Jan 6th to Jan 8th.

We drove an hour from Chiang Mai to Mae wang Elephant camp and took an elephant ride; I felt a bit sorry for it as we were balanced on a little seat that was harnessed to their backs - I felt worse when I found out mine was pregnant with a baby due in 10 days (please bear in mind these animals are pregnant for 2 years before giving birth). We bought her food though and fed her, I had to go with Jack as there is an odd number of people in the group which actually worked out well as I had my own private interpreter. I couldn't get pictures of me on there obviously and everyone else was busy on their own elephant so I had to buy the tourist one they do of you (Mum it is sailing to you right now, should arrive in a couple of months!). We watched the baby one play footballl as well which was pretty sweet.

After that we headed to our trek start point - now I am sure they did not mention that the hill top tribe was located on the top of a hill!?? The walk started with a steep incline and seemed to continue like that for some time. Luckily we had some slow people in the group so we got lots of breaks - also it was a lot cooler than I expected so altough I was covered in sweat because of the exertion it could of been a lot worse. After around 3 or 4 hours we stopped at camp which consisted of one large shed thing on stilts and a couple of little shacks with squat toilets in. We had to bath in the river and girls had to wear stupid bloody sorongs which were imposible to keep up once wet - I swear it would of been more decent if they had just let us wear bikini's but that is against their culture! I couldn't eat much that night as the infection in my wisdom tooth had got really bad by now. I slept pretty well but no one else did as it was too cold for them - I am however well equipped for dealing with varying temperatures (it was only about 8c for christ sake - we weren't going to freeze!!). No breakfast for me still in too much pain.

The day after started early and we trekked for around 3 hours before we reached the tribe we were staying with, it was a bit easier as not so much up hill and it was fairly cool in the morning. We bathed in the river when we got there and the went for a look round the village and their school. The lads played footy with the children but some of the kids didn't even have shoes (or elastic in their jogging bottoms) bless them! We then went and assisted with our tour leader in cooking their dinner - it was pretty basic but apparently a real treat for them. They waited for about 1.5 hours whilst we made it, I started dishing it out for them but the bloody Oz girl wanted to take over so I graciously stood a side - they ended up with 3 kids getting none, now that wouldn't have happened if they had left me in charge!!!

We woke up the following morning and they had set up a whole market for us to show off their handicraft skills and for us to spend some of our dosh! I bought a couple of things (Mum present for you is being sent home, you can guess which is yours by the colours, the rest are all mine!). I took some pics of the shops they set up. We then trekked for 3 hours back to civilisation, thankfully the antibiotics started working so I could eat again! Lunch was well earnt! It was pretty hard at the time and it was rated 3* on physical rating my Borneo trip is rated 5* so god knows how I'm going to survive that!

On the way back to Chiang Mai we stopped to do some bamboo rafting, I managed to go with Brendan and Daniel so basically got them to do all the work while I enjoyed a nice scenic trip down the river (rapids were a bit nerve racking though as the bloody raft didn't have shock absorbers). We thankfully didn't see any water snakes!