Patrick treks, drinks, and rock climbs

NOTE: Pictures are now officially online. You can see all of them on Robert Barchard's facebook.
http://ualberta.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2173&l=8ee03&id=513382117
and
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2176&l=b9969&id=513382117
Sorry, no elephant photos yet.

OK, where did I leave off? I think the last blog was the day we got into Chiang Mei. So... what else did we do that day? We played in the pool and started drinking early, got some details for a climbing adventure that we're planning to go on. Then we ate and headed to the night market to do some shopping before going to a Thai Boxing match.

Shopping was a wild success, with me buying a Rolex that keeps good time for an excellent price, and I also bought a carved frog with a stick that you rub on it's spikes and it sounds like a cricket. Greg officially made the worst deal of the trip when he bought his poncho. He made an opening offer of ฿100, which the man quickly accepted. We found the same poncho at another market later MARKED at ฿15.

Anyway, the Thai Boxing match was really ridiculous. We got there early and got ringside seats (I could reach the ropes) and sat and had some buckets and played the connect 4 game provided for us while we waited. Now, these buckets were pretty strong, and they hit me pretty quick. I certainly didn't realize I was as drunk as I was, but all I said (screamed) for the next oh... 2 hours or so was one of the following:
1) You're my boy, blue! (we were in the blue corner)
2) Who is this guy?
3)He's got nothing!
Generally in that order. I was out on the table by the fifth fight, and Greg and Rob, who were apparently aware that they were not far behind me, smartly got us a ride home. Somehow, the only thing I lost was the stick that makes the frog sound like a cricket. So we weren't as chipper as we would have liked for the trek the next morning, but it was still a hell of a lot of fun.

We got to sit on the roof of the truck for some of the ride up, and then went on foot to the village we stayed the night at. I bought some ridiculous hats at one of the stops in a 45-minute bartering showdown with the woman. I won. The first walk was a tough one, as most of them were through the trek, lasting hours with a lot of up and down steep slopes. Rob and Greg are uploading the pictures and videos as we speak, and there's one pretty good one of me trying to slide down a steep slope and stay on my feet. I don't want to ruin the ending, but I fall. The village was cool, we ate traditional food and watched a pig get slaughtered. Grusome. Video of that too. And then there was some Thai dancing by the village's children and then we slept on mats on the floor with no pillows.

The next day we trekked until we got to the elephant place and then we rode the elephants! Me and Rob got the big one; he was named Mai. We sat on his neck and he had prickly hair and tried to pull our shoes off with his trunk. He was cool. And then we switched who was riding and we got to play with the little elephants. There is also a video of me trying to stand my ground against a two-year-old elephant. I don't want to ruin the ending, but I fail quite quickly. The baby was so cute. At one point, he tried to get a running start up a hill and didn't quite make it so I tried to help, but he was quite heavy. That night, we played cards and a local guy did some tricks for us. On the last day of the trek, we rafted on a bamboo raft and steered it with poles down a river. I was a rudder. It was really cool, at times it got going pretty fast. At one point, there was a tree across the river about three inches out of the water, and we had to, one by one, jump over it. We succeeded. It was so cool.

After we got back and showered, everyone from the trek went out for dinner and drinking and dancing. At one of the clubs, they have washroom attendants that don't like... help you wash your hands, instead they crack your back and neck and massage your arms and legs. There's like 5 of them, it's pretty amazing. I gave them a tip and they were very surprised. Anyway, Rob lost his sandals at one bar and then later decided to go back to try and find them. There was a miscommunication somewhere, and I didn't know why they had left, and, when I couldn't find them, left to walk some of our friends home, and then went back to the hostel. They weren't there, and so, after waiting for a while, I just crashed on one of our friend from the trek's bed. We were unimpressed with each other until it was cleared up.

Today, we rented motorbikes and went out to a rock climbing area a little ways outside the city. It was pretty fun; we only did one climb, but it was a good level. We got nasty sunburns from riding the bikes, though. They're pretty nice, though. They got to 100kph in 3rd gear.

Oh, and yesterday we sent our laundry in to a laundrey service and they told us it would be done at 8 that night. It wasn't; we were told to come back the next morning. It still wasn't ready, so we had to wait a full 24 hours for them to do our laundry. We were unimpressed.

We are possibly going climbing again tomorrow, but, more likely, we will just have a day to chill. We haven't really done that yet. We might do some whitewater rafting as well while we're in Chiang Mei.

Regarding the tattoos, yes, there are some sketchy places to get them, but there's one on Khoasan rd in Bangkok that follows European sanitation standards, opens needles in front of you, and uses liquid ink, so I feel safe getting one there.

Will keep you updated. Write to me too!

-P