There is so much a young traveller can see and do in Chiang Mai, the gorgeous northern city, encircled by an old moat and ruins. So much that I felt a bit overwhelmed. You can do a cooking course (yeah, right), go white water rafting, bamboo rafting, visit the zillions of wats, swim in the waterfalls, trek into the hill tribes and so on.
I was feeling a bit ill when I arrived and decided to stay for only a short time so i could spend my last few days getting over the flu in the sleepy town of Pai (where I am writing this from).
So, despite my sickness, I signed up for a one day tour of the area that included waterfalls, trekking, hill tribes, bamboo rafting and elephant riding. A bit of everything. Really I just wanted to play in waterfalls but my last attempt at using public transport had made me wary.
It turned out to be a mixed day. OUr first foray was to trek an hour up a steep hill to visit the hmong hill tribe. They are refugees from Burma and speak thier own language. When we arrived we were told that we could walk around th evillage, but it felt strange.
The night before going I had read an article in the Bangkok Post that discussed some of the 
conflicting issues that come with these tribes being used like 'human zoos' and the Thai governments response to their requests to have their villages upgraded or even resetlle in other countries. It is a confusing issue and I didn't really want to visit them, but all the tours had some element of the 
hilltribes in them. The second hill tribe we visited was a much more touristy village. The moment we stepped form the van, all the cildren came running over to us holding up bangles shouting 'hello 5 baht, hello 5 baht, hello 5 baht'. It was pretty intense, you had to wade through them. Eventually I could take it no more and handed one of the children 5 baht only to be swarmed by the rest who reached fever pitch in their excitement. When I said no more, they all put on stroppy little faces. It was pretty bad. Also because the villagers receive no money from the tour group I felt bad and bought a scarf. I wouldn't recommend it.
However, we did go to a great big WATERFALL and I swam around for as long as I could. Most 
people forgot their bathers so just hungaround the edge whilst me and some young Brits had competitions over who could get closer to the waterfall. I think I won.
We also rode some elephants through the jungle and later through the river. My elephant was particularly stroppy, though not at the end when I fed him a big bunch of bananas.
Bamboo rafting is really fun. You just sit on a raft and flaot down the river past all the Thai families whop are picnicing on the river banks. Everyone splashes those who past and the guy steering the raft tries to tip everyone off. By the end I was pretty wet, but not entirely. As I was climbing to dry land the bamboo guide tackled me into the water. All the way home I sat in a big puddle of water. Good times.
