Rain, mud and elephant poo

I am alive. Sore and a little tired but alive. The unusual rain for this time of year persisted for 3 of the days that I was out trekking and resulted in much mud and general wetness as well as the death of my near new MP3 player.
Yes, yes I was asking for trouble bringing electronic gear to the jungles of Chiang Mai and the dumbest part of it all was that I had multiple dry bags in tow and I was only dunked for a second. However, as many a canyon newbie has come to realise, if you don't put your stuff in the dry bag before you get wet, well you can guess the result. That was a cost I wasn't quite expecting to pay. And yes, as seasoned canyoner I should know better.

Anyhow, as mentioned 3 days of mud sliding and river crossings ensued. The hill tribes were interesting in as far as seeing rural asian living but wasn't anything new to me considering I'm from Malaysia. What was fun was smoking a corn leaf rolled bark cigarette with a local sharman before getting 'blessed' on my journey. All in all very farang type experience, but at least my legs hurt by the end of it. My fitness level is of non-existant standard and it was very demoralising seeing the guides trot along wearing bits of plastic for shoes, puffing away at a cigarette the whole way. But do that trip day in day out and I guess you get used to it.

Having come out of the DRC for 3 months I've also noticed my time there has tainted my view towards the world a little. Not quite as glossy and innocent as before and there's a tint of cynicism in the way I see things. It is a shame on one hand, but I'm glad to have seen the other side of the coin. One of the 'village tours' was nothing more than a meat market with every foreigner getting mobbed by kids chanting 'Hello ten baa, hello tan baa' while waving the ubiquitous woven wrist band. Unfortunately for me this was a solo tour so running down the street with 10 kids in tow made things a little more interesting. In the end, for the ones who hung on the whole way, I just bought them all an icecream. Yes it cost '10 baa' a piece anyway but I'm a firm believer in not giving young kids money. At least they got something for themselves rather than disspearing to whoever ran the show.

Well, food is beckoning so it's off to hassle to locals for some chow. Trying to stay as authentic as possible so it's off to the food markets again.

Hopefully, a week or so of climbing is beckoning. I'll update the next adventure as it comes around.