chiang mai - I

after a 6h busride i took a tuk-tuk to the airport to pick alois (my friend from austria) up. aferwards we went to our rendevouz hotel and startet with sightseeing. but in chiang mai there are just a few imposant wats (tempel) and the very big and crowded nightmarket. so we decided to go on a 3 days hiking trip to see some native people (karen), swimming at some waterfalls and doing elephant riding and bamboo rafting.
we also found a very nice restaurant, probably one of the most expensive in chiang mai and spent about 700.- baht there.
on the next day our guide, charly picked us up and we drove to the mountains in the south of the town.
during a burning hot midday we startet walking for about 2h and saw the first two karen villages and we had our first bath under a waterfall.
we also stayed at the karen village overnight in a small hut without electricity and other comfortable and useless stuff.
next day, after sunrise we started for another walk to other karen villages; 3 more waterfalls gave us the needed refreshing cooling after walking in the hot and humid forrest.
finally we reached another hilltribe where we stayed over night until the next morning. the peaceful area was only disturbed by scary dogs and their serious dogfights.
after another night in our woodbeds , which caused a painful morning, we got a shaking massage while riding on elephants.
and because we got a dirty and muddy elephant-shower, we started with our bamboo-boat ride.
back in chiang mai, dirty, smelly and wet the luxuiosity of having a shower was something really great.
hiking in this area and seeing the karen people was adventureous, interessting, fun, painful, hot and sweating, chilling in the nights,... something i will remember.

now it is halftime of my traineeship in thailand and the holiday with alois gave me motivation and energy for the second part here at the university.