my first friend and a near death experience

for dinner last night, i found a food stall without any english signs. what would you like? what do you have? noodles. okay. i'll have that. chicken or pork? chicken. we don't have chicken. actually, i really wanted pork anyway. isn't thailand grand?


today i went on one of those adventure treks where they load everyone into a van and then head into the jungle. elephant riding and mountain biking in the morning, then white water river rafting in the afternoon. they promised us the best rafting in all of southeast asia! i met an australian girl named liz who had been traveling through thailand for almost a month. she's a nurse in perth and spent time with her sister on the islands before heading up to chiang mai by herself.


liz and i decided to share an elephant and we had a great time bouncing around on top while it refused to follow any of the directions of the guide. it actually used its ear to pull my flip flop off my foot. we gave it bananas and all was well. after about an hour, we drove onward to the base of our mountain biking adventure.


i had imagined that they would drive us to the top of some hill and we would zoom down, splashing through rivers and barely seeing the jungle around us. there was a bit of splashing, i guess, and i was proclaimed the muddiest by the end. but that bike trip was not a nice coast down a mountain. we had to ride up to the top! liz and i huffed and puffed along while this chipper couple from denver zoomed ahead and landed with breath still in their chests. at one point, i heard a magnificent pop and realized that i had a flat tire, further delaying our arrival. i really thought i wasn't going to make it, but after nearly two hours, we finally reached rafting base camp.


four to a boat. liz and i shared one with louie, a swiss marine, and a very friendly older german man that liz said was probably here for the women. our guide was definitely the most fun and the least safe. we spent a fair bit of time learning all of the commands and practicing on land before we got on the water. the ride down the river was very exciting with a few class four rapids. i fell out of the raft at one point and our guide pulled me in right at the last moment...


there were four boats in all from two different tours (the others had done atvs in the morning), and we had races and splashing wars and it was all great fun, except for this poor israeli girl who looked as if she were ready to murder someone and hid in the bottom of the boat the entire time. we played helicopter, which is basically a game where the boat flips over the the guides all laugh at us. the good parts were caught on video, though! i bought a copy just for the footage of my grand tumble.


by then end, we were all exhausted but it was definitely the most exciting (and expensive) day yet. liz was staying at the sk with me, so we headed back to change then wandered around town to the night bazaar. if i weren't going to be here for three more months, i would have bought the entire place. they had lights and wall hangings and boxes and notebooks and skirts and paintings and anything one would want except for an american to thai electrical adapter. after a few hours wandering we got ourselves thai massages, but they weren't very good so we got foot massages to make up for it. i tried this really weird water chestnut coconut thing and liz just stuck to tea, the smartie. at least i got to try something new?


it started absolutely spitting down. my first rain! so we ended up tuk-tuking back to our guesthouse. it was also my latest night. liz made me stay out until nearly 11!


the next morning, i got up early to go visit wat doi suthep, a half hour drive outside of the city on the top of a mountain. the sawngthaew for the journey wait until they fill up before they leave, and i guess no one else had the idea of going in the early morning light. i ended up waiting around for nearly an hour before my driver agreed to go with three. while i was waiting, though, i got these delicious little things from a street cart. i still have no idea what was in them. and fresh pineapple! the fruit in this country is outstanding.


i met an english fellow named jim who had quit his job in the mobile phone business to travel the world. he's been gone for nine months and still has six to go! south america, the us, australia, now southeast asia. it turned out that he was on the same flight out to laos that afternoon, so we hung out at the wat and arranged to meet again later at the airport.


the wat was beautiful. it's quite a trek up the mountain, though. the driver dropped us off at the bottom of more than 300 stairs. the view from the top would have been spectacular were it not for the mist that completely enveloped the mountain. it was still breathtaking, though.


the wat is considered one of the most sacred temples in the north of thailand. many years ago, the king put a buddha relic on the back of a white elephant and sent it wandering around the countryside. it found its way to the mountain top and promptly died, and they kept the relic exactly where it landed and built the temple around it. cool story.


jim is into photography as well, and we spent about an hour taking pictures around the grounds. then it was back to town to get ready for the plane ride and a brand new country!