Jarrod and Sara’s Site

 Hey everyone, hope you’re all doing well. We just got back to Chiang Mai after a three day forest trek in the surrounding mountains, which was fantastic.

We were with a great group of about 12 people and two great Thai guides for our trip. The first day, the bus dropped us off at a trailhead and we had about a two hour hike through these incredibly beautiful farm lands, rice paddies, and forest. The landscape is so different than home and it was such a surreal experience to be hiking through a rice paddy in the woods in Thailand as the sun was coming down…. just amazing.

The first night we arrived at a Karen Hilltribe village where we would have dinner and spend the night. It seemed everyone had mixed emotions about the experience of being in the village and I don’t have time to go over it here, but it was an interesting experience. The people were extremely friendly, tons of kids running around and playing just like kids at home (only some of them had machetes as toys), and adults sitting around campfires talking. It was humbling to see how little they have and it was a very peaceful, relaxing place.

The next day was the biggest hiking day. We hiked for a total of about 4 or 5 hours, but there were many breaks and the hiking was not too difficult. We got to see a lot of nice waterfalls and a few more remote villages. The landscape itself though was really just incredible. There was no way to make the pictures do it any justice, but the best way to imagine it is like you were walking through Disney World’s version of a jungle. Everything seemed oversized and bright green, and when you emerged from the forest it was usually to enter some sort of orchard with huge banana trees or something similar. It was a great place to hike.

The last day we did a little more hiking and emerged in civilization for the more touristy part of this particular trip… bamboo rafting and elephant riding. The bamboo rafting was fun, three of us stood on a long raft consisting of about ten bamboo poles tied together and balanced like on a surf board as we floated down stream (mostly slowly with a couple of quick water parts). We only fell once as we smashed into a rock, but other than that it was pretty smooth. Next we headed to the elephant farm. This was really fun although it wasn’t great seeing the elephants all tied up… but Sara and I rode on a saddle type thing on the back while our mahout rode on the elephants head. It was pretty funny because the elephant in the line behind us was constantly sticking his trunk up and poking us in the back and putting it in between us to try to get a banana. Needless to say we got covered in elephant snot and went through a lot of bananas. At the end we went to a huge bucket for the elephant to drink from and got soaked as they all splashed water on each other and us. It was a lot of fun and the elephants seemed quite relaxed as they had no problem passing wind (more like a hurricane coming from an elephant) and going to the bathroom freely and liberally throughout the trip…

We are heading to Laos today for the next leg of the journey. Keep in touch and we hope you are all having a great December.

Jarrod and Sara