Well I started this post about 6 hours ago during our ride back from an all day trekking adventure. As luck would have it I didn't save the post when I closed the app. Consequently I'm laying here at 11:19 PM trying to remember what I wrote while also trying to realize its my fault and not my iPhone. Not to mention we're absolutely starving right now. Usually we don't eat dinner until late which keeps the hunger monster satisfied until the morning. Tonight we ate a little earlier and then had a lengthy walk around the river area. So now we're craving what has become our go-to snack / quick breakfast: milk flavored croissants from seven-11. Delish!
Anyhow, on to the interesting stuff. Before coming on this trip, the Mrs and I chatted about a few things we wanted to do in S.E. Asia: beaches, islands, hill tribe trekking, cooking school and elephants. today we checked off the last thing on that list: hill tribes and elephants. We've been going back and forth on whether or not to do a long trek with some elephants and hill tribes or maybe some random variant of each. We settled on a 1 day trek which included elephants and some other crap we didn't care too much about.
Side note: ask anyone who's been to S.E. Asia about the chaotic travel / tour process and you'll probably get the same sort of answer: controlled chaos. We booked this tour with a travel agent (which are literally everywhere!!!) and we're told someone would pick us up at our hotel at 0830. Sure enough at 0830, some random person was waiting at our front door. Crazy!
Ok, back to our story. So the tour included a bamboo raft trip, hill tribe. village visit, waterfall trek and ELEPHANT camp!!! We ended up doing the raft thing first which was a little weird. We were shuffled onto these rickety little bamboo sticks that floated with a 7 year old boy holding a staff. He must not have liked Carolyn much cause he seemed to run her side of the bamboo sticks into every rock we saw. Oh and the water was friggin freezing! From here we drove to a Karen (this is the name of the tribe) hill tribe village a few minutes away. I don't know what I expected but it certainly didn't live up to it. It was just a couple super poor looking stilt homes with women wearing 'tribal' outfits weaving scarves on the ground floor. They tried to sell us some things but the highlight turned out to be a couple pigs and their super cute piglets running around. It all seemed like a tourist trap to us but I guess you never know.
Afterwards it was a walk down a semi paved road to a pretty waterfall where we hung out in the sun for a bit and watched some brave peeps swim in the icy water. Lunch after that and then on to the ELEPHANTS!!!!!! We pulled in and immediately saw some frolicking in the river with a baby!!!!! A few minutes later a group showed up to or location and it was then we saw the truth behind the camp. Chains, ropes and these awful medieval spike things the handlers had in their hands. We were a little hesitant before this trip about the whole idea of riding an elephant and all that jazz but seeing the conditions made it worse. This is the exact reason why we skipped the extremely popular Tiger Kingdom. Carolyn and I ended up on a wonderful 10 year old female names Bemoi. The lead elephant of our group was an elderly female who just so happened to have a baby with her!!!! The baby was Über-cute and just ran around the whole time. Someone asked about the metal spike thing and I guess the handlers use it to control and steer the elephants. They said their skin is so thick that they can't really feel the spikes. I wonder if the poor elephants told them this?
The ride was fun but a but hairy at times. Going downhill was scary and I couldn't help but wonder I was hurting the elephant by riding her. At the end we all got off and fed them some bananas and got more pictures. All in all it was a good time but I can only hope we didn't do more harm than good.
Tonight we walked around the night market, bought a souvenir and chatted about our next move. We'll be in Chiang Mai 1 more night and then it's off to Chiang Rai to check out the far north of Thailand. We have to be in Laos by 3/1 so time is running short.
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