The Kettle And The Machette

Ok well tonight i am heading back to Bangkok and probably the best idea really as Northern Thailand seems to have a problem with me.

I did make it trekking for a three days in the mountains and it was beautiful. As you can see by the pictures i was involved in a fair amount of activities and met a number of characters along the way. Sadly these pictures on this site are all i will have left as the stupid computer decided to corrupt the folder and now i am left with no photos to keep. I am not happy at the moment but never mind i will get over it!

I pondered staying for longer but two old housemates will be in Bangkok in the next couple of days and so too will a couple of guys from Chile whom you may remember from the Fraser Island adventures. Anyway on the next post you will find out what happened.

So back to the trekking. Well it was hard work and in places if you slipped you probably wouldn't have survived without a few broken bones thats for sure. We did stop to take a dip in a waterfall though which was nice and helped cool us down a bit. The landscape as you can imagine was very special.

Each night we stayed in small tribasl villages with our guide, who you can see in one of the pics taking a break! The villages were great but a little questioning upon finishing our stay. Having rested and reheated by the fire with the other trekkers we awoke in the morning to understand that all was not so impoverished for these people. The squeeky wooden frame of a half garage door swept back as we took breakfast, only for a man to reveal his huge Isuzu trooper of a vehicle. In case your wondering there is a well established history of Opium trading in these parts and although not all are involved there is no way a few tourists each day could fund such a vehicle. Apart from this there was no real signs of commercial living, a very tiny stall selling a few bits and pieces but no tv's etc which was the best part, we really were out of the way!

In the morning me and Andy another English guy went for a wonder and we stumbled on these two. Thanks mum for making mew laugh so much....

"were they being supervised"

"are they wooden toys or real?"

these guys were waving these distinctively real 'toys' around and around and were very interested in two western guys coming they're way. So the boys played with they're machettes and the girls... well...

It was an interesting stay.

Here is Moon our guide who did a good job of keeping us going, cooking us meals and storing them in leaves until we could eat them, teaching us about certain plants and letting us generally have a good time! He made sure we had what we needed thats for sure.

We took an elephant ride and this is proof for Brett that yes the funks do eat carrots!!!!! The little track we did was quite enough. To be perched above a vertical fall on a very heavy animal that doesn't seem to particulary care is another experience i can tell you! Anyway here is something creative...

Finally a bit of light water rafting and we were done. It was fun few days but since then i have either been violently ill or frustrated with computers. I have however decided that northern Thailand will not be explored further and that similar if not better places will be my conquest later in the trip, so keep watching this space!

Happy Chinese New Year to all today and hope all are well!

written by

50watts on January 27, 2006 from Chiang Mai, Thailand

from the travel blog: Ending 2005 and Starting 2006

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