Day 1 - Trekking
Today Matt and I were off trekking on a 3 day hike; visiting and staying with two hill tribes and doing a variety of other activities that included elephant riding.
To be honest we were not expecting anything to amazing as we had only paid about $30 for the tour but with low expectations we could only be impressed.

At 9am we made our way to the travel agent where we were shoved in the bag of a ute and told by our tour guide that there would be 11 others joining us and yes we would all be crammed into the back of the ute. After picking up all the others 10 Koreans and 1 English girl we made our way to the first stop the butterfly farm.
Nothing very special and more of a resteraunt with a tiny butterfly exhibit - rolling my eyes I thought god this may be worse then I thought. Next stop was the market to get some supplies and then we continued on to our lunch spot at the base of the mountain. Lunch was fried rice very basic but can't complain. Next we were told the program and headed into the jungle for a four hour hike. Straight away we noticed there were no other tours and we were actually trekking in the jungle - a nice suprise and it actually proved to be a challenging hike. Our guide was fantastic - really taking interest in getting to know everyone and stopping every 5 minutes to explain plants, fruits and terrain. We stopped at an amazing cave and went looking inside. He then climbed a banana tree and cut of a bunch of bananas allowing everyone to sample. By about 5pm we made it to a very isolated village with 3 long neck ladies and 10 or so locals. Amazingly we were the only group and although they see tourists everyday we felt as if the village was representative of the people's actual lifestyles. I had myself a freezing cold shower and then played soccer with the local kids as the sun went down the fire got lit and we were presented with a feast fit for a king: potato and chicken soup, rice and a vegetable and Tofu stirfry. After dinner we sat around the fire and talked about travels and looked up at an amazing sky fall of stars. It has been a while since I had felt so happy.