Rogerson's on the Road

After a hot, sweaty and franzied journey through the islands of Southern Thailand we knew it was time to "do" something. Now, we are not complaining, but 2 weeks on a beach for your summer holidays is great but spending a month on a beach can be, at times, well quite frankly, a bit boring. We still are not the type of people to be able to sit and do nothing like so many of our fellow travellers.

We caught two flights in order to get to Chiang Mai in Northern Thailand via Bangkok. The flights in themsleves were only an hour each but we had 7 hour wait for our connecting flight from Bangkok to Chiang Mai, which entailed us having to sleep in the domestic departure hall of Bangkok airport (there are photos of Neil looking much like a homeless person on the website!).

Landing in Chiang Mai was like a breath of fresh air, literally. The climate is much cooler than that of Southern Thailand and the air is crisp. Chiang Mai is an old walled city with the main tourist area being surrounded by a moat. It is cultured, cool and has a totally different feel and appeal than the South. We love it here. Bookshops replace the t-shirt stalls and lucky lucky men are replaced by fully robed Buddist Monks, Chiang Mai oozes history and culture.

The city itself is fasinating with a Wat on every corner, adorned with their golden turrets and sparkling singha dragons guarding the doorways. We managed to spend a couple of days exploring the city and pounding the streets ticking off the sights. You don't feel like you are going to collapse with heat exhaustion here as the climate is so much cooler and condusive to a good bit of sight seeing.

We hired bicycles and cycled the 9 Km out of Chiang Mai to the village of Bo Sang - the Umbrella Village. Here they handmake paper umbrellas, everything from the wooden frames to the paper is hamdmade, a really beautiful place to visit.

No trip to Chaing Mai is complete without a cookery course and a hill trek, and we have been lucky enough to do both. The cookery course was taken by a lovely Thai gent called Mr Teng who has purpose built his cookery school with an extensive garden where he growns the most amazing veges, huge patches of corriander, thai basil, holy basil, tomatoes, pinapples, dragon fruit, long beans....the list goes on. We had a great guided tour of a local market which sold everything from french beans to live frogs! The fish was so fresh, it is brought to market still alive, swimming in baby baths!

The cookery school was really interesting and I picked up some great tips, Neil however is now a master of thai cookery and really embraced the whole day. I am hoping for a break for the kitchen a few days a week when we get home - although I am worried we will just eat spring rolls! We spent the night at the cookery school in the most beautiful bamboo house, it was so quiet and peaceful.

The next day we were picked up by our trekking guide for our 2 day, 1 night hill trek. The trek would take us 1000 metres up into the Chiang Mai mountains to stay at a Karen Tribe Village but first of all we would visit an elephant camp.

Elephant riding is great but the slowest mode of transport I have ever been on. Elephants have got to be the most stubbon creatures on earth and will not move unless they are eating at the same time. Our "driver" spent most of the journey trying to move the elephant way from the tasty snacks which the elephant knew were hidden in the forest and we spent most of the journey looking down the elephants nose as it sniffed about for bananas. At the end of the 1 hour trip I was covered in elephant snot - lovely!!!! A brilliant experience and one I would recommend, but one piece of advice, buy a large bunch of bananas to bribe the elephant with!

We trekked up into the mountains of Chiang Mai to reach the Karen Village which would be base camp for the night. The Karen Hill tribes live at about 1000 metres above sea level and wear the very colourful woven fabrics (we have uploaded some photos). We stayed at a White Karen Village, so called as all the unmarried women wear white and the married women wear the coloured outfits (no confusion there then). The villages are, as you can imagine, very basic but the introduction of tourism has brought change. They now have solar energy for lighting which enables the children to study and read in their own villages at night and enables us to find out beds at night. The bed for the night was a bamboo hut, much more basic than the one at the cookery school and absolutly freezing cold! The temperature really drops away at night and at that height, it was like Manchester in the winter! It will go down as the most uncomfortable night I have ever had (and I have slept in Bangkok airport). It is the first time in my life that I was happy and rejoicing the morning! A great experience all the same and the people in the hill tribe could not have been nicer nor kinder to us during our stay.

The awful nights sleep was soon forgetten as we started out trek back down the mountain at 9.30 in the morning. The mountian mist was clearing as the vast forest, patch worked with terraced rice fields and grazing ox was revealed. I guess you have to experience discomfort to get these rewards. I spent the whole day humbled by what I had seen in the hill village.

So what comes up has to come down and we spent 3 and a half knee grinding hours decending the hill which we had climbed the day before, by lunchtime we were dusty, thirsty, hungry and I was about ready for a sleep! I looked down the valley and thought we still seemed awfully high and they it dawned on me how we were going to get to the bottom of the valley. I seemed to recall "bamboo rafting" was mentioned on the itinery.

So after lunch we were launched onto the River Weng on a raft that was constructed from 5 bamboo "logs" lashed together with bike tyres. We had a local "driver" and Neil acting as rudder. Wet? Yes wet, although Neil did a fantastic job and we were not dunked into the river once, the bamboo raft did not do that great a job of floating, it kind of fluctuated between submerged and semi-submerged for the 50 minute ride down the river but it was so much fun but by the end of the day we were ready for our hotel room, a hot shower and a cup of tea!

Next stop Laos, not sure how we are going to get there yet but we are have to be out of Thailand by 26th January when our visa runs out. So until the next time folks enjoy the photos.