We went a little 'activity mad' in Chiang Mai (see the next blog too) and we hired a motor bike and went through the mountains and stayed over in a place called Pai. The bike ride was beautiful.
This is a temple (called a Wat in Thailand - you can quite legitimately ask the question 'What wat is that wat then?) All the temples have statues or images of Buddha, usually in the grounds and the valuable ones, some made from solid gold, in the temples.
This is a rather 'portly' looking Buddha. It what happens when Buddha's retire - be warned Ron!
Some of the temples have lots of little pots, the idea being that you put a coin into each pot for good luck, health etc. Here is the 'shoulder covered Elvis in respect of the Buddhist traditions', furnishing each of the pots with a bit of silver!
The heat and smoke from the fields burning makes the sunsets quite unique here, long before the sun has set the whole sky turns a yellow colour and if you can see the sun, it appears as a massive red disk that you can look at without sunglasses on.
The heat and smoke from the fields burning makes the sunsets quite unique here, long before the sun has set the whole sky turns a yellow colour and if you can see the sun, it appears as a massive red disk that you can look at without sunglasses on.
We decided we would do a two day trek up into the mountains of North Thailand and into some of the remote villages. You can't really do this by yourself so we joined a group and six of us went off into the mountains with two Thai guides. This is one of the villages we walked through.
Here's the group heading towards the village of a special tribe of people, they do have a traditional name but most people know then as the 'long neck' tribe (it's not too difficult to work out why!). After a few hours hiking we arrived at the 'long necks' village and we stayed the night there in very basic huts, it was good fun though as we had a great group with us; two - self confessed 'punks' from America and two guys from York in England.
Here is one of the 'long neck' woman (only the women do this as they believe it makes them more attractive to men - which would work if men liked their women to look like Jackie Charlton!!!). I couldn't help feeling that it looked painful and very restricting to their head movement, although it may also have it benefits, like sleeping on an air plane seat. They start with the girls very young, the rings are made of a heavy brass like material. 
After a little more hiking the next day we transferred to the true 'hiker' of the jungle, the elephant. Do you know how to tell the whether this is an Asian elephant or an African elephant? Easy really, it can't be an African elephant cos we're not in Africa are we you daft buggers!! We took the elephants up the river and then transferred to rafts and then white water rafted through the rapids, then transferred onto bamboo rafts for a more sedate cruise down the river.
Here is the 'group picture' Elvis, Hodgie, Drew, Dana, Mark and Joe at the end of the trek
After the trek we took a motorbike over the mountains to Pai and returned the next day. Pai is a little mountain paradise of easy living and we fitted right in! The scenery on the ide was fantastic and the bike was pretty good too - we had a real bike for a change which was much better than a 50cc scooter!
These are the huts we stayed at in Pai - very basic but effective!
After all that hard trekking what's two tired travellers to do? A Thai foot massage of course, just be sure to tell them to be gentle cos these little women are incredibly powerful creatures with hand made of steel!
While we were here I (Keith) also got into some other action activities but to know more you'll have to wait for the next blog.
The first cup of tea to my nephew Ryan aka Dave/Ryster/Reggie/Ry for correctly naming the ex-president of Thailand as the owner of Man City. Ginny the researcher gets the bonus (on her second attempt) for correctly identifying 'Chang Beer' as the shirt sponsors for Everton.
2 comments:
hello my lovlies,great pictures and stories l loved the elephant question but it could have ben an african elephant on holiday.xx mam
I just want to say, and Paul (wherever he is) will back me up on this, that this is the seocnd time you've talked about white-water rafting in the blog but we never actually see you doing it. I believe the last time you cascaded off a 25 foot drop...and again, someone forgot to bring the camera!
In all fairness though, not many could say that they've ridden an elephant or lived amongst the ringnecks. It's quite amazing what you two get up to! Keep on keeping on.
Post a Comment