A day full of adventure

On Saturday we headed out on a trekking adventure here in Chaing Mai. Our adventure included a visit to a long neck Karen tribal village, a visit to a butterfly, an ELEPHANT TREK, white water rafting, a bamboo raft ride and a swim at nearby waterfall.

We were picked up at 8:30 by our tour guide and we traveled about 45 minutes outside of Chaing Mai city. Our 10 passenger van reminded me a lot of the Matatus in Kenya along with our drive on the rocky roads that surrounded the mountainous terrain. The visit to the long-neck Karen tribal community was extremely disappointing. You could tell that it was set up for tourist an there seemed to be very little authenticity to the whole experience considering we came away knowing no more about the history or culture of the tribe. Every experience I’ve had at this type of this has always been the same and I am beginning to wonder if it is possible to have an authentic experience unless you spend more time in the actual village which is impossible for most day long trekking excursions. All I could do was take a few pictures as though they were animals in a zoo and I felt uncomfortable but knew that I would never see this type of thing again in my life, so you sort of just go a long with it even though you hate mostly every minute.

We quickly moved on to elephant trekking. Oh I forgot to mention the butterfly farm thingy. We saw some butterfly’s and took some pics and moved on. So the elephant trekking was like a dream come true. We got on our elephant and started down a steep hill where I literally felt as though as I as going to topple off that elephant. It didn’t help that I was trying to take pictures with one hand and hold on for dear life with the other. I couldn’t help, I love elephants and a girl can never have too many pictures of elephants. In case your wondering what the elephant felt like, well he was very wrinkly and quite hairy. He had spots on the back of his ear and most importantly the most loveable creature ever. Well not really, but lets just pretend. While riding on the back of elephant we climbed a little mountain and traveled through a shallow river. So in other words my elephant moved mountains and crossed a river just to be with me…haha. Oh my goodness and the best thing about this trek was that fact that a baby elephant came along for the ride. The baby’s mom was carrying 2 of our groups members and so the baby followed which made my life. Everything that baby elephant did was adorable and I mean everything. Every few minutes I would say to Jodie “did you get a picture of the baby elephant doing this and doing that” Everything that baby elephant did was fascinating to me hence why half of our photos are of that precious thing. Towards the end of the trek the baby elephant just fell over into the water and starting playing. We couldn’t take any pics because we were so far away but I watched in awe and although it is not documented for you to see, you can trust me that it too cute for words. I think that I’m going to adopt an elephant to go along with my Kenyan baby and Thai baby.

We had lunch at the elephant site and then drove for a bit to get to our white water rafting destination. Here I came across another elephant, but it wasn’t such a happy site consider the elephant was chained to the tree. That made me really sad but as I went over to it to introduce myself, a man came over and started feeding the elephant some watermelon. I asked him if I could try and he handed me some watermelon and I got to feed him. Lets just say we had a moment. I whispered sweet nothings in his ear and feed him watermelon. I also tried to come up with an escape plan but I wasn’t sure if he understood my Thai, it’s a bit rusty.

Next it was time for white water rafting. Our biggest obstacles were the rocks. The water was quite low which is understandable because it is the summer season and so there were rocks everywhere. Jodie and I were in the front of the boat so we were the first to come in contact with everyone of those rocks. We never really got that much speed but we had an awesome time maneuvering our bodies from side to side in our attempts to avoid the rocks. Throughout our travels down the river we came across lots of Thai people swimming and having a blast in the river. They would splash us, we would splash them. All it all, it made our trip down the river, that much more enjoyable.

After our white water rafting adventure we shifted our fun towards a nice relaxing ride on a bamboo raft. I pretended I was a princess waded slowly down the river on a raft. I had two captains, one at the front and one at the back that used a large pole to direct the way and it keep the boat on course. It was so relaxing that I don’t think anyone wanted it to end.

After our rafting trip we headed to a nearby waterfall. It wasn’t really a waterfall though, it was more like a swimming hole but I had a fun time climbing the rocks and swimming in the clean water.