When they said trek they meant trek

As I write this I am sat in an extremely mellow bar in Laos hungover so I'll warn you now, the creative writing is not flowing! 

Last Wednesday we set off to do a 3 day elephant trek in Chiang Mai in a group of 9 (2 Canadians, 1 American and 3 Belgians). 

Once we got to the edge of the jungle we settled down for a bite to eat. Tasty rice served in a leaf!

We had a crazy (in a good way) guide with us (they all seem to be) and he showed us how to blow bubbles through the stem of a lead. Really cool! I tried... and failed. 

Turns out when they called it a trek, they really did mean a trek! Little naive old us thought we'd be casually riding an elephant and doing a light bit of walking from place to place. How wrong were we! Who needs boot camp!? 

Amidst the balancing across trees and climbing up and down the jungle terrain we stopped at some really beautiful waterfalls and took the opportunity to jump in to cool down! 

At one of the waterfalls we decided it would be cool to follow the adventurous Canadian couple in our group and venture up to the next level of the waterfall. This resulted in the 'three best friends' almost becoming two when Nathan went tumbling back down to level one taking my waterproof camera with him! After some panicking and fumbling about in the water thankfully it was found and the friendship remains! 

That night we set up camp in a little bamboo hut which actually turned out to be one of my comfiest beds yet! That being said... I have been sleeping on what would better be described as slabs of wood... 

The next day it was back to trekking. An entire day of trekking... My oh my that is not what we signed up for! Finally we made it to our new camp in a local village and had a much needed chilled out night singing songs under candle light whilst one of the boys from the village played his guitar. Perfectly cliche! 

The next day it was elephant time! This time with seats so it was a far comfier ride! 

 

 

We then went on bamboo rafts down the river which was a lovely relaxing way to finish the trip! 

Despite our occasional losing the will to live whilst trekking, we actually had a really good time and spent 3 days with a lovely group of people! 

That evening we all rewarded ourselves with a much needed western meal and spent the evening together in Chiang Mai. It's such a nice place, I could have definitely spent more time there!  

But on to the next...

Ciao for now x