Hilltribe Trek Day 3

This was our last day trekking, but instead of hiking, we were taking a bamboo raft down the Mae Tang river.  The raft was built the previous day and after some final adjustments, and checking that it had enough bamboos for our weight, it was ready to go.

A bamboo raft is a very simple boat.  It sits just above the water, so sitting on it means getting wet.  It's also controlled by putting with two or three long bamboo sticks.  We had two rafts for our group with the backpacks tied up high above the platform.  The water is pretty shallow this time of the year, at waist level or lower most of the time.  The Mae Tang is used for river rafting later on the season (and further downstream), so we just floated down the river with the occasional Class 1 rapid. 

The scenery from the raft was amazing with beautiful trees, birds, and the occasional village or elephant camp.   We stopped in one of the village half way to get some drinks and souvenirs.  A nice place, but I got bitten by a nasty spider on the sole of my foot which was quite painful for 20 minutes or so.

 

 

 

A common encounter down the river were water buffaloes that love to get in the river and just cool down in it.  Water buffaloes come in two colors, black and a strange (human like) pink.  The buffaloes belong to people living around the river and they are let roam until they are needed for working the fields (water buffaloes in the area are only eaten after dying from natural causes).

Eventually, we followed the example of the buffaloes and jump into the water.  It was fun floating down the muddy river side by side with the raft.  In about 4 hours, we reached our destination, a nice village, reachable by dirt road, where our transportation was waiting.  After having lunch and bidding farewell to our local guides, we started our way back to Chiang Mai.  After a long, dusty trip, we were back to the city.  It was nice to have a proper shower and a change of clothes after the trekking.  After that, Lindsay and I decided to get a Thai massage.  We left the hotel and walked around for 40 minutes trying to find a place...  Eventually, we quit on it, and decided to go back to the hotel.  As we turned on the hotel street, there was a massage place...  no idea how we missed it the first time.  After a wonderful Thai massage, we headed for dinner with the group at the night market.

After some nice food and drinks, I returned to the hotel in a tuk-tuk, while most of the group went for a long night of drinking and partying.