Chiang Mai, Thailand July 2007

Trekking again. However this time, in rainy season. Kyle, Danielle and I headed out from Chiang Mai for a 2 day/1 night trek into the hill tribes surrounding Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand in the end of July. We were joined by a guy, Robbie, from Beligium and his girlfriend, Katja, from Germany. They'd met in Holland. They spoke many languages, we did not. The main difference between this year and last year was the greenery. Marvelous! Last year I traveled in the end of the dry season. As a result everything was...well...dry. Dry translates into brown. This year was gorgeous. Green, everything green and lush and beautiful...and wet. Yes, it rained. Yes, trails turned to mud. Yes, I fell. Three times. It didn't dampen spirits though. It almost made it all the more real. The first tribe we went to see was the long-neck tribe. I'm sure they have a more Thai-like name than that, but that is how they were described to us. I hadn't seen them last time and wished I had, so I was excited. I remember reading about them in National Geographic some years ago and being astounded by what they do to their bodies and how they do it. It was quite interesting to see it in real life. They start putting rings around their necks when they are 7 years old. They stop adding more rings after a certain point, but put more rings on every few years. The result is an apparently elongated neck. That, however, is not the case. What they end up doing is pushing their ribcage down, compressing everything inside. Not the healthiest thing in the world to do, but it does give the impression that their necks are really long, which they consider to be more beautiful.

We stayed with a different tribe for the night, in the middle of the mountains. For the first time in a long time Dan, Kyle and I saw a sky full of stars. It was beautiful and muchly missed. The next day we walked more to an elephant camp. Rode some elephants and then rafted the rest of the way down some river, back to Chiang Mai.

That night we met Robbie and Katja for some dinner around the night market in Chiang Mai. I love that night market, it's marvelous. However, we got side-tracked by a pamphlet for Muay Thai boxing and ended up spending our night watching people (literally) kick the shit out of eachother. At times it was pretty cool. I reminded myself that I had taken Taekwondo and that was practically the same thing, so I couldn't judge. However whenever a person was KO'd I felt bad. Still an experience...kinda like the ping pong show.

The next day Kyle, Dan and I got in our mini-bus to head to the Thai/Laos border. The next day we were to take the slow boat into Laos. It's a decently long drive (5~6 hours) so we were pretty beat by the time we reached our hotel on the river separating the two countries. The hotel had the cutest puppy though, with the grossest skin condition on his feet. We pet him and washed our hands a lot. Still really cute regardless. That day wasn't too exciting, nor was the boat ride. Since the boat ride occured in another country though, it shall be reserved for a different entry!