The last day of our three-day trekking consisted of a short hike down to a base camp where we ride elephants, experience white water rafting, and relax on a bamboo ride down the river. After that, lunch and then return to civilization.

UPDATE: WTF? When I copied this post from Word to the web, i thought everything had copied. It is missing a paragraph about waking up and johnny being really sick. I will add it later.

Ok, so here is what I had written earlier that for some reason wasn’t originally posted.

The sleeping pills were still in effect when we woke up to the sound of people moving about and getting ready. Breakfast was soon and that meant we had slept in. We grudgingly got up and went to brush teeth and go to the table for the usual feast of pineapple, toast, hard boiled eggs, coffee, and tea.

One look at Johnny, the guide, and you knew he was not feeling well. He had been up most of the night with stomach pains and nausea. Dee gave him some pills to take and told him to drink lots of water. he threw up the water. I was really concerned. not for him, but for me! he was the cook. was it just by dumb luck that he got the dirty dish? they don’t exactly use antibacterial soap to clean the pots and dishes. i think they dip it in the river and as long as it looks clean, it is clean.

Johnny requested for us to pack quickly so that we can make it down to base camp. as i watched him, i could feel his pain. he paced back and forth and you could tell he was fighting off the urge to release something or faint.

We hurry and pack. Johnny takes off down the trail. Usually he waits for us, but he wasn’t waiting for us this time. He didn’t have to anyways. The trail was an easy downhill but in the spirit of obstacles in the jungle, it had rained last night and the trail was muddy. Marie and Sybille said that earlier in the morning elephants had visited the camp. They had pics to prove it.

well, I dont know if it was dumbo who left the holes or something else, but we were hopping back and forth across the trail to avoid the water holes. * WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 4444 * In addition to the puddles, we had to negotiate a slippery metal pipe combined with a quick step on slick wood. * WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 4459 *It looked like an obstacle course. I stepped on some mud that quickly enveloped my shoe. I became the proud owner of a brown shoe. once out of the trail, er jungle, we walked a road to base camp. Our shoes were beyond repair.

we arrived at the camp to the sounds of elephants. They have the scariest growl or voice. There were several other groups riding elephants and they were come back from the ride. We hopped one and started the ride. The “bench” on the back of the animal wasn’t as padded as the one in samui and you had to watch your back otherwise your back was banging against the steel frame. The ride as usual is like a slow motion hurl. For those of you who dont know what a hurl is, it is the position you make when you want to throw up but cant and then arch your back backwards to somehow sling it forward and then back again to repeat the process. Anyways, five minutes into the ride, we were ready to get off. like I had posted before, the elephant ride is something you dont want to repeat. However, they did something cool with the ride. You could feed the elephant bananas. That was fun. You had to pay for the bananas, something like 20 baht (.5 USD). so the thais had worked it out how they can cut cost of food for the animals. Have the tourists pay for it!

Our elephant was hungry.

he would reach his trunk around to the top of his head and you place the banana in one of its nostrils. He would then stick it in his mouth. * WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 4525 *It was cool, but he kept coming back for more. I had no problem reaching the nostrils, but dee couldnt. she would try to push it and push it to the nostrils but it would eventually fall off his head. At one point, she just threw them on the ground. The elephant would stop and pick it up. haha. Where is the novelty in throwing it on the ground? I guess dee was tired of feeding this hungry thing so she started feeding it two at a time. Our banana supply quickly ran out. Dumbo would reach back in hopes of receiving more bananas but then slowly lower his trunk. It was kind of sad looking but I didnt care. I wanted off that damn thing. I about feel asleep due to either the boredom, the sleeping pills or just pure exhaustion of hiking for two days in the jungle. Dumbo visited the river to wash out the banana taste in his mouth. Elephants are strange creatures. They suck the river water into their nose and then squirt it into their mouth. We were on our way back when dumbo wanted to cool its head. Due to the lack of water in its nose, snot shot out across each of its shoulders to spray each of us with some mucous, yucky!!!! I mentioned he might want his head cooled, and dee immediately poured our bottle of water on its head. He never slung snot on us again.

We returned to the base camp to be instructed to wear only our swim trunks, life preserver, and helmet for the white water rafting. We all changed and jumped in the raft. I was in front and dee was in the rear. The front proved to be the most fun. I saw the edge before we went down into the swell. The water would crash right into my face. I quickly learned to turn my head and look across to coby who was sitting across from me. When the waves hit, I leaned forward and turned my head to watch them crash over coby, the raft and the rest of us. It was a cool sight. Unfortunately, I couldnt take the camera so I have no pics of the white water rafting or the bamboo rafting.

The white water rafting was fun but too short. It lasted about 45 minutes. We docked the raft and then walked over to the bamboo rafts. The bamboo raft looked flimsy and reminded me of the Mark Twain stories of Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer. When you put too much weight on one side, it was go underneath the water, so we sat on it and coasted down the river. The guide had some kind of thing for marie. I guess cause she was the whitest and thais dig white. He asked her age and claimed that she was too young for him. The kid looked like 20 but said he was 35. yea, right. The thais are a funny bunch. They yell and sing and jump around all excited. I couldnt believe that he was 35 with as much energy as he had.

Well, the bamboo docked and we walked to a picnic area where we changed and had lunch. Johnny was there and looking bad. He urged us to eat quickly so that he could make it to a doctor quickly. We did. Got a group photo * WPG2 CANNOT LOCATE GALLERY2 ITEM ID 4534 *and climbed into the pick up. on the way back, I had a hard time trying to stay awake. I kept nodding and waking. I hated it. It is similar to the experience of driving while trying to stay awake. Instead of the fear of wrecking the car, I was afraid of falling out of the car, so I could never full fall asleep.

Everyone was dropped off and we made plans to meet the marie and Sybille later on at the night bazaar. Once back in the room, we took a long, scrubbing, hot shower and relaxed.

The rest of the day and night was us meeting up with marie and Sybille and grabbing some drinks at some Texan saloon owned by an American who had come to Thailand to escape some tax fraud. He owned a few bars in Chiang Mai and had some very American items such as tex-mex food, a pool table, American music, and other American artifacts.

Anyways, we planned to go to the temples tomorrow with the Belgians, and we booked flights back to Bangkok for the day after. We had booked them with air asia. After booking, marie told us about the scariest flight they ever had with air asia. It was terrifying. The plane could not pressurize properly and the masks dropped down. They felt like they were going to faint. The pilot for some reason would force the plane into a dive and then into a climb and over and over. Marie and Sybille seriously thought they were going to die. Thanks for the info AFTER us buying the tickets. We looked into changing the tickets but they were non-refundable. Fantastic. Luckily, we had bought some valium at the local pharmacy for 20 baht (.5 USD) a pill and planned to use them for the flight. We definitely enjoyed the nighty-nighty aspect and dont remember the flight.

Anyways, the next day would be us meeting up with Marie and Sybille and figuring out what we were going to do with our last day in Chiang Mai.