Day 2 trekking Chiang Mai
After a 3 hour trek in the morning we had bamboo rafting then elephant riding to look forward to. Again the trek wasn't really too hard, trickiest part was balancing on the edge of the the drainage system we were walking along! However I'd say the highlight of the tour was bamboo rafting down the river, one local guy stands up front and guides the boat, three people sit down and then we took turns standing up at the back pushing the bamboo raft down rapids. It's actually quite challenging, ducking trees, pushing off rocks, being splashed by onlookers in the aftermath of Songkran, but great fun. As our guide said when we got on ' No wet, no fun. No fun, no baby' He should have been a poet.
The elephant riding was ok, and a life experience, but you really just feel sorry for the elephants. The knock it on the head to get it to go where they want it to which isn't a pleasant sound. I'd tend to recommend people to go to the Elephant conservation centre instead and skip the ride.
Decided to cut the trek off a day early since....well everyone else had and it would have just been another night of the 'authentic hilltribe experience', but I'd had enough campfire singing so we headed back to Chiang Mai. Met up with our guides at a local pub later and drank beer from paper cups (the election was the following day, and for whatever reason the police can't see you drinking the night before an election)
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