Friday, January 21, 2011

Chatting it up with Monks....

Northern Thailand is the shit.  I've been here for a few days, since the 18th, and it's been amazing.  I got into Chiang Mai, the northern town that use tobe capitol of Northern Thailand, and it was an awesome change.  The town is like a big city, in the fact there's lots of stuff and big buildings, but really has reminded me a bit of Kenya, at least in theory.  The town is westernized but has kept a lot of culture.  You'll walk down the street, pass a 7/11, and the next building will be a temple or buddhist monestary.  The town is such a travel town too, with loads of travel companies offering tours, and lots of western bars and used book stores.  Just a cool community of travellers, with still a lot of culture in the heart.  You'll see loads of monks walking around all day, and i even went to a temple and chatted with a few for an hour or so my first day, which was super cool.  They often just want to learn english so they are happy to talk about anything, and me being an ignorant american, I wanted to know everything about buddism, meditation, and thai culture.  Pretty rad experience.

Chiang Mai has been a great place for meeting a lot of really good people, and a lot of good travellers.  Ran into a few guys who climb so i'm going to climb with them later this week, and that's awesome because now i got equipment to use, good guys who climb that'll give me some good guys that will give me beta and tips, and some friends to hang out with on downtime.  I met some really nice travellers and we had a great night out before i headed to Chiang Dao for a 3 day trek through the jungle.  The trek was amazingly awesome.  I got to do everything I wanted and got a lot of insight at the same time.  The trek started off nice and easy with a short hike, and elephant ride from one town to another.  It was pretty rad and nice to know i hired a company that treated there animals fairly and nicely.  From there we rode bamboo rafts down the river to anotehr town and met a few more tribes local to the area.  It wasa really cool meeting the tribes, which have been getting government assistance, and it was good to see how well they were treated.  |They were given solar panels to help with basic needs, and all villages were given small hospitals.  It was good to see the government was helping without intervening in too much of their culture heritage.

From there, we did a bit more trekking to another village where we slept the night, freezing our asses off.  The next day was fun, we did a few day hikes basically, going to a cave and exploring in there.  It was nothing too crazy but definitely interesting to see.  We also saw a pretty rad waterfall that pretty much fed most of the communities around with water.  The water system was interesting, and really reminded me of the water system in Guatemala, so it just spiked lots of ideas for non profit stuff.  We headed from there to a hill top village where we slept in open air huts overlooking the mountains and jungle, one of the best views i've seen during the trip.  The next day was a long day of hiking, with a short trip to another big cave.  We then visted another village that just had their first school built a month ago, and got to visit the kids and spent a few minutes to color and draw with them, as they don't see many visitors and were definitely excited.  Really cool to do that sort of stuff.  So after a few more hours of trekking, we made our way back to the lodge we started and I got a ride back to Chiang Mai.  The trek was awesome, not touristy at all, and didn't even see another tourist until our last night, and it was only a small group.  The tour was also eco-tourism, so they only hired local guides and made sure their practices were fair and ethical.  Just a really good time and I was lucky enough to have a pretty rad group, 2 kiwis, a pair from Malta, and an older English guy who was full of stories and insight.  Overall, a great trek and got me going to do more soon.

So I'm back in Chiang Mai, had a good night of chatting with some of the old friends I made earlier, and have lots of plans for the few days i'm still here.  I am headed to a thai organic farm to do a cooking class where we pick all the vegtables, and then go to the market and buy all the ingredients.  Definitely stoked for that.  Then we hit up a reggae festival that is in town all weekend, and probably will have fun with that.  Tomorrow, I finally get some climbing in and then i'm onto Laos!  Should be exiciting but can't believe i'm jsut a bit over a week from returning.  I'll think more about that later, but for now, a few more adventures, and a few more stories to tell later.  Cheers

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