride we had a munch better feeling about taking a mini bus to Thailand, because our driver was friendly, safe, and only broke 160 a handful of times throughout the ride.
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