Feb. 6th - Waking up to Roosters, Mountains, & Down Hill Hikes

After not sleeping my best, I was the first one up out of our whole group - like 5:30 am.  I let Tony sleep but then he actually was up at 6:30ish, so we went outside on our deck to see the sun rise. 

Felt like we were the only ones up in the Village - simply perfect

It was pretty cool out, so we were happy we trekked with our long sleeve jackets and I had a small zip up jacket too.  We got ready for our days adventure, which required wearing a bathing suit.  Then slowly people were starting to get up.  They had coffee (extremely strong coffee) & tea for us from literally off the fire pit.  Then for breakfast we all sat around our table again and enjoyed toast with butter or jam, hard boiled eggs, & very fresh watermelon. 

It was now time to separate our group, 1/2 of us were headed back, while the other 1/2 were headed for more nights in the jungle.  We did have a different guide, who now spoke no English, so I made sure to try and stay right behind him.  We left the village and wish all our fellow trekkers good luck and to have a great life with lots of travels, then headed out & down the mountain.

Trail we started on from the Village - our new guide in front; he was really quick

On top of the WORLD

Now, it started out ok, but our legs were a little weak from the extremely hard trek the day before and going down, slippery dirt paths was definitely not any easier.

You can't tell from this picture, but we went down the path on the right, if you can even see it, but it was straight down!

We trekked, and trekked, taking small breaks because some of these downward hills were pretty scary, slippery, and I would say dangerous!  But finally after an hour we found ourselves at the bottom of an incredible waterfall.  Right when we got to it, it was instant air condition and felt amazing.  I took my shoes off, thinking maybe I'll get in for a dip, but wholly cow it was freezing.  So sticking my feet and hands in the water was enough for me.  We got to hang out there fore about 30 minutes and then continued on.

Refreshing waterfall

Getting my hands and feet wet in the waterfall

Tony enjoying the built in air condition, he did duck his head too

There was this single flower on our bamboo deck at the waterfall

We had to cross logs that were over the water, rocks that were very slippery, and then literally climbing on the side of a wet hill that there was no longer a path.

Probably one of the easiest logs to cross, that's why I posed for the picture

If my foot slip, just once in the wrong place, I could have fallen probably 15 feet. Luckily we ALL made it fine.  We past other villages through the out the jungle and then we were finally at the bottom of the mountain.  You could feel the difference in the heat when we reached the bottom.

Bottom of the mountain

Finally, our trekking took us to the river where we were setting sail for white water rafting.  Here we had to give everything (backpack, shoes, passports, etc.) to our guide, where they through all our stuff in the back of a pick up truck and told us it will be there when we are done with the rafting.  We weren't thrilled with giving our passports, but otherwise they would have been drenched.

We got on life jackets, helmets and then got really bad broken English directions on what to do.  Now, English is our 1st language, so it was a whole lot easy for Tony & I to get what our guy was telling us to do while white water rafting.  However, the Italians and the French guy were looking at us for help.  I think they were pretty nervous (I was too actually).  We all got into the raft and the water again was pretty cold, but did feel nice.

Rapids

We started our paddling and some good rapids were right at the start, but then it got easier.  We saw elephants on the side of the river, other villages, and just surrounded by beauty!  I wish I could post pictures, but for this part I didn't have my camera.

We then boarded a big bamboo raft in the middle of the river and Tony got to be our driver.  He had to use a long bamboo stick and push it against the ground to steer the raft.  He was already tired (we all were) from white water rafting for 40 minutes, and now the rest of us get to relax on this calm bamboo raft, while Tony has to do more work. I think he was a little excited to be the Captain, but then was like ok, anyone else????

Bamboo raft - they had people taking pictures for us that we bought for  120 baht ($3.87)

Finally, we made it back to a camp ground where they had lunch waiting for us.  This time it was noodles with carrots & other veggies.  It was really good, we actually had seconds.

Lunch TIME

We both just love how they serve their food in coolers:

Tony getting 2nds, yum!

Now our whole adventure was done and we got back into the truck for our 2 hour ride back to Chaing Mai.  There was great scenery to view on our drive home, I did my best, but we were all exhausted.

Leaving the mountains

Passing more towns on our way back

We got all our backpacks back from their office, and then the driver took us to our cute little boutique hotel in the middle of Chaing Mai.

Loved our Hotel - Villa Duang Champa "a cozy little hotel"

We checked in and showered RIGHT AWAY.

View of room from front door, we even had a little sitting room to the left that looked outside

I don't think I have ever enjoyed a shower as much as I enjoyed that one (even though the shower was a little funny):

Bathroom with funny shower

View from room, you can see the Monks leaving the Wat across the street

Our downstairs section of the hotel

I wanted to try and get some of the blog done, so we took some time and enjoyed the outside seating at our cute hotel, along with a few beers.

Bloggin'

Then it was time to walk around a little and find a place for dinner.  While walking we ran into different Wats all over Chaing Mai.  There over 300 different Wats, about the same as Bangkok, much Chaing Mai is a much small city.



I then found a shop that was selling these comfy pants that look like genie pants and had very different cool patterns on them.  Well I bought myself a pair for 200 Baht (less than $6).

Finally, we could a restaurant that had a lot of people in it so we thought this had to be good.

Where we ate

Little did we know we were going to be stuck in there for the next 2 hours!!!!  It just was super slow service because it was just 1 man taking orders, bring the food out, getting refills on drinks, and doing the cooking!  We decided to split 2 different meals: burmese curry & panang curry.  Both ended up being really good, but the Burmese curry was the winner!  We also split fried shrimp before our meal, that was delicious with a very flavorful dipping sauce.

Fried Shrimp 

Burmese Curry

We were both falling asleep at dinner, but finally we got back to our hotel room.  I was going to do more blogging, but we fell asleep at 9:15pm exhausted from our 2 day trekking trip.  Goodnight!