Chang Mai was next....

The trip up involved a 8 hour coach journey ato bangkok, where we stayed for one night in the Swasedee and bumped into the scottish girls from Krabi, Obviously we tucked into a few buckets and beers on the Koh San Road and the the next day we picked up our suits from the tailors ...hmm hello ladies ....and then we chilled out in the afternoon before we got the night train up to Chang Mai...

The train was late leaving and we where in the communial carriage but it turned out to be a great laugh, and i got a little tipsy with a few lads and some germans. However the journey then took a turn for the worse as we hit a hill and the train couldn't get up this hill so we had to wait 4 ho9urs for another engine...joy...the result was a 6 hour late arrival.

when we arrived we bumped into two lads we would be treking with...Jack and Sam from Kingston, what a result this was as thery were great lads and the trek was going to be a laugh... the first day was a 3 hour trek in morning, lunch in a monsoon and then 3 hours after lunch. the treking was hard work and also dirty too due to the flash flood at lunch....we saw a few spiders about the size of millsys hands and ants about the size of my thumb...just before we arrived at the first village that we would stay at we had a shower in a waterfall, which i ghave to say despite sharing with three lads was cool....lol

that night was spent in the first village and we had a fewbeers some awsome food and played with the local animals before we sat in the owners kitchen (hut) and talked and drank with him and his wife and family and our guide Joshua....aka legend....also my word the 27 year old village lad loved to drink....haha

The next day was another 5 1/2 ours treking with lunch at another village halfway before we arrived at the next waterfall camp...few more spiders, wierd plants and steep hills and we arrived at a beautiful waterfall where we again swam and washed before dinner and some more Chang...our 71 year old host was a very kind man and cooked some fantastic potato currey and a pumpkin dish that was awsome befor e more drinking games and an early night at about midnight. We slept that night in a hut with 100 million ants and it was also the coldest night ever...my 3-4 year old sized sleeping bag doing nothing to keep out the cold but at least there were no cockrels trying to wake me up at 3 am!

Then in the morning we set off for home via a rather scary path which at times was about 2 inches wide before wedid a few fun activities in the afternoon. The first was unexpected but involved our truck running over a cobra and stunning it...I obviously ran back to take a pic before we were told to get back and the mad swiss tom hit it over the head to kill it. ( The Thai lads wanted to sell it for some sort of food.) I was a little nervoud however when they through it in the back with us and it started to move again...however Jack had a stick on its rather malformed face so all was well....guess not many people can say they have been a foot away from a cobra in the wild before....

after this we went elephant treking which was cool but a little upsetting cause they used to be wild and now they are just treking around with tourists all day but they seemed to be having fun and definatly are very well fed.

Then we went Bamboo Rafting which was very cool and i am not usre how but i managed to stand the whole wa without falling in...impressive stuff and defo recommended.

All in all a great trip and now we are heading to Laos with Jack and Sam for some Tubing action. That is if i get throiugh the 8 hour rocket boat ride to Louampa Prang first....

xx