Roughin' it tribal style!

We're in Chiang Mai! Its a pretty buzzing place - not as busy as Bangkok, which is comforting!

Been on a couple of trips so far - first was a visit to the Golden Triangle. This is where three countries - Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet - its pretty cool cos you just stand at the viewing point and you see all three countries surrounding this one long river!

Last night we got back from a 2D 1N trekking trip around Se Meong (think thats what the place was called - our guide wasn't very good at telling us where we were going!). There were 11 of us, firstly all squashed up in a small pick-up truck travelling to the trekking point. The first day trek was pretty boring - just straight roads and some rice fields. We arrived in a Karen (a hill-tribe) village after about 3-4 hours, and the first thing we did was grab BEERS! It turned into quite a fun and cheesy night - drinking, singing by the camp fire, and playing truth! We stayed the night in a big hut, and as you can imagine, no shower and pothole toilets meant that it was a pretty uncomfortable and skanky night for me! I could barely sleep cos my clothes were all sweaty and all i could think about was going to the toilet - but i was a little scared cos it was pitch black outside, and i really didn't want the mozzies biting at my bum!!

It was a bad idea for all of us to be drinking cos the 2nd day was a mega-hardcore trek! We thought that it was gonna be an easy day just riding on elephants and rafting, but NO, we had about 5-6 hours SOLID walking up hills and down slippery rocky roads (witha 1 hour elephant ride in between)! Woke up at 7am, had brekkie then started the trek about 9am and didn't get to rest for lunch til 2pm!!!!! It was hell! We were also promised a nice waterfall to bathe in, but really, it was barely a pond with mirky water - though the actuak waterfall wasn't too bad - we just didn't have anywhere to bathe! So onwards we had to go for another hour, still in our manky, sweaty clothes, feeling like shit, till we got to our final stop - the river bamboo rafts! I must say that this was teh best part of the trip - sitting on these dodgy bamboo rafts and floting along a mild river rapid! Seriously good fun!

Ok so most of the trip was rather hard for me, but looking back it was actually a pretty cool experience...that I would never do EVER again!! However, if you do ever come to Chiang Mai - I would reccomend this trip just for the experience of roughin' it!