So Chiang Mai is well known for its outdoor adventures. Trekking, elephant riding, ziplining, etc. are the things to do here. I signed up for a cooking class/trek combo for 1450 THB, which is about $45. Not a bad deal for two full day activities including transportation. The cooking class was a hit, but the trekking adventure wasn't.
It wasn't totally bad, just not as awesome as it sounded. Basically, we rode around in the back of a pickup all day and got dropped off in a "hill tribe," elephant "trek," waterfall trek, and whitewater "rafting." All of those things are normally cool, but they are less cool when you just get dropped off and simply told "OK, now you ride the elephants," or "OK, now you do the trek."
The visit to the hill tribe basically consisted of a 15 minute stop while some village people tried to sell us handmade bracelets or various other pieces of junk.
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| hill tribe people selling us stuff |
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| hill town |
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| me on an elephant! |
The elephant trek was substantially long (about 40 minutes). The elephants wandered on a trail . You could buy bananas to feed to the elephants during the trek. For some reason, my elephant driver (handler?) took all of my bananas (two bunches) and gave them to the elephant all at once! I didn't even get to feed it!
The waterfall trek was actually pretty cool. We hiked through the jungle for about 40 minutes, and got to go swimming at the end of it. It was a much needed swim, considering the heat!
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| waterfall at the end of our trek |
"Rafting" was more like floating in a shallow muddy river. I think we went down exactly one thing that you could call a rapid.
Overall, it was good to get out and get some sun, and see part of the countryside that I wouldn't have seen otherwise. However, my review of Chiangmaitic tours on tripadvisor will not be good! I'm just glad that I got a good deal on everything so I don't feel like I wasted a bunch of money!
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