I feel like a traveling fiend and we’ve only been on our own for 10 days.
The rest of Malaysia was great. Kuala Lumpur (KL, as the locals say it) was a lot of fun. I think mostly in part to our great location right above the Chinatown night market. We also went to this little pond where you can rent paddle boats and we got a great view of the skyline.
The story, however, lies in the 5 days of northern Thailand.
We got to Thailand on the morning of the 6th and spent the day walking for about 3 hours up and back down the street our hotel was on. It’s like walking through an Anthropologie store. Katie Sturniolo would be drooling. So naturally we spent way too much money on things that take up room we definitely don’t have. My 75 liter pack is now 20kg and we had to buy another bag as a carry on.
Another really cool thing I got- as we were walking down the night market street I spotted an INCREDIBLE dress in the window of a tailor’s shop. And it was white with black accents.
Every four years the brothel has a celebration of sorostitution called Red Rose Formal. It’s a weekend long formal, usually in Savannah, where every girl wears a white gown and the president wears a bright red one.
Let’s talk about white gowns in America. They’re called bridal gowns. And I, for one, am no bride. No time soon at least. I also don’t want to drop a ton of money on something I may only wear once.
So I went into the shop.
I asked about the dress and asked how much it was and he said it would be a bit small for me but he could make the same thing in all white for the equivalent of $80. So over the course of 4 visits to the tailor shop, I got my formal dress handmade by a Thai woman and it is gorgeous. How many people get to say they got their dress made for them in Thailand? Pretty cool.
Can you see how we bought everything in sight?
But alas, we get to the trek. In about March, Elizabeth and I decided to get onto GapAdventures.com and find some fun tour to do in Chiang Mai during our visit. We found it.
The first day we got picked up from the airport and stayed in the hotel they provided. The second day the “trekking” began.
Let me preface this by saying that the physical fitness level on this “tour” was a 2 out of 5 and included the words “light walking” in the description.
I’d like to see a level 5.
The first day we hiked for 3 hours. Not normal hiking. Machete-wielding, slide your way down hills, almost die on the way up a 400 meter vertical hill kinda hiking.
Naturally I fell on a pile of bamboo and cut up my leg. It had a bit of blood but our guide, Pon, ran into the forest to save the day. Luckily for us, he wasn’t running away, he was getting a leaf. A leaf, he said, that had antiseptic powers and would stop the bleeding. My mother’s cringing nurse face was in my mind as I let this guy rub a crumbled leaf over my cut but it actually felt like rubbing alcohol and, hey, all our remedies had to come from somewhere. Plus, I haven’t had to get my leg amputated so I’m guessing it was safe.
He had all sorts of tricks up his sleeve though. Pon carried a bottle of water, tobacco and salt mixed together to pour on the leeches that attached to our shoes. He also poured it into our shoes which was appreciated until the blisters ensued.
After our hike we got to the first village we were seeing. We thought we’d be seeing people with rings on their necks who were fully prepared to smile for tourists but we were wrong. The tour was much less of a cultural immersion and more of a three day hike.
We slept under mesquito nets on mats on the wooden floor in a hut. I laughed remembering the travel clinic nurse asking if we’d have air conditioning or screens on our windows. Windows? You mean the places where parts of the wall is missing? No, sorry, no screens.
Now APPARENTLY I’m not in the best of shape. Or I like ice cream too much. But day 3’s 5 hour hike didn’t suit me well. It could have been the fact that it was a 5 hour hike. Not sure why those even exist.
We came over the last hill into a middle-of-the-jungle elephant farm. There were just elephants wading in the stream and playing with each other everywhere. Seven in total.
Such a victory. We had made it.
We then had some awesome lunch prepared on the spot and got to ride the elephants for about an hour to the village we stayed at. Same sort of accommodation but we slept much more soundly that night (until the cocks crowed at 4am).
We played some fun, language-barrier-friendly games that night in which, if you lost, Pon would draw on your face with the soot from the bottom of a pan. I’m sure it’s a skin treatment somewhere.
The 4th day we got on a bamboo raft made by Pon and floated down a river for 5 hours. It was super relaxing and peaceful once we realized bamboo was buoyant.
Once we reached our bus we had a late lunch and headed back to town to stay at the hotel again the last night.
It was definitely nothing like I expected but it’s nice to push yourself sometimes. Looking back, I’m really glad I got through the hikes and got to meet the 4 wonderful Irish people we were on the trek with. We passed the time quickly and had a good time living the hilltribe life for a while.
The rest of the 10th we got to walk around Chiang Mai, our new favorite city, and see some temples with our trek group. It was nice living in an Anthropologie magazine.
Our new Irish family with a city view of Chiang Mai in the background.
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