Trekking in Chiang Mai

Sunny, our guide, with smoked bee larvae

Sonny, our guide, with smoked bee larvae

We decided to go on a two day trek in a “non-touristy area” and we ended up only seeing other tourists twice on our whole trip. We were picked up from our hotel around 10:30 in the morning and went back to the travel shop to drop our luggage off for the next two days. After this we left in a truck, which I thought would be a van or a tuk-tuk, in which the five of us rode in the back. The driver managed to pick up a monk along the way, who got to ride in the cab.

Our first stop was at a market where our guide, Sonny, picked up food for the evening meal. We also purchased water, snacks and other stuff that we wouldn’t find again until it was over. Our second stop was an elephant camp. We weren’t sure why we were at the camp. The travel guy told us that the elephant part of the trek would be on the second day, and we were supposed to ride the elephants along the trail we were hiking. In reality, we rode the elephants around a small path on a very torn up piece of land. The mahout would stop the elephant next to stands that sold bags of bananas, and this happened about every 15 minutes. We rode our elephant, Kuku, for 45 minutes and bought a picture of us on top of him. The ride was fun, but disappointing because of the area and the trail that led nowhere.

After the elephant ride, we stopped for lunch. The lunch point was also the place where we would start the hiking. Our meal of fried-rice was quick and we started our trek around 1:00 PM. We walked to a small waterfall and stayed for a few minutes before walking for around an hour. There were villagers there bathing in the river and weaving fabrics. The first parts of the trek wer mostly up-hill, and slow. We then stopped for another break at another waterfall. We would only stop for one more break before arriving at the village around 5:30 PM. Along the way we ran into a few guys who had harvested a bee nest and cooked it over a smoky fire. They were eating the larvae of the bees and the nest itself. We were offered some and we tried it, but it wasn’t very good.

Elephants at the Elephant Camp

The trail was very well worn, mostly by hill-tribe villagers, and was located in the national forest that is north of Chiang Mai. It was a very sunny day, and the river was cold, but very pretty. We arrived at the village that evening and were introduced to the village teacher. After the meeting we sat around for about half an hour with 5 or 6 village children drawing. We were handed blank paper and Becca drew homage to Louisiana with Lake Charles labeled as Lafayette! I’m sure that this will somehow come back to haunt us! The other guys drew tigers, elephants, etc. Becca’s drawing was placed on a large wall with other drawings from the few tourists who had visited the area. After the drawing was finished we dropped our stuff off in our hut before we looked at the village handicrafts on sale. The village women selling their scarves, shirts and sarongs thought it would be funny to dress Becca in the traditional village garb, but we found out later it was clothing for married women! According to Sonny, if a woman is over 20 and not married, there’s something wrong with her! Uh oh…

The village was on a gently sloping mountain side, with a large concrete cistern to supply the people with water. They also let their animals run throughout the village, and we saw chickens, water buffalo, cows, pigs, dogs, etc running all over the place. There also seemed to be a large amount of puppies running around, and one kid told Becca that the name of the puppy she stopped to pick up was BBQ! We asked Sonny about it and he said that only the males in the village sometimes eat dog…

After we finished viewing (and purchasing) some of the local handicrafts, we sat down for dinner. We had two dishes, a green curry and a very delicious vegetable mash over rice. After dinner, we sat around a fire, talking with some of the locals and Mo purchased a bottle of local moonshine for about 50 baht. One of the locals who hunted jungle fowl in the area brought us half of one and cooked it over the fire and we all shared it. We sat up for quite a while that night talking and playing cards until we fell asleep in our hut. The next morning we got up late and had breakfast before watching the locals dig for termites (to eat). After wandering around the village for a short time, we went back to the village school and made a donation for supplies and left.

We walked for another hour or so before we arrived at another waterfall. We stayed there for awhile before heading up hill to cross to another trail. We final walked though a huge field of basil plants and arrived at a small village for lunch which we ate next to a huge waterfall. After lunch we were picked up and driven to the bamboo rafting section of our trek.

The rafts were similar to the ones we rode on in Yangzhou, China but smaller. We immediately got wet and we traveled down the river with another group of people on another raft. We ended up starting a splash-fight and towards the end of the ride, we stopped for some cliff jumping. Once finished we got cleaned up in a roadside restaurant and had noodles before the ride home. We were dropped off at our hotel late in the evening, where we tipped our guide, got a group shot and went to rest before dinner.

All-in-all, our trek was a lot of fun! We had a great time hiking with Sonny and getting to see how the hill tribe minorities lived. We were greated warmly, and we felt at home during our brief stay in the village. We would recommend it to anyone who is in Chiang Mai and needs a break from the city!