Trekking in Chiang Mai

Sawadhee Ka! Hello,

I'm in Chiang Mai, a province about 12 hours north of Bangkok, for the weekend. What an incredible weekend. So, about 3-4 weeks ago, I went to dinner with my Thai friend, Warren, and some other exchange students, to meet up with Warren's friends from California (he spent the summer in Cali). At dinner, I met this girl Melissa who is studying abroad in Singapore and we started chatting about how we like to travel and have crazy adventures, doing physical things such as rock climbing, hiking, etc. Then she mentioned she wants to got to Chiang Mai to do some trekking and I agreed that I've been wanting to do that as well. So, we talk for an hour or two and then she leaves back to Singapore the next day. About a week later I get an email from her about a Chiang Mai trip, and she actually books her plane ticket to BKK, and we are now in Chiang Mai. SO random, things like this never actually happen...people always say they want to do things but never take action to actually do anything. I'm really glad Melissa emailed me, because this trip was one of the best I've had in Thailand...too bad it's during midterms. Mai ben rai.

So, anyway, Melissa gets in late Tuesday night and we stay up till almost 5 am talking about life... even though I've known this girl for about 4 days I feel like I have known her for years! I wake up a few hours later, play squash, skype my mom and head to school for midterm # 1. That was fun. After the midterm, Melissa, myself and about 6 other students from my midterm class head down the river to the most incredible massage street ever. It's BKK's best kept secret...2 hour massages for 140 baht (less than $5 USD); love it. It's my weekly massage, and the best part is there are no other Westerners there...only locals. After that, Melissa and I head to MBK (huge shopping mall) to get our eyebrows waxed (FINALLY!). For all those that have lived with me, they know how obssessed I am with my eyebrows. I literally am obssessed...the first thing I do when I get back from a camping trip (or something similar) is head to the bathroom to do my eyebrows. That is, if I haven't somehow done them while camping. Anyway, we get our eyebrows done after searching MBK for 30 minutes (that place is HUGE)...and then proceed to Chinatown. But not before we spend 45 minutes in MBK marvelling over how cheap everything is, and doing some sunglass shopping. Once we leave MBK, we get to Chinatown and Melissa and I proceed to eat EVERYTHING there. No joke. This past week was a vegeterian festival in BKK, so Chinatown had hundreds of food stalls, full of delicious veggie meals. Melissa and I literally went to a food stall, ordered food, sat down and ate it, then walked for 10 minutes and did it again. Total meals= 2 dinners and 2 desserts. Niccce! We ate this AMAZING (and I don't typically throw that word around) toasted bun with green goo (coconut syrup??) inside it...seriously one of the best things I've ever eaten....it even rivals sticky rice with mango. Yum.

Wow, I just spend a paragraph talking about the delish Thai foods, but they really are incredible (with potential to be gross...watch out). After Chinatown, Melissa and I finally head home and pass out from the exhausting day.

The next day, I go to Finance, spend way too much time trying to figure out Time Value of Money problems, and then get together with Melissa and MJ (another student who came to Chiang Mai with us) and head to Lumpini Park for a midday picnic at the best park in BKK. It was a great time...we just hung out there and met some buff guys working out at the outdoor gym, who convinced us to work out with them. Ya, me working out in my school uniform= quite a sight to see. I'll post those pics soon. Then, we played on the playground and got kicked off the swings by the security guard (what, Thailand has rules??), but were allowed to play on the rest of the equipment, just not the swings. Okkay, sure. Then, we head to the train station to take our overnight, 12 hour sleeper train to Chiang Mai. Yay, my very first train ride! Overall good experience, very nice and cozy. Once we arrive in Chiang Mai, we consult our Lonely Planet travel guide and head to Julie's guesthouse and then book a 2 day/1 night trekking/water rafting tour that leaves in 1 hour! We have breakfast and soon thereafter are off for trekking!

After a few hours of driving and stopping at local markets for snacks, we finally arrive at a small village, where lunch and elephants are awaiting us. We spend an hour elephant trekking through the jungle (my first elephant riding...but slightly overrated, I must say), and then we begin the intense 2.5 hour trek up the jungle to the Loa Hunla (?) village tribe at the top of the mountain. This was exactly what I came for... 2.5 hours of up hill, at times hand over foot, hiking. Definitely did not feel bad about all those Thai sweets after this trek! When we finally arrive at the village at dusk, we shower (in the dark, with no electricity...thank goodness my phone has a flashlight) and have an incredible dinner of bamboo, pad thai, tofu, squash & chicken curry= YUM! We hang out with the tribal women, admire the beautfiul stars (which you can never see in BKK because of the smog and pollution), look for the Big Dipper but only see the Milky Way, and head to bed for one of the best nights sleep I've had in weeks. Until 5am, when the damn roosters start their roosting (crackling? screaming?). Ughh, not pleasant. So, I wake up, head to the bathroom, eat breakfast and have coffee (a rare treat here!), and get ready for more trekking! We trek for about an hour of slipperly-ness (I think I fell about 3 times), until we get to this fantastic waterfall, where we all strip down and run through the way-cold- but-so-refreshing-water, that literally knocked me off my feet and took off half my bathing suit...that is one powerful waterfall!

After playing in the waterfall, we trek for another hour to the river where we begin white water rafting! Woo, what a great time! We raft for about 30 minutes, and then hop on a bamboo raft, which is just as it sounds. A huge, 8 person raft made of bamboo, where the front person steers with this enormous 10 foot stick. Ting, the Chinese guy in our group, was originially steering, but I soon changed that :) After he "slipped" off the raft, I jumped up ahead and took over the steering. We arrived at our lunch spot, starving, and ate a meal of pad thai and pineapple.
Oh, AND, grasshoppers. Yup, I ate a grasshopper. Me, the person most scared of bugs I've ever met in my life. I wasn't going to do it, but I told one of the Danish girls on our trip I'd do it if she would, thinking she'd decline. She accepted my challenge and then I had to do it. We pulled off the heads, popped the body, complete with legs and wings, in our mouth, and chewed away! It was actually quite good...I probably wouldn't order it at a restuarant, but not so bad. Good protein :)

Then we head home to shower and hit up Chiang Mai nightlife. Well, not quite. More like hit up the walking market, where we spent 2 hours shopping, eating, and walking around, until we were too exhausted to move. While shopping, I hang out with the 2 Danes (I cannot handle Melissa and MJ while shopping...such girls) and we proceed to try every Thai sweet being sold on the street. Haha, it was great. And, they also taught me some Danish (did you know Filt means fat & cool? So, I can say "Tu er Filt" meaning "you are cool/fat". Hmmm.....) which was interesting. After a couple hours of this, the 2 Danes head home, as they had an early morning adventure awaiting them. Then Ting (poor guy spent 2 hours shopping with MJ and Melissa), Mj, Melissa and myself head back to Julie's guesthouse, where we meet some fellow travelers and talk with them for a couple hours. I met a Chilean financial analyst who takes off 1 month every year to travel the world. She's been trekking to the base camp of Mount Everest, trekking in Chiang Mai, and hanging out in India, among other things. What a cool lady!

Oops, gotta run, check out at our guesthouse is in a few minutes! More on the rest of Chiang Mai later.

Ciao!