“We’ve got in at the White House Hotel in Chiang Rai and have a nice room. We are hoping to see the Chinese New Year celebrations down in the town tonight and have booked a trek in the hills tomorrow with some walking, boating (again) and an elephant ride.”
The nice thing about travelling independently is being able to decide what we want to do and see in our own time. So far on this trip there have been plenty of opportunities to book day treks and activities and yesterday was no exception.
Our day trek organised by the White House for the two of us was excellent. Our guide, commonly known as ‘Skippy’, works at the hotel guiding in the day and working as night security through the night.
A few hours sleep was something he fitted in when he could! Our long tailed boat took us upstream along the Mae Kok river to an elephant camp where we ‘boarded’ our elephant for the next ninety minutes.
It took us some time to get used to the jerky movement but had settled down by the time we got to the serious climbing. The elephant went along very narrow tracks along hillsides and up and down very steep slopes crossing streams on the way. It was a bit unnerving at times.
We stopped at a hill tribe village where we were shown round and Skippy cooked us noodles, rice and pork for lunch. We said goodbye to our elephant and his mahout and set off on foot into the hills stopping at other villages en route, including a visit to Skippy´s Mum´s house.
What made it very special was the fact that we didn’t see any other tourists all day! That night we ate at the excellent night bazaar.
The next day we had a short trip out of town to see the White Temple and looked round the three main wats and the Hilltribe Museum in Chiang Rai.
With our bus tickets already purchased we were ready to set off the next day to Chiang Mai.
