We've got Jungle Fever! (Jungle trekking fever that is)

Did you notice that Dave wrote that post there?? Big round of applause, it took 2 minutes of guilting and one bottle of water to get that to happen. Congratulations for bringing your namesake to this outfit.

After another early morning pick-up, we were off on another completely different Chaing Mai adventure. Today we were going to trekking camp. First thing we did when we got there was ride an elephant! We loved riding the elephant, and i think that the elephant liked it a lot too, because we fed it somewhere around 17,000 bananas. Dave even got to get down on the elephants neck and steer the elephant.

After elephant riding, we got to go to the Karen village, which was literally around 5 families who all lived within one acre of each other, on the steepest hill ever (think: cortona). It was interesting to see how these people lived but you got a feeling that a lot of this was for the tourists as we got to go through a market which might as well have been a gift shop on the way out.

After Karen we took a half hour to an hour long hike through the woods. Luckily for us we had gotten some magical bracelets that seemed to keep all the mosquitos away even though we forgot bug spary. We now wish, as we sit in the internet cafe being eaten alive, that we had those bracelets now, but as we talked about in an earlier post, time traveling has the same repercussions as teleportation, and it is still not a risk we are willing to take. We also made the wise choice before we left to get some great Dr. Scholls, so as we were gellin like magellan up and down the Thai Jungle, our feet were as comfy as could be.

Our destination of the hike was at a wonderful waterfall, where after climbing down what must have been 10 flights of the scariest stairs that were often composed of sloping mud, we reached the bottom of the falls. After hopping in the water, we played over at the mouth of the fall for quite some time before i got swept away by the waves. Dave being the hero that he is saved my life, after which, I prompltly hopped back in the water and floated away again. Needless to say we are both pretty scratched up STILL!

After drying off, and another hour long hike, we wound up a river, which we got to float down on a bamboo raft. While a Thai guy steered in the front and Dave helped in the back, I got to sit and enjoy the nice cool water that kept splashing onto my tush! After the ride started, I found it necessary to share my good fortune with Dave, so I took the opportunity to splash some water his way. He in turn retaliated by splashing me with the big bamboo oar, BIG MISTAKE! A water war has been started which will continue on far into the future. All I can tell you is, I am winning so far.

We rode down the increasingly complicated river and saw water buffalo, elephant, small riverside stilt villages and many children playing in the river. Two were so playful they jumped right on our raft and we we thought they were going to overturn it. After the raft ride, we and the others in our group literally poured ourselves in the van and rode back to the hotel, more stories to come soon!