3 weeks in asia: part 3.3

this post, which is quite long, covers days 15-18 (dec 11th-14th) of the trip.

we had some breakfast at julie's, left most of our belongings in storage there and took a truck ride about 20 km north of chiang mai to the area of mae tang.  at the time i felt horrible, but wouldn't know until days later that i had tonsillitis.

 

we stopped at a market for some snacks and water.

 

some big toads/frogs in the front here and some snake in the back.

 

 

we had some lunch then took an elephant ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we went into this mess.

 

 

we were privileged enough to have the chance at staring at this guys ass the whole time.

 

 

 

 

 

there were nine of us on the first leg of the trek.  we soon got on our way with the 4-5 km hike we took that day, which was straight up much of the way, no traversing.  the guides new a lot about all of the plants and animals around the area.  the leaf of this plant created a red juice when broken and rubbed between the fingers.

 

 

when the stem of this plant was broken, bubbles could be blown from it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

while stopped at a waterfall for a break, a guy in a different group lost his footing and started to slide down the hill.  they managed to get him back up fairly quickly.

 

 

daniel and i switched bags at this point, just to distribute the weight/work a bit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

some purple bananas.

 

 

 

he was telling us about the types of rice and beans that were growing there.

 

 

 

the first good view of the hoi gu gap village, that would be our resting place for the night.

 

 

 

the hut that we stayed in.

 

there was a brick/concrete slab in the middle of the hut for a fire.  after taking extremely cold showers, we had some delicious food and sat around listening to one of the guides play guitar and sing and solving puzzles that the other guide would challenge us with.

 

 

the people in the village usually only wear traditional clothing for special occasions, but the mother and father of the family who provided the hut for us wore theirs.  they spoke a different language, even the guides couldn't really communicate with them.  we learned one phrase 'ah-bo-yeu-jah' which could be used for hello, bye, thank you, please.

 

 

 

 

 

 

i was quite feverish, it was quite cold at night up in the mountains and the roosters started crowing about 4am, so there wasn't much sleeping.

 

after some breakfast and instant coffee four people left for their second and final day.  i went for a walk through the village.

 

 

the far, faint mountain range is burma, to give you a little perspective of our location.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this was the kitchen in our hut.

our guides as we were heading out for the second day of hiking.

 

 

 

 

 

 

this used to be the school that the children went to, but they recently started going to school in a different village.  we stopped here to play some foot/volleyball.  this was fun, but made us sweat all of the hydration out that we had worked on getting in before leaving the hut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

we hiked about 5-6 km this day, but it was a lot less up, mostly down.

 

 

we soon came up on another village.

 

 

stopped for a break.  i played some checkers and got schooled.

 

hey look, there's a pig.

look, two more.

 

we stopped again for some lunch at a waterfall.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

a little muay thai practice.

 

 

 

back into the jungle and out of nowhere, papaya.

 

 

 

 

 

 

stop at another large waterfall for a break.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

this guy was like a monkey hopping over that wall.

 

 

there were a couple huts near a creek that we stopped at for the night.  the two ladies there could speak a little english, so we could communicate with them.  and by the way, our guides had really good english.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

still didn't sleep very good because my throat hurt like hell and i still had a fever.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

from here we hiked about 40 minutes.

 

 

 

big termite mound.

 

 

didn't matter where you were, there were babies on motor scooters.

an orange grove.

 

a ladder up the tree for honey.

 

 

this snake was slowly creeping its way up this huge tree.  it was probably 50 feet up with another 80 to go.  hours of dedication.

 

there used to be a military base here.

 

 

this is where the hiking ended and the hour whitewater and bamboo rafting down the mae tang river began.  obviously no photos.

when rafting ended we were across the river from the location of the elephant ride.  once again, i was beaten at checkers.  they do play with different rules than i'm used to, but i still lost.

 

we got a ride back to julie's, took showers, repacked, had dinner and waited for our night bus to bangkok.

the bus dropped us off near kao san road at about 5am on dec 14th.  we had to find some guest house and wait a couple hours for a van to take us to the cambodian border.

the van took its sweet freaking time, stopping at every gas station it could.  here are some some grasshoppers and crickets if you care to snack.  no thanks.

 

the van stopped less than a half mile from the border at a place where we could pay double the price for a cambodian visa with a guarantee to get us to siem reap for no additional charge.  i protested that a visa doesn't cost that much, but just decided fuck it and paid for it.

 

now i had wanted to fly from chiang mai to siem reap, but it was going to take a whole day as there were no direct flights available.  so by land was the only option.  next time though, i'll probably find a way to fly because i won't have to deal with all of the people trying to rip you off by ground.