We only had about a week left before our flights back to the sterile normality of Melbourne, so we figured we should make the most of what's left of our journey. Good thing we picked Chiang Mai to end it in. The place is the adventure capital of Asia - everywhere you look there are ads for mountain biking, bungee jumping, tiger taming and god knows what else. I had only 7 baht to my name, so I went straight to an ATM and withdrew the maximum amount. Time to have some fun!
We found a guesthouse and sprawled the innumerable amount of brochures we'd amassed on a bed. We ended up booking a tour the next day that would see us ATV (quad bikes) riding in the morning and white water rafting in the arvo. We were picked up in a minibus early in the morning. The driver spins around and grins at us, saying "HELLO! My name is CRAZY!!!". Then he drops his voice to a creepy murmer - "...how are you?" . Crazy blared the Thai equivalent of Michael Jackson over the speakers and started singing along. After a 2 hour trip up north, with Crazy singing terrible Thai pop all the way, we arrived at Maetang River. There were a bunch of ATVs waiting for us; they were only 150cc, but they were very responsive and fun to drive. We did a couple of test laps to prove we weren't mongoloids, then set off after the guide down some offroad tracks. As I expected, within the first half hour Ariel had continued his trend of being utterly useless at everything with a motor, and rolled his bike. After the crash the guide started to ride at a sensible speed instead of his usual breakneck pace, so sadly things got much more dull after that.
Back to the river for lunch and then we got kitted up in our rafting garb. Basically we had to sit on the raft and obey whatever commands our steerer and guide up the back shouted at us. He told us when to paddle, when to stop, when to get everyone over one side, and when to duck inside the raft and hang on for sheer life. We are currently smack bang in the middle of the dry season in Asia, so sadly the water level was pretty low so the rapids were mostly nothing to rave about, but on a few occasions we went over some pretty massive drops and got some speed, which was undeniably fun. At one stage the raft tipped on its side, and after holding on for five seconds I eventually came tumbling out. This was probably more fun than the raft, but my floating dow the rapids was cut short when somebody chucked a rescue rope at me (what a jerk). As we pulled up in the calm, shallow bit at the end of the section of river, our guide suddenly screams "EVERYBODY TO THE LEFT!!!". We scramble to oblige, all the while feeling confused. The guide from the other raft rushes over to the right of the boat and capsizes it while we are unbalanced. What a bunch of smartarses.
Back in Chiang Mai we're craving more. I read about the Flight of the Gibbon, a set of ziplines through a rainforest canopy high above the ground. Ariel is too pussy whipped to come with me. I end up doing a day of riding, and the Flight of the Gibbon the next day staying at a homestay, while Ariel hires a guide to take him mountain biking for two days straight. At the mountain biking place they have four options, with 1 being a beginner and 4 being a pro going down steep single tracks ridiculously fast. I go for option 3. We get driven up a mountain (1500m above sea level) and we ride down the whole thing to an elevation of 200m above sea level when we get to the bottom. You cannot die without riding down a steep mountain. So unbelievably exhilerating. My group was excellent - a fearless English dude looking for thrills, a Norweigan backpacker, and a German couple who work as a travelling two-person circus. The track is fairly steep and extremely rocky, and because of the total lack of uphill sections we simply fly. The speed was an incredible rush. Just the concentration required, trying to analyse the track a head of you and choose which line to take or how to tackle obstacles on the fly while the world is whizzing past you is just intense.
We left the main paths down the mountain and started on some single tracks. These are really really narrow tracks with only one way down them, and ours wove through the trees. This is where we had to start tackling drops in the path. Often there'd be a series of tree roots sticking up that we'd have to jump, followed by a foot drop, usually many in a row. Suddenly our speed has been replaced by this highly technical riding, just trying to keep balance as we ride through this stuff that clearly isn't meant to be ridden through. Some parts were so steep that the bike would rise onto the front wheel only and start to flip over, simply by riding forwards. Eventually we broke out of the confines of the single track and emerged on the main road at the bottom of the moutnain, where we finally stopped for lunch. I was absolutely knackered, so it was a godsend.
I was the only person doing Flight of the Gibbon as well, so when we got back to Chiang Mai there was a taxi waiting to take me up to the village I would be staying in. An hour or two later when I arrived, there was nobody. After looking around a bit, somebody seemed to recognise that I was both lost and a white person, so I was probably looking for someone to help me out. Sooner or later a woman introduces me to the husband and wife who will be putting me up for the night. Neither of them speak a word of English. The house is very plain, but functional, made of bamboo and with only a couple of rooms. Soon after I arrive the wife (Lada) starts cooking dinner. She invites me to the dinner table and starts bringing out the plates of food for us to eat. When she's brought out four huge plates with different dishes on each, as well as a big bowl of rice, she stops and waits. Her husband doesn't sit down, nor does she. She waves at the food in front of me. Turns out, this is just my dinner. She goes off to watch TV and her husband sits on the bench where she was cooking and shovels his (much simpler) meal down. I wasn't even especially hungry and I had the biggest meal known to man in front of me. After half an hour I'd eaten my fill and had barely made a dint in each plate. Lada collects it and looks frightfully disappointed in me. Some scraps go to her dog and the rest gets thrown out.
The English speaking woman who introduced me earlier comes to the house to talk to me, and says "Part of your stay include a massage. Would you like one?". HELL YES I WANT ONE. Mountain biking made me pretty sore. I get my hour of bliss and then, at eight thirty, everyone goes to sleep. Strangely the foam mattress on the floor is pretty comfy, and I somehow have the best night's sleep I've had in weeks (the mattress at the guesthouse is like a rock). The roosters start crowing at 4am and don't stop and even this doesn't bother me.
In the morning a guide from the Gibbon comes up, looking sheepish. He explains that the reason nobody met me when I arrived was that all the staff were out getting drunk in the village. They were going to invite me too, apparently. Oh well. I join a group of people and get harnessed up. The course itself is very impressive; wooden platforms built high up these massive trees in the rainforest. They explain the building process. The locals build these terrible bamboo ladders (literally a piece of bamboo running up the tree secured by spikes of more bamboo hammered through it into the tree) and climb up to the top to steal honeycombs. They got the locals to climb up the desired trees and secure ropes so that they could start sending up building materials and slowly but surely make all the platforms and start attatching the cables that connect them all. As for us, well we just get a pulley snapped onto the wire and then we step out over the abyss and slide over to the next platforml. It's a lot of fun. At each station we get attatched to a wire which goes around the tree and we are free to wander around the platform and admire the crazy views. Occasionally there are suspension bridges or even a rope to rapell down to platforms below, but mostly it's the ziplines. We are each given a V shaped piece of bamboo to use as brake (you slam it over the wire and pull down) as we get set up to go across the longest wire. I take my step out and go flying for over 100 metres. As I approach the platform the guide there is yelling at me to brake. I oblige, then he yells at me to stop. I'm slowing down too much since the cable is going uphill now, and I've lost momentum. A metre short of the platform I stop, and go sliding back to the middle of the cable, stranded sixty metres above the ground dangling from a wire. I start pulling myself hand over hand, commando style, to the platorm. The pulley keeps squishing my hands, which hurts immensely. eventually I get withing reach of the rope the guide is throwing to me and the rest of the group haul me to safety. I learn my lesson and never use the brakes again,and even then I barely made it to most platforms. At the final platform we get attatched to a rope and lowered 45 metres down a tree to the ground below, whcih was pretty cool. I took a video on my camera on the way down, which I'll upload if I get the chance.
That's it on the adventure front. We did a cooking course, which was fun but not really interesting to write about (suffice it to say I can now do a decent green curry, one so spicy that even the Thai woman who taught me was unable to handle). Ariel convinced me to save ten bucks by getting a bus to Bangkok instead of a train. This was, of course, a stupid idea, since I now have to sleep in an uncomfortable seat instead of a bed. So once again, screw you Ariel. Now I've just got a day and a half to kill in Bangkok and then I fly home. Bangkok is pretty grungy, so I'm not really looking forward to it.
I'll write up the final blog on the plane and when I get home I PROMISE I'll finally get around to uploading some pics and scattering them through each entry.
Time to try to sleep. Night.
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