hill trekking in chiang mai

'You know in many ways Coca Cola, Pepsi, and Fanta are analogous to Christianity, Buddhism, and Judaism,' said the girl at 12am last night in the street side bar in Chiang Mai, while I sat opposite her pondering which ward she had escaped from, and whether I could use her new age headband as a gag for her mouth. 'Yeah, that really makes sense to me now,' she added in a tone which suggested she was thanking me for having helped her have such a sophisticated, cogent, and insightful thought (how dare she blame me? I thought). I wasn't sure how much longer I could take it, when she shifted her philosophical reflections to a discourse on chocolate, and, such was her eloquence, she had to leave the bar, there and then, to go and buy a 'Ritter Sport' from a Seven Eleven. She never returned. I downed my whiskey and coke and went to bed at my new guesthouse, the Panda Guesthouse (which is about ten metres from the bar), and so ended my hill trekking experience.

It all began three days earlier when a group of us headed out of the city and into the countryside in a minibus. First we drove to the village where the Karen Tribe, or 'long necks,' live. They are so-called because from the age of five they wear a progressively larger ringed neck brace around the neck which stretches it to an eventual incredible length (see my photos). After this, we moved on and went elephant riding, which was good fun, even if my elephant did stop for a long time to eat an entire tree. We walked from the elephant camp for a few hours to a remote hill tribe village lived in by the Lahu Tribe. Here we had dinner and stayed overnight, sleeping in one of the bamboo hut homes. In the evening the village children came and sang us some local songs. Their performance was engineered for the tourist, but this didn't make it any less enjoyable.

On day two we spent the day walking to another Lahu Tribe village, in another part of the hills. This took us all day to get to. On our way we visited a bat cave, crossed and swam under a large waterfall (the force of the water on the head was enormous), and then - after we had reached our second village - went swimming in the local river at the request of the village children, who wanted to splash around and be thrown into the water in turns. We stayed over here for the night, and played with the kids for most of the evening. None of them could speak English (many don't even speak Thai: their first language is their tribal dialect) so they just kept saying 'hello, hello, hello,' pointing and beckoning at things. 'Hello, hello, hello, hello.' It was another wonderful evening which I will remember very fondly.

On day three we left around 10am and trekked down to a much larger river, where we went white water rafting and later for some more relaxed bamboo rafting. This was a new one on me, and I enjoyed it a lot. One of the people in our group had been before, and assessed our ride as being: 'not too hard but above beginner.' I got soaked through and halfway down the river jumped out of the raft for a swim in the water, careful to quickly scramble back on board before the next set of rapids. After this our three days were up and we went back to Chiang Mai for a few beers, and some annoying conversation with a girl at the next table about how Judaism is really very similar in a lot of ways to Fanta. I also had the most appreciated hot shower and change of clothes of my life. Well, maybe not 'the most' but certainly up there in the top ten.