Jungle trekking day 1.

| October 2nd, 2008 | Chiang Mai

I’m awake at 7:30, sore and tired because the last 3 days have been pretty intense, we spend them in the jungle on our 3 day jungle trek adventure tour. Which turned out to be pretty damn good actually.
Our first day we headed down to the travel agent at 9am we booked with to store our bags and valuables and with only the bare essentials we hopped aboard the truck and picked everybody up from various places in Chang Mai. With our group complete we all headed for our first stop while we got to know each other, and what a lovely bunch of coconuts they all were… That really makes all the difference when doing something like that because if everything goes bad or you really start to not enjoy it at least you have good company you know?
Anyway our first stop was in fact a hanging orchid garden which was pretty cool I suppose, didn’t really see why but hey. Then off to stop number 2, a snake farm. Which again wasn’t mentioned when we booked but we kept an open mind, it was a dire display of how not to keep snakes and what’s more I have a real aversion to things like that because I have seen enough shocking movies on the Internet to give me a healthy respect of dangerous animals especially for instance, massive king cobra’s in a cage and one of the staff kicking the mesh to make the thing react!!! No thank you, and when they started walking around with them to put on people I am certain to keep the fuck out of the way! After a while walking around the cages looking at the various slippery beasts we were ushered inside to watch yet another shocking accident video in the making, a snake show with an old man fucking around with cobra’s and all sorts. The commentary for the show was hilarious but the rest of it was a little brutal for my liking and I think I would have found it infinitely more entertaining if he had taken a dose of venom but he didn’t and the snakes went back in their respective sacks until the next tour group arrives.

We arrived at the base camp where we would get some lunch and prepare for our first day of trekking after about an hour, by this time we were all getting on pretty well and although a little spaced out from the exhaust fumes of our struggling truck, ready for a good trekking… Even Georgie! We were all given lengths of bamboo as hiking sticks and told it was to hit the wild dogs with and then away we went into the jungle. It was about a 3 hour trek and pretty tough going, it started fine and as we got higher the going got tougher, we had a short rain shower which helped to re energize everybody but it didn’t last too long because shortly afterwards it was baking heat. After about 2 hours Georgie was set to turn around, she was running on empty and completely exhausted but with help from some Alpen bars and a Redbull she kept going… Despite swearing that trekking is the most ridiculous thing in the world and she would never ever do it again! But thanks to a few of the others being so supportive and our guides she soldiered on. As we climbed higher the views started to open up and become ones of pretty dramatic hillside and jungle greenery but it was spoiled slightly by the super hard going because the best we could manage was to stare directly at the floor to keep moving and not fall, only stopping a few times to really take it in. As we neared the hill tribe village that would be our home for the night the clouds rolled through the valley below us and let loose a pretty big rain storm, we had gone from being dripping with sweat and ready to drop to almost shivering and soaked to the bone within a minute…
But the end was in sight and with a soundtrack of utter despair from Georgie we made it to the village and to our bamboo long-house, within minutes a fire was alight and we were stripped off huddling around it trying to dry off. The long-house was really basic but really nice, it had 3 rooms, one a kitchen/staff area, a kind of sitting room with an open fire pit in the middle and one side open to the hills and lastly a big bedroom. Outside was a large porch area and the whole thing was made from bamboo even down to the floor covering.
After a few hours the weather lifted and the views down across the hills and valleys was pretty spectacular, we all sat around chatting and drinking some beers while the guides knocked up some top grub. We all sat around the fire swapping travel stories and eating for the evening and it was starting to all seem worth the effort of walking there, one of our guides who had been particularly quiet all day had perked up a treat and with a few of the villagers got out a guitar and a old water can and started to get a sing along going. It was really fun and the guide was on top form really going for it, but after exhausting all their English songs he started making them up… Our favourite was one centred around the royal family with a few classic lines like “prince Charles loves Camilla too much” “prince William, went to Iraq, to find Bin Laden, but only for a week, then he went home, because its very scary”
Hilarious!
A few of the village women were offering massages and we weren’t about to refuse… Kat and I got a treat of 2 women each while Georgie bless her only got the 1, but after that we were suitable relaxed and I shortly after we all headed off to bed before the snorers got going…