This is the blog/travel journal for Chris & Joanne Reilly from Glasgow, Scotland. After quitting our jobs and selling our house, we plan to travel around the globe for the next year.

Tuesday, January 31, 2006

It's not all walking

We were picked up about 9:30 for our eco-trek into the Thai highlands north of Chiang Mai, as seems to be the norm in Thailand we were then driven about 2 Km’s and then shifted into another van. We had a short journey to a market to get supplies before we got going; well to be honest we never really got going. After driving for another hour we stopped off at a small hill village where we wandered about for five minutes, but there was nothing to see except some people trying to fix a pipe and snotty kids chasing chickens. It was then back into the van for another short drive to our lunch stop for fried rice and veg. By this point we were all wondering if we were going to do any walking at all today and the rest of the people we were with were starting to get a bit anxious.


Joanne and I had signed up for the three day trek, but everybody else apart from a Swedish father and daughter who were only here for two days. The group consisted of two Irish sisters, three women called Maria from Valencia, a sailor from Switzerland and Christophe and Charlotte from Sweden (but who now live in Provence, in the south of France). We eventually started walking just before two o’clock and we had a nice walk through some rice fields and small woods, but the walk was far from strenuous and our guide was as informative as the internet in a power cut. Don’t think for a second that we were trudging knee deep through rice paddies as its slap bang in the middle of the dry season and the ground was parched and barren. The most exciting it got on the first days trek was crossing logs over some small streams, one of the Maria’s suffered from Vertigo and had to hold on to my shoulder as we crossed a few of brooks. I decided about half way across to do a wee hop, skip and jump which didn’t go down to well as she hit me once she got off the log.

We arrived at another small village and were directed to the group’s hut, large mosquito nets hung from the roof covering our mattresses. You could almost hear the mosquitoes salivating as we piled in to pick our spot for the long night ahead, as the local flying vampire’s booked in for their European buffet. A small crowd of women and kids had congregated around the hut door selling bracelets and necklaces, if it looked like they weren’t going to get a sale they put some wares in one of the youngest kid’s hands and tried to embarrass you into buying something. We came away with two bracelets and a few smiles from the women and kids. During the time we had arrived a frail old woman was struggling to climb onto a long axle foot press to separate rice from its husk, she looked as if she was about to keel over at any moment but she had probably be doing the same thing every day since she could remember.




After dinner we sat around a camp fire for awhile and drank some beers, but most people decided to hit the bed early as we expected a heavy day of trekking the next morning. Nobody got a good night sleep as the cockerels doodle doodled doo all night and one of the Marias snored like an asthmatic water buffalo, much to the annoyance of Christophe and Charlotte who were sleeping next to her. We were woken at 7:30 for our breakfast before we started at 9:00 for our first short walk of the day, yeah the walks never really did get that difficult on the second day.

We arrived at a clearing in the forest and caught sight of the elephants that were going to be our transport for the next hour. Joanne bought some bananas to feed the elephants, and suddenly the five elephants made a beeline towards her with their trunks aimed for her hand. This gave Joanne a bit of a fright and she was off her mark pretty sharpish, luckily a few others bought some bananas so Joanne narrowly avoided being mauled by the hungry beasts. After the elephants had their fill of bananas we climbed on and set off for our slow procession through the forest. After horse riding in Bolivia and Camel riding in Australia this was by the far most leisurely of the three and apart from a few hairy moments going down an embankment also the safest.


Soon after the Elephant rides the group split with the two day trekkers heading one way and Joanne, Christophe, Charlotte and myself heading the other. We arrived a good hour early for lunch and our guide didn’t seem too happy that we were walking too fast, whilst we were all getting a bit frustrated at the lack of real walking. We then set off and had a nice leisurely walk across some more rice fields and pass many herds of water buffalos and cows. We arrived at our camp for the second night just before four and we decided to have a dip in the pool at the bottom of the fall. Big mistake as the water was absolutely freezing but after a few minutes it was almost bearable, there were no showers for miles so it was the only way that we were getting a wash that night.

Before dinner we whiled away an hour knocking cans off a fence with catapults, when I was a kid I always wanted a toy called Tin Can Alley but I was obviously a toe rag as Santa never did come up with the goods. I really enjoyed using the catapult and don’t remember ever trying one before, but I’ve said things like this only to be shot down a few seconds later by some knowing party. After a few shots I thought I was doing really well and was hitting the cans quite regularly but I was then challenged by the rather worse for wear cook who hammered me every time and I had to sing a song as a forfeit. After dinner we asked the guide if we could start earlier the next morning than the planned 10am start to do quite a bit more walking, but he threw a bit of a strop and got a bit snappy with Christophe while playing cards.


Next morning we set off 30 minutes earlier than the guide had wanted and he said he would try and find a longer, harder route but kept saying that he hadn’t been this way in eight months and that we might get lost. We didn’t get lost, and it was a bit more taxing than the previous two days but we still felt that we had been short changed. We arrived at a nice spot with a waterfall so we decided to have a dip in the water and chill for a bit as we realised we weren’t too far from our lunch spot. After lunch it was into the back of a truck and a short drive to the river for some bamboo rafting.


I hadn’t really thought too much about the rafting before arriving at the river, and I suddenly realised that we were going to be floating down a fast flowing river on five bamboo poles tied together. My fears weren’t allayed when I was nominated to stand at the back of the raft to punt us down the river as the other three sat in the middle. We managed to set off ok and it wasn’t too bad at first, a raft with four Germans in front was having quite a few problems and it looked like they were going to sink at any moment as they were sitting well below the water line. At one point I had to dive on my front as I was about to smash my head on a low trunk of a tree, but luckily I managed to stay on the raft even though now I was totally soaked. After about 50 minutes we arrived safe and sound at the finishing point where the bamboo poles back are sent to the start via a van. We were then packed off into a small van and taken back to our hostel, even though we weren’t too chuffed with the guide and the lack of walking we had a good time and would maybe do a bit more research in to what company we would use in the future.

Saturday morning we wandered into Chiang Mai and had lunch at the Cinnamon House which sold fantastic baguettes and iced coffees to die for. We had wished we had found this place on our first day and not near the end of our time here, but we did make three trips to it over the next day or two. It was such a nice day we headed to the park and found a nice spot to sit and read. The place was full of local families sitting under the shade of the trees, eating ice cream and enjoying the lovely setting with ornamental ponds and gardens.

Sunday morning after a slight detour to the Cinnamon House for breakfast we headed to the railway and bus station to try and find the best and cheapest way to Bangkok the following day. We decided to get the bus again as it was almost half the price and the times suited us better. Well we misjudged the scale of the map slightly and we were walking for over a good five hours there and back. We stumbled across a cool street market selling loads of interesting knick knacks for a lot less than the tourist orientated markets. We also found a sports shop selling football strips at ridiculously low prices, I’m not sure if they were sourcing them straight from the back door of the factory as they were 90% cheaper than the exactly same strip available in the adidas shop in the centre of Chiang Mai.

The bus turned into another saga, but you must all be fed up hearing about our nightmare bus trips. This time the air conditioning was on full blast and we almost froze to death sitting on the most uncomfortable seats with our legs straight out right at the front of the Double Decker supposedly VIP bus. But nevertheless we arrived safe and sound in Bangkok at 5:30am slightly cold and without any sleep.

2 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

Hoho - what a righ punt.

You would get odds of 8-1 against that happening.

There would be more chance of Lenny scoring (on the footie field)than the dubmeister shimmying they shoulders in a work like manner.

Yassssssssss :-)

9:23 pm

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Loved the elephant story! Would have paid good money to see Joanne running off clutching her bunch of bananas!!!

Kids are getting excited to see you guys!

9:48 pm

 

Post a Comment

<< Home