Chang Mai Trek

We set off with a group of 11 other peolpe to start a 3 day hike and trek into the hills of Chang Mai. I honestly didn’t think it would be as hard as it was but it was worth doing and everyone in the group was really friendly. Lloyd and I bonded and made friends with a couple from the south of England called Mark and Cindy. The walk itself took us through amazing scenery and our guide Jayjay made sure everyone was looked after. Each night we stopped in a local village and had food by candle light and then sat around a campfire talking and drinking beer. Our final stop was by a waterfall; here we managed to have a swim and lounged around before we had food and another campfire. Mark had bought a bottle of vodka with him so we drank that and set off some fireworks.

After the final night we made our way back into the hills where we walked for about another 2 hours, we were then driven by truck to a place where we got to ride elephants, this was my least favourite part of the whole trek. The least I could after the elephant ride was to buy him some bananas. After the Elephant ride was finished we were then taken to the river for a ‘‘slow’’ raft ride. Pretty much everyone got soaked, I just about made it to the end without falling in and with about 15 meters to go the raft tipped and I fell in.

It’s really hard to write about everything that happened on the trek but it certainly was a great way to meet new people. When we arrived back at the hostel a few of us had drinks together and ended up getting very drunk.

The next day Mark, Cindy, Lloyd and I rented a couple of scooters and drove out to a really old temple in the hills. The temple itself was beautiful but it was full of tourists, we then drove back down into Chang Mai. In all honesty I enjoyed the bike ride more than the seeing the temple. Tonight a few of us are going to watch a kickboxing match; I’ve never been to anything like that before so it should be interesting.

Tomorrow is our last day in Chang Mai, it’s a great city and worth visiting and I would recommend it to anyone.

My next up date will be from Laos.