So we had heard that doing a hill tribe trek was one of the things to do in Northern Thailand. We'd heard that in places outside of Chiang Mai that it was quite touristy and we wanted to go somewhere a bit more off the beaten track. So we decided to do it in Mae Hong Son a small town surrounded by forested mountains. We were in for a treat!
 
We caught a local bus from Pai. We were at the bus station at least 30 minutes before anyone else yet when the bus arrived lots of people jumped on before us and we found ourselves without any seats. Dammit! Four hours of standing travelling on the windiest roads imaginable. Nooo! I decided to sit on the floor in the aisle. I say sit, more like wedge myself in as the aisle was actually narrower than me! This worked quite well for about an hour until I noticed that my bottom was getting very hot, veeery hot. Way too hot to stay sitting down. I realised that this was because the floor that I was sitting on was actually metal and the engine was heating it up. Dammit! Standing it was then. Luckily for the last hour we got to sit down after some people got off. 
 
We arrived in the rain and managed to find our way into town after a very wet walk. We settled into a guest house and organised our trek for the following morning. We would walk for one day, stay the night in a hill tribe village and walk back on the second day.
 
Our guide took us on a bike to our starting point, a small village just out of town and we were away. We walked for around six hours on the first day. The first couple of hours we were in dense forest following the path of the river. It was extremely hot and humid. As we were following the river there was so much moisture in the air we were soaking wet within half an hour. We quickly realised that this wasn't going to be as easy as we thought. At some points there was no path to speak of and our guide was chopping his way through the undergrowth! We were climbing under and over large tree trunks that had fallen across our route, ducking and diving through vines and bushes. I managed to rip my leggings in the process. The remainder of the day was spent on an extremely steep trajectory all the way to the village with a quick stop off for lunch. Red faced, dirty, soaking wet, looking like we'd been pulled through a hedge backwards (because we had), ripped clothes and seriously overheating we couldn't help but laugh and look at each other in the afternoon and say “Why do we do this to ourselves?!!”
 
We arrived in the village late afternoon and were shown to our little hut and where we'd be sleeping. After a quick shower using the cold tap outside (believe me it was very welcome!) we had a nice cup of tea. The tribe we stayed with were called the Karen. There were maybe four huts in the village and there were three families left here. It started raining as soon as we arrived and very quickly the paths between the huts became slippery mud slides! Our guide cooked our dinner in the evening. Lots of plates of food we couldn't finish. Some interesting vegetable and meat broth type dishes shall we say plus lots of fresh mango and pineapple to finish. Was nice to sit in the main hut next to the fire watching everything going on and watching how our hosts went about their business. The Karen grow all their own food and their huts were quite primitive as you might expect. 
 
We returned to our hut to find a mosquito net had been put up for us and we had been provided with lots of blankets to lie on and to cover ourselves up with. Good job we had the mosquito net (which I meticulously tucked underneath our matt we were lying on) as there was a gigantic fat spider immediately above our heads. Eurgh!
 
We set off after breakfast the next day and walked a different route back to the way we came. For the first hour we were treated to walking through beautiful fields of corn surrounded by paddy fields, lovely forest and lush green hillsides. For the next hour and a half we were treated to LEECHES. This we had not thought about before the trek. Unbelievable little creatures. Every 10 minutes you'd take a closer look at your boots and there would be four or five of them speedily climbing up to reach your juicy ankles. Argh! Not so easy to just knock off your boots either as they just cling on. They were so small that they just crawled into all the nooks and crannies of your boots so you couldn't get them. They're fast critters too. We had to keep spraying our boots with mosquito repellant to make them fall off. By the time we stopped for lunch we'd moved out of the leech infested area so we took our boots off for leech inspection. We both had a few remaining on our boots which we got rid off plus one stuck to my leg which we got rid of just in time before it started eating me! Ewww! Our guide didn't care. He just had blood pouring down his legs with a big smile on his face!
 
For the remainder of the day we followed the river, literally, back to the village we started at. We had the similar hardcore paths of yesterday along the way but also had about twenty different river crossings to make. Some of which required walking through ankle deep water and some of which required walking through water above knee deep! Well for me anyway. When the water is as fast flowing as it was it was hard to keep your balance. Sometimes we'd have to shimmy along very narrow slippery rock ledges with the water below and sometimes walk across very precarious bridges that had been made out of tree trunks, again with the water right below us. It was really fun walking through the water and a relief as well for hot feet!
 
All in all a tough couple of days but it was definitely worth it. It was great to do a more challenging trek like this. It certainly wasn't a well worn path and because of this we felt we were getting to take a peek at this beautiful part of Thailand that not everyone gets to see. One of the best treks we've done so far :).