a mountain, an elephant, and a really cold river

man, am i behind on this thing! i am almost five posts behind--please forgive me! tim and i got the schmancy overnight bus to chiang mai from bangkok--it was almost as nice as the nice bus in singapore, but this time, we had a thai movie (subtract five points for non-english filmmaking) and a back massager (add three points for traveling in lumbar-assisted comfort). we got in early early morning, and at the time, i hoped maybe it was just the sleepiness or the darkness that made chiang mai so ugly. sadly, it was neither.

we got to our guesthouse, and miss pissamon, our hostess, immediately handed us the reviews of her treks and left us to sit for a while before she took us to our room. we took this to mean that we should book a trek. feeling rather hardy (or sleep-deprived) and unimpressed with the concrete-ness of chiang mai, we agreed. a three-day trek through the mountains it was. we then went immediately to bed. when we awoke, we wandered around town a little. it was still ugly. we tried to get some delicious falafel for lunch, but it was friday, duh. israelis don't work on friday. so we went to an english-owned establishment, bought some books and ate cheese and pickle sandwiches. hurrah! that night, we were off to the night market, which is a series of stalls selling just about everything. we wandered around a little bit, and then bought some things (maybe for you!) and then went home again. oh! and, on the way to the night market, we walked down this skankatron road full of cheesy bars with hookers inside. THE HOOKERS PROPOSITIONED TIM! WITH ME STANDING RIGHT THERE! i could not believe it. chiang mai was rapidly declining in my books. listen, ladies, don't try to seduce my husband when i am standing right there! at least distract me with some chocolate or something!

the trek took off at 9 am, which was not so bad. what was bad was that tim and i were the only english speakers on the trip, and we were all (12 people) crammed into the back of a pickup truck. me, tim and 10 germans. now, i am not normally such a fan of german tourists (call me racist, you already know it's true from the spanish tourist posts), so i was not too thrilled by this new event. tim speaks about 1.5 words of german (i can ask for a beer, which is odd since i don't drink beer) so it was us, sitting in silence while the germans chatted away. it was actually us, 3 swiss kids and 7 germans, to be precise.

we stopped at a market on the way and made a little small talk with a few of them, mostly with martin, this rad swiss kid who just finished uni, speaks perfect english, and is en route to japan for a year-long internship. we stopped for lunch a little further along, and then began to trek to a waterfall. up, up, up and then the waterfall, which was COLD. then, down, down, down, and back to the truck. we finally started the 'trek' at about 3 pm, and i think mr chan, our guide was in a rush, because we virtually sprinted up the side of the mountain and across and down, to get to our first hilltribe village, where we spent the night. finally, at the village, we started to befriend the germans. the two swiss girls, jasmin and claudia, started to talk to us, and two of the german girls, irina and bettina, also made some conversation. mr chan made us some delicious green curry and eventually built a fire, and we all made friends.

let me tell you about our deluxe accomodation for the trek: it was much like our deluxe longhouse accomodation (though this time, no one robbed us). we slept in wooden huts, side by side on the floor on mats that have probably been slept on by every western visitor in the north of thailand since 1950. we got some scabby blankets and no pillows, and the bathrooms were, of course, the fabulous squat toilet with a shower head beside. irina was terrified of the bathrooms, since she is an arachnophobe, and would regularly go to pee and come screaming out of the toilet because she had spotted a spider. it got to the point where the poor thing had to bring bettina in to pee with her.

the next day, we trekked some more, but went a little more slowly this time. the mountains were not far from the burmese border, and the views were spectacular. the pain in my behind from walking uphill for hours on end, not so much. tim and i spent most of the second day trek talking to irina and bettina about bettina's love for british film, and eventually, we reached the elephant camp. at the elephant camp, we decided to swim in the river, which meant that we would walk to the middle and then let the current carry us downstream. only at the end did i notice the giant pile of elephant dung next to the water. mmm, tasty. suddenly, it was elephant riding time! i almost fell off, because you have to step on its HEAD to get on, and i felt badly. but soon, we were both on board, and we were lurching down the river. our elephant had a baby girl who accompanied us on the trek, which meant that she mostly rolled around in the water, kicking up her baby white feet, and flopping around so that we could only see one eye, blinking up at us. let me tell you: riding an elephant in the water is ok, but going downhill is no fun! it requires some serious thigh muscles and no fear of death.

we got to the second hilltribe village after a couple of hours (tim was unimpressed by the elephant ride and swore it off forevermore), at which point i was exhausted (having been unable to sleep on the ancient mattress with the scabby blankets and crusty mosquito net). while we were having dinner, irina and bettina came shrieking into the cabin and ran out to the beds, from which they soon emerged with the news that tim and i had a virtual river of termites climbing up the wall next to our bed. we switched to sleeping next to them. we read our books for a while, and then ate dinner, and then i went into our 'bedroom' to read some more. after a while, i got bored and couldn't sleep, so i went out to the fire with everyone else. tim was chatting it up with our other guide, chai, who spends most of the treks poking people with sticks or yelling, 'SNAKE! SNAKE!' chai was some kind of hilarious, and a very sweet man. he used to be an elephant rider at the camp, where he earned the princely sum of $30 a month. now, he is working on his english and trying to be a proper trekking guide. we loved him. he took my book and tried to read to us, and then taught us some thai, all the while patting tim on the shoulder or the leg, and cracking up laughing. the interesting thing about thai men is that they are very affectionate with each other--more so than with women!

the next day, we woke up and it was time to raft. rafting meant that half of us would stand on one raft, which was composed of several planks of bamboo roped together, and raft down the river. the water was cold, and the currents weren't too bad, but of course, our boat (led by the mischevious chai) hit a big one halfway down and jasmin, tim and i all keeled over (we didn't fall in, but were wet from the waist down, and of course it was the one day that it was about 50 degrees). soon enough, we were back on the road to chiang mai. we stopped briefly at an orchid farm, and then we were back.

we went to dinner (we finally got our falafel and sweet tzaziki of love!), but even with our delicious middle eastern feast, i was depressed. as we were getting ready to go, a man came in with a thai woman. the man was geeky and nerdily dressed, and the thai woman was beautiful, and clearly, an escort. the man was desperately trying to entertain her (he even had a book of thai phrases) and she was totally unimpressed. it was so depressing. the poor man, having to go to thailand and hire a girl to go on a date! usually, i feel badly for the women, and loathe the men, but this time, i wanted to slap that girl silly and tell her to listen to him talk about dungeons and dragons! we had made plans to play snooker with chai at 7.30 (he is a snooker nut), but when we arrived (at a abandoned-looking building full of men smoking and playing snooker, with 5 policemen on the floor in the back playing cards), he wasn't there. tim played for an hour with a man named jee, and then we met the other kids from the trek for drinks. the germans were lovely kids, and i really liked them, but we had to get to bed early because i was making tim go to the elephant conservation center the next day--at 6.30!!

o man, the elephant conservation center was the best thing about chiang mai, and it's not even there! we got the 7.30 bus out of town, and 90 mins later, the bus pulled over to let us off. we got on the elephant bus with a little boy and his sister, who were ecstatic to be seeing the elephants, and it dropped us near the baby cages. there were two babies at the center, and we got to feed them and their mothers. feeding them basically means you hand them a banana, which they either suck with their trunks, or curl around in their trunks and then flip into their mouths. it was great. then we saw the show, in which about 20 elephants demonstrate how they worked in the jungle, and play music, and paint pictures, and raise and lower the flag and all kinds of other human-taught tricks. they even bow to the audience. they all seemed very well cared for, and man, were they smart. I WANT AN ELEPHANT!!