Trekkings and wettings

The red trek bus - a ten-seater, open backed, jeep-type affair - picked us up from SK House early on Thursday morning - April 13th. We were immediately each issued with a plastic bag and advised to put everything in it - including any money, cameras or documents, because 'you will get wet'. Our driver and Lahn, our trek guide, wound up the windows of the cab and left us to it. I thought they took some pleasure in cruising slowly alongside other vehicles and slowing down as we approached groups of people. At Songkran, anyone in an open vehicle is a sitting target - from the people lining the streets and from people in other vehicles. The journey out of the city took about 1 1/2 hours. The floor of the truck was awash with water before we got out of the city centre. As Paul remarked several times, it is amazing that there aren't a lot of accidents caused by scooters and vehicles swerving and skidding.

On that first day of the trek we went bamboo rafting. This involved the women sitting demurely on the raft whilst the men punted. It's not uncommon for the rapidly constructed rafts - made of bamboo and strips of rubber (old tyres) - to fall apart on the journey down the river. Ours didn't, although it did need a few running repairs. We had to get off the raft and into the water a few times, but as we were already wet this didn't matter. I lost a flip flop at one stage, but it was recovered. There were a lot of families out on the river, picnicking on the banks as well as rafting, and a lot more water was thrown around.

After lunch we walked for about 3 hours until we reached the Karin village where we were to stay that night. This was a settlement of the Karin Skho hill-tribe, in an area of reserve land to the south-west of Chiang Mai. About 50 people live there - along with numerous dogs and cats, buffalo, cows and pot-bellied pigs - tilling the fields and growing rice.

There were ten of us on the first day of the trek: Paul and I: Aisling from Ireland and Fernando from Argentina; Marius and Lindi from South Africa; and another couple from Germany and Italy; and Anne and Jeanettte from Manchester. We all slept in a bamboo hut on platforms of bamboo and matting, draped with mosquito netting. It wasn't particularly comfortable!

On the second day Aisling, Fernando, Marius, Lindi, Paul and I carried on with Lahn, walking for about another three hours to a camp by a waterfall, where we stopped that night. The others left us to return to Chiang Mai as they had only booked a two-day trek. We were joined later in the day by another group of trekkers, two of whom retrurned to Chiang Mai with us on the following day. The camp was about an hour's walk from the nearest village. There was only one man there when we arrived, but about three more turned up the next morning, each coming alone and carrying provisions - among these some moonshine and some monkey meat, both of which they consumed eagerly. The monkey meat was raw and mixed with spices. I didn't try it. Lahn had told us the day before that there was no wildlife left in the hills, so presumably it's all been killed for food?!

I thought the actual trekking was disappointing, because there was no wildlife and few birds even in evidence. There weren't many wild flowers either, apart from the small purple orchids. There has been lot of logging in these hills in the past. It's now illegal, but I wonder how much still goes on. There are serious signs of soil erosion, no doubt added to by the trekking. As soon as the path becomes unusable a new path will be created to one side of it, thus adding to the problem. There were no visible signs of that the reserve was managed, apart from by the hill tribes themselves, who still use a form of slash and burn agriculture (the reason why there is a haze over the hills viewed from Chiang Mai). The camp where we stayed on the second night was on a steep slope on the banks of the river. In the rainy season it would be unusable.

Paul did enjoy the trek, so perhaps it was just that I was making a comparison with Australia and the abundant wildlife there.

The final day of the trek began with a short walk of an hour or so, followed by an elephant trek. We were entertained by the elephant in front which took every opportunity to stop and scratch itself, on and with whatever was available. It even picked up a small piece of bamboo in its trunk and scratched each foot in turn, front and back and all around - tops, soles and toes.

The journey back into Chiang Mai was wet again. We were dropped off about half-a-mile from the SK House - where Aisling and Fernando were also staying as it turned out - because the roads were closed to traffic.

After a while being wet does begin to get tedious and I had an attack of wimpishness that evening, being reluctant to venture out until the celebrations had died down. We went to explore the market on Ratchadamern, which leads off the Tha Phae gate, in the old city. There's a market here on Sundays, known as the 'Sunday Walking Market', but there seemed to be a market there for the holidays too. There were some great food stalls on this street, as well as all the clothes and jewellery stalls. I got 2 pairs of earrings for 10 baht a pair. We also had several of our many Thai massages on this street. The most memorable of these was the one we had on the last night of Songkran - the night we got back from the trek. We decided to go for the full body massage and lay on the ground behind all the massage chairs, looking up at the sky. An electrical storm started soon after our one-hour massage had begun. It was amazing to lie there, in a relaxed state, whilst flashes of lightning regularly rent the sky and thunder cracked overhead. The woman who was massaging Paul kept getting the giggles because she was getting tangled up whilst trying to manage his long legs! My masseur found it very entertaining when my shoulder muscles were making scrunching sounds: 'Skryck skryck,' she laughed, digging into them again, 'Skryck skryck.'

Luckily the rain held off during our massage, but we got caught in the downpour as we walked back to SK and had to change into dry clothes yet again when we got back. The wettings still weren't over though. We went and sat in the SK lobby and had a couple of bottles of Singha beer and then got soaked right through again just walking the few yards back across the courtyard to our room!