Our first few days in
Chiang Mai were spent on a 3 day, 2 night jungle trek, one of the most popular
activities to do from Chiang Mai. Our first day started off meeting our group
then driving to a butterfly and orchid garden for a short stop, followed by a
local market so our guide could get ingredients for our trip. The food on this
trip was excellent and very plentiful – definitely some of the best I
experienced in Thailand.
The next part of the
day was our elephant ride! This was really fun, with some people choosing to
ride on the elephants neck, although I opted for the chair! Our elephant was
pretty hungry for his bananas and sugarcane and was very receptive if vehicles
would come past as he would reverse and then carry on once they had passed.
We had a lovely lunch
of fried rice (served in bamboo leaf) after our ride down by the river – we got
a bit of preview of the white water rafting we would be doing on the third day
of our trip whilst enjoying our lunch.
This was when we
properly started our walking, and on the first day we walked for about 3 hours
with a nice stop early on at a waterfall slide! This was so much fun, and very
refreshing after walking in the heat.
After quite a tough
uphill walk with not very well trodden paths we made it to the village we would
be staying in for the night. We had an excellent large room for everyone, and
nice comfortable beds on the ground. Our guide made us a great feast for
dinner, and we spent the evening outside before getting some sleep for our day
of trekking the next day.
The next day we
started walking at about 10am – this day was just a full day of walking with
two stops at waterfalls. It was not as strenuous as the previous day and it was
nice that the day was broken up with stops. I really enjoyed the first
waterfall where we also stopped for a delicious noodle lunch, and we also spent
some time sunbathing here.
A little while after
the second stop we made it to our camp for the night, situated near a river. We
had another great meal tonight and enjoyed sitting around and playing cards.
The next day started
with a short walk to the river where we would be white water rafting and bamboo
rafting. This was really fun, although pretty tame in comparison to the rapids
in Costa Rica I did last year. We were able to float down the river, although
it was pretty shallow with a lot of rocks! The bamboo rafting was nice and
relaxing and took us to our lunch of Pad Thai!
After lunch we had a
drive of about an hour and a half before saying goodbye to the rest of our
group. We checked in to a different hostel, where I stayed until I left Chiang
Mai.
Will update soon with
the second part of my time in Chiang Mai which included cooking, ziplining and
meeting tigers! I’m in Sydney now, but I’m struggling to update often as
internet is not as readily available here as elsewhere!
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