Due to the sleeper train only having a stand and squat loo, doing your business whilst being jolted from side to side was something that wasnt at the top of my priority list. However once we arrived that morning with a beautiful sunrise view over the hills, it was clear my stomach was not happy with me one bit and once released from the train I had to awkwardly sprint whilst doubled over in agony towards the toilet only to find that you had to give 30 baht to use it (60p) which I didn’t have and had to shuffle sprint back to the boys to get money, but they had gone wandering and I ending up having to beg the toilet guard to use her toilet telling her I’d pay here after. Eventually after a lot of sweating and hand gestures I made it to my goal! Once empty we jumped in a taxi taking us to our hostel, the taxis here were a lot bigger but bigger here meant they made it into a competition to see how many people they could fit into the car, we had 10 in a five seater…
Upon arrival at the hostel we found ourselves with a remote pretty place with a massive swimming pool and diving boards, we spend hours until sunset making NFL Draft ‘pick me’ videos with our token rugby ball we’ve brought all around with us. Videos to follow! Kern then had a little time to spare in trying to recorrect my shlid from our previous Bangkok antics.
We had a wander into town and had to of course try the Chiang Mai massage, it was fair to say kern enjoyed himself being clicked and stood on by rather large Asian ladies (yes they were genuine ladies). With tips towels and a blushing masseuse, we left to get some rest for our big trek we had planned for the next morning.
We woke up bright and early and rode a good 2 hours into the jungle, our first stop was for the elephant riding. We had a bit of a problem with the three of us having to make two pair to ride the elephants so it was clear someone had to go on their own. Finn took the noble route and volunteered to ride with another fellow German named Nico. We first got introduced to the elephants whilst waiting for our turn, from a far it looked as though a cute little baby elephant was resting under a wicker canopy with its mother but when you got closer, the mother was chained to a pole in the ground. You can understand why they did it so the elephant didn't run away but surely if they were treated well enough they would stay there by choice. It just didn't feel right. Nevertheless it was an amazing experience to be sat atop such a massive creature. Kern and I bought a bag of sugar cane and bananas for the elephants to snack on as we walked around the area. Our 'driver' was a tiny little asian man sat on the head of the elephant nonchalantly smoking a joint made rolled in a banana leaf. This kinda made us a bit nervous about where the elephant would take us the with driver being under the influence and all but the elephant had done the exact same loop countless times in its life it knew where to go, as even at one point our 'driver' jumped off and let the elephant go freestyle. Our elephant kept stopping and raising its trunk over the top of its head, which at first we thought was cute and a friendly thing for an elephant to do so we'd pat and stroke it. But before long he just stopped and wouldn't budge until we realised that was his way of asking for a banana and finally he moved on. Kern and I decided to film our neck noms atop the elephant, mine taking a good 30 seconds longer than kern's (I'll speed up the video when I post it). The elephant plodded us down to a small river and as soon as all four legs were in the water, he suddenly turned all rebellious, what we thought was him raising his trunk to be fed, very quickly turned out to be be the elephant drenching us in the river water. Five times. Half way down the river he refused to move and kept asking for food until we run out, so we were stranded, soaked and driver-less. It took a good ten minutes for the driver to lure our elephant out of the water and a lot of flinching and screaming from Kern and I every time that trunk was raised up in the air. As surprising as it is the elephants aren't all that comfortable to ride but it was a sweet experience, I just think that maybe we should've done a bit of research into supporting and doing a more humane elephant ride. Our guide for the trek was a small little man that insisted we called him jungle joe, what a legend he was, spoke bad english but was constantly cracking the banter. On the first leg of our trek, we were escorted by a little mountain dog, we picked him up about five minutes into the trip and then stay with us for all of the 10kms that we walked, we decided to call him Rufus. we don't know where he came from but he made it all the way to our first stop at a big waterfall. At this waterfall we stopped for a rest and within 3 minutes jungle joe had whipped out some bamboo, a knife and some silt and made himself a jungle bong for his tobacco he always smoked. We were taken to yet a bigger waterfall in which we swam in the freezing waters and finn filmed his neck nom underneath the full force of the main body of the falls. We took some cute posey piccys of the three of us and moved on. At this point Rufus was no where to be seen :( and we lost him forever...
The trek then took us up huge steep hills that we almost had to climb, past giant leaves that had fallen from strange trees and past heaps of funnel web spiders perched in their distinctive webs. We came to an opening in the trees just as the sun was setting and we were able to view our accommodation for the night. It was a tiny village up in the hills with an epic view over the rest of the landscape. It was amazing. We had tiny little piglets running round our feet, along with a small posse of other farm animals. Jungle Joe sorted us out with a huge feast of thai green curry that I managed to eat more than 10 bowls of. See my free food ego kicked in, I've noticed its become a bit of a weakness for me, I've always had it but its only really come to light in the recent months of travelling, I will eat as much free food as I possible can, in most instances ending up with me feeling real bad, but I keep on doing it. That night we spent enjoying the company of MJ, Jungle Joe, Michael and the boys whilst chilling out underneath the campfire gazing into the stars, which were so clear in the unpolluted jungle skies. A spontaneous improvisation of 'In the Jungle' spilled out of our lips as we all tried with dire attempts at singing the three part harmony and every time wrecking the big wailing high notes that make the song what it is. To us it was the funniest thing in the world however I'm assuming that the other trekkers probably found us a tad bit annoying as we were actually probably most likely very really terribly bad. That night it actually got pretty cold and despite the thick blankets and bamboo hut we were cooped up in I didn't get much sleep at all. I gave up hope and wandered outside to the view point as dawn was breaking, turned on my iPod and put on some James Vincent McMorrow to accompany the majestic landscape. The boys found me sat on rock looking over the hills as they woke up, it was time for our gourmet breakfast of melon and toast to prepare us for the last leg of the trek back into the hills. We endured much steeper hills than before and witnessed a few more waterfalls along the way, the sweat was pouring off of all of us in the humid asian climate, but it actually felt invigorating to finally do a bit of exercise and sweat of all the booze from previous nights out and pretend as though we were still in as good of a shape as we were before we left. Walking down the final hill we seemed to stumble across a pick up truck on a dirt track, we all thought that Jungle had just found it and intend to speed the trek up. Turns out it was actually his whip and our ride to the next part of our adventure tour. Kern and I were perched on the back with our legs dangling over the edge as JJ ragged the car along the road to the bamboo rafting place. We were given a raft and a 'driver' to push us down the river, it was more of an unusual way to sunbathe as you were lying on a frame of bamboo half dipped in the freezing river, with tiny little ant balls breaking and swarming all over you as you tried to sit back and relax. Occasionally our driver would catch up with Michael's raft and a few times ended up in an intense dangerous race at around 1 mile an hour! This concluded our jungle experience and we were driven back to the hostel to rest up. The cold waters of our swimming pool were a welcome feeling, we smashed out some stunts and pick me's using the springboard to flip and jump into the pool. Only succeeding once in about an hours worth of play. We decided to splash out on some pizza that we'd all been craving and went along with our new German trekking Nico, and because of the six nations starting we thought we'd locate the nearest sports bar just so we could watch england's first game and feel a part of the chat back at home. However, we ended walking down many dark alleyways and into dodgy strips of bars until we found it and to our dismay they didn't have the rugby on any channel, let alone actually knowing what the sport was, so we made the most of it and grabbed some unregulated changs and played out ww2 in a pool match. The hostel we stayed at also had a pool bar so we head back there Kern and I smashed the Germans and kept the ongoing pride of our country. We weren't allowed to buy beers at this bar though due to the protests going on and there being a curfew on consumption into the late hours of the night.Â
And so our time in Chiang Mai had concluded with some more amazing memories and enlightened us to the wonders of Michael Jackson all over again.
