Northern Thailand Wilderness

An incident that involved putting our camera memory card into the small plastic bag containing the leaky bottle of soap has prevented this update from containing any pictures, which is terribly unfortunate because it was by far the most scenic and interesting few days that we have had yet. Things started on the first day (because any sense of date or day of the week is lost) when we were picked up by a set of pick-ups outside our hostel along with 18 other people. We were loaded in the backs and driven 2 hours to the edge of a national park, North of Chaing Mai. Tyler and I cruised along on the tailgate at 55 mph and no one cared. There are no traffic cops here (as far as we know). We had to honk the horn to get cows off the road as we got farther from civilization.
I can sense that this is getting a bit detailed so I'm just going to hit a few highlights in bullet form. Our guide, Tarzan, looked like he was 17 and were actually 26. Tarzan and the other guides (Tiger and Jo-Jo) loved smoking opium and were always sneaking off to get high. We hiked through dense foresty areas along fairly small foot trails. Our youngest guide (Tiger) cut a vine off a 40 foot tall tree and made a rope-swing which we all swung on. There were spiders as big as my hand, on the underside of a raised house that belonged to a couple of hill-tribe men who were raising cattle in the middle of nowhere. The village where we slept had dogs, cats, chickens, cows, and pigs, and there were no fences for any of the animals. They just wandered free. We slept in a long hut that was constructed almost entirely of bamboo and leaves - no nails or screws.
The second day John and I were walking ahead of the group and walked within 2 feet of a 5 foot long green snake that our guide informed us (as we were standing on one side of it and he and the rest the group on the other, waiting for it to slither on) kills 50% of the people it bites. Later, Tarzan beat a snake to death because he said that it was very poisonous and was attracted to light and thus the few surrounding huts and villages. That evening we slept in another hut by a nice 40 foot waterfall and swam in the pool below it.
Day three started with a four hour trek, interrupted by a 30 foot rock climb to pool jump that was super sketchy in the sense that the water was shallow and there were very large rocks under parts of the climbim\ng section, that brought us to a small river where we got on some bamboo raftes lashed together with old bicycle tires. Our rafting guide was 10 years old and spoke very little english. There were a bunch of other rafts on the river and it turns out that rafting the river, or sitting along the banks taunting people as there rafts were run aground on the rocks or tipped by other rafters, was a very popular thing to do here. Our ten year old guide would sneak and smoke cigarettes between the populated areas where the adults where, and at one point smoked two at once before diving in the water to avoind getting caught. The water level was really low and so there were a bunch of rocks and bumps and ty and I frequently had to get out and man-handle 25 foot bamboo rafts while John steered with a ten foot bamboo pole. Rafting landed us at some pick-ups and we rode on top of them to an elephant camp where we rode elephants. I regret it now, because these big beautiful animals are walked in circles all day long with tourists on their back, but at the time it was quite the interesting experience. Elephants are huge. We than took a pick-up back to our hostel and immediatly caught a tuk-tuk to Pick-up Ultimate Frisbee. It was super laid back. At night we watched Arsenal lose to Chelsea with about 4 Thai's (Tiger, Tarzan, Jo-Jo and a friend of theirs), 1 American, 2 Finnish boys, and 1 Israeli in our hostel from 1100 - 2100.
Today We woke up late and John, Weldon, Ty, and Tiger (our guide) went bungy-jumping for $50 at a place about an hour by Tarzan's friend's girlfriends's car. I took Pictures. They loved it. This evening we are going to watch Manchester United play Everton in the FA cup Semis.
Tuesday we leave for Laos.
Have a Happy Pascha, Christ is Born!!!
P.S. we are sending a package home soon with shoes for B.
Cheers, Christopher