I was two and a half days away from the internet so that's why there's been a real lack of posts lately. I went on a three day/two night trek to see some hill tribes in Thailand. The trip started off with eight of us but three of the people were only going for a two day/one night trip so halfway through we split up with them. It was me, a sixteen year old kid from Britain named Stephen, three Belgian girls, Charlotte, Tina, and Tina, and a couple, the man was Thai, and the woman was Thai too but she lived in Rome. The last person was a Chinese woman who was the Thai woman's friend and also lived in Rome so they spoke Italian to one another.

We had about a two hour ride out to where we started trekking and it took awhile to get there since the truck really didn't go very quickly up hills. Once we started off our guide showed off his many leaf tricks which included tearing one leaf apart and blowing bubbles with the sap and another trick where he took the leaf and hit it with his palm and it made a huge POP! noise. The first place we stopped wasn't exactly all that rural in the sense that there were powerlines and a telephone booth and it really sort of seemed like this is what it would be like if you went on a tour of poor, rural, West Virginia. We hiked along and saw a lot of insects, tons of huge spiders, and numerous furry caterpillars.

Finally we showed up at the village where we were going to spend the night and we stayed in a raised up house thing that had a solar panel attached to a battery so there was a light. It was kind of early and so we just kind of all sat there together waiting for the guide to cook dinner. At one point a guy on an elephant just strolled by in the background and that was kind of exciting but that was it. There wasn't really much to see otherwise. So, we sat around and ate and it got dark and we sat some more and I chatted away with the Belgians mostly. Then it was time for bed. (Jeez, this is a dull story.)

The next day we got to ride the elephants. First we fed them bananas and they came right over with their trunks and took them right out of your hands. One of them managed to fling mucus on one of the Tinas which was pretty amusing. So, then we got on the elephants on a little elephant chair. My partner in this was Steven who was wearing his anarchy doo rag today. He'd worn his Union Jack one yesterday. So, we set off and our elephant was the slow one. And the one with the flatulence. You couldn't really smell it but every so often the elephant would just make this really loud sound like "BWAAAAAP". The elephants didn't appear to be mistreated from what I saw, although I'm sure they don't do too much in front of tourists, other than once they shot one of them in the side with a slingshot and a couple of times they threw dung at the elephant. I'm not sure why. When we were riding the elephant it stopped once and uprooted a tree. Just reached down with the trunk and pulled it right out of the ground to munch on the leaves.

We got done with the elephants and then hiked on until we were supposed to get to these waterfalls where we could swim. Well, the waterfalls were a pretty big disappointment in the fact that they were really small and, according to my Belgian colleagues, smelled pretty bad. I couldn't smell anything but it was decided by everyone that my nose doesn't work very well. We didn't spend too much time swimming then and since we were where we were going to sleep we all sat down and sat some more. I learned that when I mispronounce the word "Qatar" it means "pussy" in Dutch. Towards the end of the evening our guide and the cook came out to the table and we played some card games including one called "Pig" that I had never heard of. There was a special "We're camping!" sort of rule where if you lost a hand then the person that won the hand could draw on your face with the soot from the frying pan. So, I lost three hands in a row since I didn't understand the rules and got my face totally covered in soot or grease or whatever it was despite my protestations that it wasn't really fair since I didn't understand the rules. We played for about an hour and a half until I was super tired and we all went to bed. In the middle of the night I woke up and smelled something burning but I didn't really pay attention to it and just fell back asleep. It turns out that in the middle of the night the cook had fallen asleep and a candle had fallen on his bedding and set it on fire. He went and woke up the guide and the two of them had to take it, still burning, and throw it in the river. You could see it there. A big charred mattress.

That morning we headed off to do bamboo rafting down a river. I was chosen to be the driver and I dutifully took up the bamboo pole and pushed us down the river while a Thai man in front guided us. There some very, very, light rapids on the river but at one point the guy in front lost his balance for a second and tipped the raft and I fell in the river. It wasn't deep at all so I just swam for the shore and then swam right back out to raft and got back on. We did a little bit more rafting, had lunch, I got some chili in my eye, and we came back to Chiang Mai.

Tomorrow...Laos.