Chiang Mia - we went trekking Chiang Mia, 3 day 2 night, the bus there was a nightmare, it was a 13 hour journey through out the night, which did not seem that bad until, the air conditioning started to leak right above us and every 10 minutes a ice cold drip of water would land on our foreheads, after an hour or two, early hours of the morning we found an umbrella, so we were sat at the back of the bus with an umbrella up and everyone staring at us!
After the excellent bus journey we arrived in Chiang Mia, we were then driven to an elephant camp, for a ride around the jungle, which was quite cool although the guide kept hitting the elephant behind the ear with a hammer, which seemed excessive! after the ride we started our trek, 3 hour walk, this is when the guide advised us to put on our walking boots or even trainers, i had neither just damn flip flops, so 3 days of trekking through jungles in flip flops, happy days. we arrived at our camp for the night, Karen hill tribe village, this was cool to stay with locals, they cooked us dinner and we all stayed in a large raised bamboo hut. the following day we had a 5 hour trek through swamps and rice fields, rivers and waterfalls, we then arrived at our camp for the night again, but this time it had no locals we had to cook for ourselves! i was covered in crap from the swamps, and when i asked the guide how do we get washed he passed me a bottle of shower gel and pointed to a huge waterfall, so that was an laff getting showered in the freezing cold waterfall, trying not to lose balance and fly down the rapids. unfortunately i managed to slip and smash my toe into a huge rock, instantly bruised and swelling up. that night we all sat round a camp fire and drank home made rice whiskey. The following morning we were woken up early to be told we had a 4 hour walk to the river where we would bamboo raft to the end of the trek, which sounded good, but i had the worst headache form the whiskey, i think i was still pissed when i woke up, plus my bruised and swollen toe which i could hardly walk on, and it had rained during the night so made trekking in flip flops even harder...