Chiang Mai: Day 15

Updating after 3 long days of hill tribe trekking, temple hopping, and extreme sports I'm pretty wiped but I want to get this all down so I'll start from the beginning of the trek.

We hadn't really put much effort into research but Dad found a little hotel in some Chiang Mai side street that offered a 3 day intensive trek into the hill tribe villiages as part of a package deal. We knew from the guide book that a hill tribe trek would be the perfect thing to do for an adventure so we just kind of went for it. When we realized that nobody knew the name of the company (Top North) that we were trekking with back home and Top North didn't know anyone back home it made us a little nervous of any worst-case-cenarios but we through caution to the wind and kept going in the polluted little parking lot as we found the little pick up truck with the rest of our trekking group we'd be spending the next 3 days and 2 nights with.
We had a bit of a mixed reaction at first when we found five 22 year old girls sitting in the back chatting. The group was small and friendly but we soon realized they were all somewhat friends from diffrent places. After a few minutes of talking though we realized how lucky we were. The girls were extremely nice and over the course of the few days we became great friends. There were 2 Lauras, 2 Carolinas and one Augistina (Augy for short). The 2 Lauras were nice girls from Canada, one a tall bleach blond with dark ray bans and a big smile, the other a short and quiet brunnete but also friendly. The two Carolinas were outgoing girls from Buenos Aires in Argentina, both very pretty and like to laugh a lot. Augustina was well.... Augustina. She was very talkative and definitely the party animal type and even though that's not usually my crowd she was fun to talk to about all the crazy parties in the south and all of her crazy adventures. Perhaps the person we became closest to however was the tour guide, Teeratat (nickname Bo).
Bo was a little shorter than I, with long surfer hair, dark skin and sun glasses platered on his head. He was half Cambodian and half Thai working in the tourism industry since he was 17, son of a Cambodian government worker who worked on a project to get rid of the opium in the north. He worked as a model for some time and then settled into the role of tour guide, specializing in hill tribe trekking which he studied in the Chiang Mai University. He was easy to talk to with fair English and quick to laugh. Although he was a bit of a sad case with pretty bad alcoholism and a smoking habit he didn't even think of quitting he was the epitome of the fun loving Thai. He is 22 now and he's not supposed to get too involved with the female tourists he was laying it on a bit thick with the Argentians. That's Bo though.
After leaving off talking in the Song Thew with our new trek mates we rode to a nearby market to pick up stuff for the trek. It was pretty similar to the other markets, old women with few teeth swatting mosquitos left and right, the strong musk of red and yellow spices filling the nostrils, and the slapping noise of live fish in waterless buckets in their last throughs of life. The one thing that will stick in my head about that market though is the one table teaming with dead insects. I guess they were for eating but everything from beatles to crickets to spiders lay accross that table staring back at you. Ughhhh. No thanks. Quite a site though.
After the market and a short stop in the boring butterfly conservatory we arrived at the base of the chiang dao mountain, a formidable climb, where we got a chance to do the extremely touristy yet still fun elephant riding. It sounds a bit too British imperialist yet it was actually fairly cool. There was no track or advertisements or roller coasters nearby or anything, just jungle and rural Thailand. It was a bit intimadating sitting atop such a mammoth beast but the bumpy ride was a new way to see the area and just plain awesome (how many people get to ride elephants in the northern hills of Thailand?). After our little fun though came the hard part, the 3 hour- more like 5 hour hike up the mountain. And when I say up, I mean UP. It may as well have been rock climbing because by the end of that first hour and a half we were all dripping with sweat and dirt. We stopped at a nice waterfall which Dad dutifully jumped into when all of the other young backpackers were too timid to make the first move. With a primal howl Dad plunged his head under the beating falls, more like an aquatic Thai massage than anything and while embarrassing me, he managed to entertain the backpackers.
The rest of the days hike was just about as hard as the first part if not harder but by the time we got to the Lahu villiage at the end it was worth it. Greeting us were friendly old tribal women in a small bamboo hut about as authentic as a tourist is ever going to find. Taking advantage of the tourism through the area, there was a cooler filled with Coke, water and beer and women offering cheap massages for wary hikers. We settled into the extremely modest- more like impoverished accomidations and looked around the villiage a bit while dinner was being prepared.
While I assumed the tribes were fairly poor I didn't realize the state they were living in. Bo said the people are happy but without living on the streets, this is about as poor as you can get. No electricity, no running water, animals running around everwhere, kids playing jacks with sticks. It was pretty depressing yet this is how they've lived for hundreds of years (minus the tourism) so we just kind of had to take it as it was. One of the most interesting things we found though was that the villiage wasn't completely devoid of electricity, there were several solar pannels spread out accross the villiage. I guess it makes sense but it seems funny to see solar panels in one of the most remote corners of the world. I guess that's the 21st century.
That night we were treated to a nice modest meal by Bo who served up some nice yellow curry with rice, watery soup and some pinapple. We all got to know eachother better and talked about our respective countries, the diffrences between them, the similarities, and everything else from global politics to bargaining in the Chiang Mai markets. It was fun sitting next to a little fire lounging on the firm bamboo below us knowing that we were in some exotic remote villigae far away from anywhere. Sleeping on bamboo isn't exactly the most comfortable thing ever, but that night, between the amazing stars and talking with all the great people around was really something to remember. When you're traveling you realize that it's not the Eiffel Towers or the Colisseums you end up remembering, it's the people you meet. And between the Argentinians, the Canadians and Bo, it was a fun group.

It's late and I'm tired. I'll do day 2 and 3 tomorrow morning. Up ahead: Giant wateralls, bamboo rafting, proper British folks and more....