Train Rides and Treks....Same Same, but Different

We took a train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai about a week ago. What a blast. I think I love trains. Why don't we have them in Canada? Oh, I know we do, but they just aren't commonly used for transportation. Our train left Bangkok at around 2:30 in the afternoon and arrived in Chiang Mai at 6 the next morning. We had the cutest little bunks that folded out/down and they made up our beds with sheets and pillows. We had curtains across the bunks for some privacy. There were probably as many tourists on the train as locals, but definitely a fun variety of people to watch. TThe train looked like it was made in the 1950's but it was clean and everything worked. Vendors walked up and down the aisles selling pop and stir fries and snacks and cut up fruit. Oh, and the toilet. Try peeing on a raised squatty potty in a rocking train. Quite the challenge, and obviously other people had issues as well. By the morning, it didn't smell so nice!

By the way, the soup in the top picture was the worst food I've had in this country yet. The majority of it is amazing, but this was greasy and gnurply and tasteless.

So we met a fellow traveler from the U.S. who has been in the Philippines for the last 3 years and is now traveling around, so we have joined up with him for a while and did a trek together a few days ago. Fun times, with 9 of us on the trek and 2 guides. 3 Americans, us 2 Canadians, a Dutch couple and a French couple. It was a great group and we all got along well as we strapped our backpacks on and climbed through bamboo forest and through cool streams to our first night in a small village in the hills north of Chiang Mai. Our guides, "Jungle Joe" and "City John" were definitely a unique pair and we enjoyed the food they cooked for us and their stories about growing up in the village and what life is like there. Joe's favourite lines were "Oh my Buddha!" and "same same.....but different" after which he would laugh hysterically. We camped by a waterfall our first night and and the end of our trek had an elephant ride.Touristy, but fun.

Jungle Joe posing on a break.

                                                                                      

    One of the villagers with his son (?) I think he was reading him Thai comics.

The waterfall we camped beside. It was SOOOO cold at night - hardly slept at all!

Local village lady weaving. They make the most beautiful fabric!

Ok, sideways...but if you look closely, you can see the frogs that we caught, roasted and ate...mmmm.

Julie and Dave in front of our little sleeping hut.

Fellow trekkers on our elephant ride. We noticed the small size of these elephants' ears vs. the African elephants we saw in December.

We had dinner out with our trekking group after the trek. This little Thai girl was the daughter of the one lady working that night and was helping her mom out. She was quite the character and wouldn't give us our meals until we said the magic words, which she determined on a whim. It seemed it was usually "thank you" in our native language, while we kept trying to say "koh pun kah" to her, which is "thank you" in Thai. 

Until next time...