Day 3 of the trekking experience!!

I forget to mention the amount of steep down hill walking at a very slow pace that took place at the end of the second day. The amount of pressure that was to put on mine esspecially and Jades Quads was to punish us for days to come, mine still, 3 days after that day are struggling to recover!!

Anyway day 3, was to be started with a very short walk, which started off after a breakfast of boiled egg, toast, jam and water melon. The 15 minute walk was easy enough, esspeically as every body knew it was leading to the easy task of letting an elephant carry one about for a while. When we got to the elephant trek centre, which was also to be the base from which we set off white water rafting, I immediatly felt slightly uncomfortable about whole thing. I wasn't in a state to not have the amazing experience but, I mean this is a country that are supposed to believe the elephant is a sacred animal and yet they let tourist\s ride on their backs and hit them with far too harder products for comfort to make sure they give those tourists a good ride. It has to be said I'm glad I've ridden on an elephant and Jade really enjoyed, but I'll never do it again out of free will, because it's not right. We did get to feed our elephant at least with the bananas that they conveeniantly sold us!!!! Our elephant who we named Gaz even though it turned out to be a 20 year old girl, also picked up Jade flip flop with its trunk when she dropped it. We got some great pictures, but my views remain that it's not right.

After an hour of that, we got our selves ready for our double rafting, white water and then bamboo. Our guide had apologized the night before due to the fact that the lack of rain meant that as he put it, it would be white water pushing and bamboo walking. However when we actually got started it was better than that, although more water would have made it much better it was still a very fun experience. The group was seperated into two 5s and me and Jade were seperated, my group went first and it has to be said, we rocked, we got the whole group rowing in time, great techniques. Our agreed upon team name was - Team Mega winner Champions - MWC for short!!! Jades boat only had the one man, but that suprising didn't take away from their expeirence!! ha

After a period of that, I'm not sure of timings, prhaps 40 minutes, we swaped our blow up rapid fairer for about 8 long thick shoots of bamboo strapped together to give pleasant looking small boats. Speed was gained and direction controled by long thin pieces of bamboo, usually controlled by a guide but on my three man boat, by Ray and Dave, I was the middle weigh man, running to one side for corners and the other side for the other direction. Imean I probably didn't do much, but it felt like I was helping and we all enjoyed it, and won again ha. Jade tried her hand at controlling her boat aswell before leaving it to the guide.

After about half an hopur or so of that we got a pick up trucki back to another selection of hut type things, basically purpose built to be the restaurant area for those in our position of just having finished the rafting, but built out of bamboo. We ate and got some group photos before getting in our covered pick up truck back to Chiang Mai.

The journey was about an hour and a half, and I managed to burn my feet, due to me having the back seat, next to the openb back door!! awww welkl their not sore. We passed around names and email addresses and agree to meet in a bar later that night. When we got back to the city, having previously agreed to move to the hotel a group of the girls were staying in, we picked up our bags from the agency we left them at and got dropped at the new hotel. Which is much more friendly, and although still as basic in the rooms, holds much more of a charm, basically due to us knowing other people staying there. We were given a triple room with a fan for just 300 Baht which is basically the price we aim to get for a double ion most places. The extra bed was the prove handy the next day when Dave moved out of the room he was to share with Emma, another of the trek girls who left for the South and the Islands. That has probably come across as complicated, but I understand what went on, and if further clarification is needed, or wanted I can advise!!!

We had got back at around 4ish, and after a good old clean up and a small amount of relaxation we went down stairs to see what was going on. We bumped into a few people. Some neccisities needed to be bought by certain members of the group and it seems from just a two day example that setting up Boots stores in Thailand was a genious idea, as thats where it was all bought, and not for cheap cheap prices. I got shampoo because my hair is basically dead and anti-persperant because I was horrific on the trek, Jade got shower gel, and some other product that has slipped my mind.

We went to our meeting up bar a bit early and had some drinkes to stop the dehydration, before hitting the stronger stuff, well that was my logic!!! When Ray and Ailish, the only ones not staying in our hotel met up with us, w went on to a small restaurant/bar, and got our dinner. The amount of cheese burgers on the table was a bit silly. My excuse is I was too lazy or hungry or something, to even look through the menu properly and therefore pointed at a picture I recognised!!!! The others I think it was just a sickness at Thai food after 3 days of nothing but egg, noodles, rice and mostly veg. After a few drinks at the restaurant, a nice meal and some really good chats, which iincluded the girls introducing a new person to the group, an essex girl, who half meets your expectations of that title, who was sat at the bar on her own. We moved on, looking for another bar, in the end settling on a small joint with a free pool table and darts board and huge stock pile of rock music. The drinks flowed, the pool in my case was constantly poor, in Jades case was good other than her cheating, and the chat went on, moving from a disagreement betwenn me, Dave and Sophie. I was arguing a comment she made about anyone who likes Kasbian should be shot, simply down to the fact that, anyone should be aloud to like anything they want and not be 'prosocuted' for it. Her arguement was that its all main stream, it's easy to like, and because people don't know the origins of the music they listen to they can't actually like it as much as her and her friends. This has nothing to do with Jade or the rest of the night, but it was apoint that interested me and I enjoyed a wee bit of controtasion on a discussion level!!! We all went round the group chatting to everyone, Jade got stuck in a conversation with 'the boring Ozzie Guy' as he was labeled who had attempted to join our group and then failed to back up his advances with chat!!! however as Jade found out if you did chat to him you'd be stuck there for an aweful long time.

All in all I must say it was an extremely enjoyable night, and a very jolly one (said with two meanings) It was topped off by the last few hours where peoples choices in music were played from the stock piled rock, Lynyrd Skynyr or a name similar to that, was one I was told I had to love and I can't say I did. Then at around 1.30 the shutters of the bar were put down with us and a few other people still inside, with the bar still running and all. We were really shown why a little later when the bar was told to go quiet as the police walked past outside. It was all very amusing at 2 in the morning!!

When we were finally thrown out of the place we, due to the request of a couple of members of the group got a tuk tuk for a very walkable journey, but the money didn't become an issue for that as we got 5 people on a two person tuk tuk that we had agreed would be 50 Baht. Dave was stood on the back holding on to the roof. When we got back to the hotel we sat in foyer for a while. Randomly a group of Irish lads and lasses walked in, clearly very drunk trying to find a girl a girl called Ailish, extremely coinsidental, coinsidering its not a common name, and the Ailish we knew wasn't the one they needed!!! After they left we went to bed. Ooh one quick after thought it's important to mention that theThai man that was asleep by the reception when we came in and was a woken by the Irish group had the weirdest accent I've ever heard, very London, cockneyish and then very Thai, mental!!!!!