life in progress...

chiang dao trekking

Happy Lunar New Year's everyone!!! Just got back to Chiang Mai yesturday from 3 days of trekking in the mountains of Chiang Dao with Luke, Ethan, Angela, and Mike. Uphill was killer. I find that I have a hard time breathing at higher elevations or possibly I'm just in really bad shape, which wouldn't surprise me considering the week at Grandma's. The first day we went hiking and did a bit of spelunking in some caves. Really beautiful rock formations, some sparkly, some of which were hollow and we could play them like the drums. Lin has a audio file of the acoustics somewhere. Second day was spent visiting a village, more hiking, and lunch in the woods. Our guides made us chopsticks and serving dishes out of freshly chopped bamboo, so resourceful. We spent the rest of the night in the village playing cards by candlelight. On the last day, after another hour and a half of hiking, we went to ride some elephants. The elephant that Luke and I were on decided it was bit hungry and went charging off the path, taking us on a surprise ride through some branches to snatch a young banana tree for a snack, pulling it from the ground by the roots. During the 10 or so seconds the elephant was charging, the trainer turned over and kept repeating to me,"its okay, its okay." I was surprised, laughing, and just trying not to get hit by a tree branch. Lol. Luke, who was riding on the head of the elephant, luckily did not fall off, but thought the ride was awesome. Crazy dude. We ended the trek with a some bamboo river rafting and a little friendly race.

Then back to Chiang Mai to rest and celebrate my birthday :) You would think that a massage would be a nice present to myself, but somehow it turned out to be the worst massage experience of my life. So yeah, not all massages in Thailand are good. Take note. Oy! The masseuse had no strength or pressure at all. I keep telling her "harder", "harder". It was like she was just patting me. WTF? Ok, I got to stop before I get frustrated again.

Thankfully, Som saved the day. She came and took us to a nice Riverside restuarant, where we enjoyed some great Thai food, desserts, and some headbanging music. Thanks Lin for the ice cream cake :)

posted by snowtweety @ 2/18/2007 02:17:00 PM