Banana please.
TREK!!!
We got to Chiang Mai on the 23rd, and the next morning our guides picked us up for a three day trek through the forests around the city. On this trek we learnt many things about Thai custom, the merits of correctly sized blankets, waterfalls, and the feeding of elephants.
Day 1
Our journey to the start of the trek involved some truly, truly insane driving. We were piled in the back of a Chevrolet Colorado, a vehicle designed for transporting shopping bags between districts of suburbia. At one point we were overtaken on a blind corner by an equally insane, non discript, people carrier. At this point a car met us travelling the opposite direction. None of the drivers were phased by what appeared to be an inevitable collision- instead, the approaching car moved into our lane, passed the people carrier, then squeezed diagonally through the gap between us and the people carrier, putting it back in it's own lane. The people carrier then completed the overtake. I have prepared a diagram to explain this maneuver.
I should point out that no brakes were used in the making of this diagram
Later, we did some walking. It was fun. We stayed the night in a village on top of a hill, inhabited by Thai farmers. They were very friendly, and it was really interesting to be somewhere that was 'authentically' Thai, where people were living more or less as they had been before the invention of tourism, rather than centering their efforts around extracting money from tourists, as has been the case in the cities we've visited.
Camp site in the village
Local people
On the second day, we continued to wander through the forest. At one point we stopped next to a lookout tree, which was a tree that had a ladder up the side so you could climb to the top and see stuff. Ladder is a slight exaggeration.
DC scales tree
On the second night, we camped down river from a waterfall. It was a good waterfall.
Waterfall!
On the third day, we were done walking. This was good news for Marvin! who is still suffering slightly from the time his foot almost had to be amputated. Instead, we employed two unusual forms of transport.
First we rode elephants. In the museum we visited in Bangkok, they explained that elephants were effective as military mounts. This is clearly false. First of all, elephants are extremely hungry- all the time. We were given some bananas for the elephant. Within about 2 seconds of being on its back, the trunk was up in Nathan's face, asking for a banana. Naively, we fed it a banana. In less time than it takes Marvin! to eat a three course meal, the trunk was up again. We fed it another banana. The third time, we thought we would trick it by feeding it two bananas at once, but this backfired because somehow it managed to eat them even quicker in tandem. By this point we had moved less than four meters from the start of the walk, which brings me to my next point; elephants are very very slow. In the museum there were paintings of Thai princes dueling their enemies on the backs of elephants, which would never happen, because some foot soldier would just walk up beside them and push them off while the elephant was asking for a banana. If, of course, the elephant had even made it to the battlefield. This leads on to the third point, which is that elephants are extremely hungry, all the time! Every now and then it would give up on us trying to separate a banana from the bunch, and go off and pull a small tree out of the ground and eat that instead. This became an issue when it tried to eat a tree that was on the other side of a deep crevice. It inched closer and closer to the edge, while the three of us inched further and further towards the back of the elephant. Apparently they occasionally fall off cliffs around here. This, also, would not be helpful in a combat situation.
Elephant gives up and eats a tree
DC tames elephant with crocs
The last item on the agenda was bamboo rafting. After that, we slept. More to follow... very shortly!
