Thailand Part I: Trekking in the North

We had our dream vacation in Thailand for 2 weeks, Dec. 26- Jan. 8. We traveled with our friends Matt and Chelsea. Our travels consisted of three main parts: trekking through the north, the beach in the south, and Bangkok. Considering we took so many pictures, we will do 3 separate blogs describing our adventures.

An overview of our trip: We flew from Japan to Bangkok and spent 1 night in Bangkok. Then we flew to Chiang Mai where we spent 4 nights. We then flew to Ko Samui for 1 night and took a ferry to Ko Phangan for 5 nights. Next, we took the ferry back to Ko Samui for a night, then flew to Bangkok for 1 night, where we ended the trip by flying back to Japan.

A 3 Day Trek through the North of Thailand:
We began by taking a flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai to begin a 3 day trek which consisted of visiting 5 different remote villages, elephant riding through the jungle, hiking up a mountain to a beautiful waterfall, and going rafting down a river on a bamboo raft. We took a private tour, so it was just us, Matt and Chelsea and 2 Thai guides (1 that spoke English). We all carried a backpack with our clothes, toiletries, and sleeping bags, and the guides provided our food whenever we stopped at a village.

Trekking Day 1:
The first day we were dropped off at a remote village about 2 hours outside of Chiang Mai, it was here that we began our hike through the jungle. After about 3 hours of walking, 2 HUGE elephants came out of the jungle that were led by a couple of Thai men and we got to ride them for an hour! The elephants were really trained. Whenever we would be blocked by a tree or a branch, the man would command the elephant to tear it down with its trunk.

We saw some beautiful views while on the elephants and while hiking the rest of the day.

Around 4:00 pm, we came to the Karen village where we ate and spent the night. This was the best village we went to! It was very small and surrounded by hills. We got to see the school and experience how they live with no electricity.

We slept in this hut. It got really cold at night, but we layered up and had sleeping bags. Inside, we had mosquito nets around us while we slept.

This is our shower and toilet. There was no plumbing here, so after going to the bathroom, we had to scoop a bucket of water into toilet to make it flush. The shower was outside and the water from the hose was from the river so it was ice cold! This really made us appreciate our luxuries!

At night, we had a campfire and the young village girls performed some traditional dances for us. They were really cute. We even got to participate in one of the dances!

Trekking Day 2:

When we woke up in the morning, we were so excited to see elephants bathing in the river in front of our hut! It looked like out of a movie!

This was our most challenging day of hiking because it was mostly uphill. We crossed over dozens of small streams and climbed a mountain to reach a beautiful waterfall.

We spent a couple of hours at the waterfall resting and having lunch. Our guides used machetes to make us bowls and chopsticks out of bamboo! They cooked us noodles for lunch using the fire they made. It was amazing to watch them do this! The picture below on the right is of the noodles and veggies cooking in the bamboo in the fire.

Here we are eating out of our bamboo bowls using our bamboo chopsticks!

Frank was the only one brave enough to go into the freezing waterfall!

After leaving the waterfall, we hiked a couple more hours until we got to the village we stayed in for the night. This village was not as nice as the first village. There were a ton of stray dogs, cats, and chickens running around. There were some pigs and monkeys, too. The mountains around the village we really pretty, though.

Trekking Day 3:

On our last day of trekking, we walked though some beautiful farmland with many vegetable gardens and crossed over a couple of unstable bamboo bridges. We only walked for a few hours until we got to an elephant camp where a van was waiting for us. From here, they drove us to a river where we went rafting on a bamboo raft for an hour.

Our trek ended by visiting the Padong ("long neck") village. It was interesting to see this tribe that came as refugees from Burma. They believe it is attractive to have very long necks, so the small girls and women where rings around their neck to lower their collarbone.

We were sad that the trek ended because it was one of the best experiences we have ever had. Although we did look forward to a hot shower and a bed! We spent our last night in Chiang Mai shopping at a night market and getting 1 hour foot massages!