Day 5 1/5/14 Jungle Adventure

Today was my favorite day by far. We made reservations for a white water rafting trip through the jungle. Our tour guide picked us up from our hotel  at 11:15. We were the last to be picked up in our group of 12. In the car I sat next to a girl about my age. Her and her brother moved from the US in October to teach English in Thailand. I spent most of the ride asking her questions about the school system, her experience, and any advice she had. Talking to her was really helpful. The other people in the group were also interesting. There was a guy from Australia, one from Israel, another from England, and a family of four from Australia as well. The family was the most entertaining because they had a teen age girl and two young boys who kept bickering and saying witty comments in a cute Australian accent. The car ride to the jungle only took about 45 minutes and was absolutely beautiful.The drive into the Jungle was stunning.There were so many different types of tress and plants.It was picturesque. Among the canopy's of the tree you could see the roof tops of  little village huts lining the mountain side and elephants bathing in their camps.After a bumpy ride through the jungle we arrived to a large bamboo covered shack where we sat at picnic tables and were served lunch. For lunch were served a plate of sweet red rice, a fried egg, a small hot dog, and a piece of overly fried chicken, none of which was very good. On the other hand the conversations around the table were great. One of my favorite things about meeting other travelers is asking questions about where they are from and where they have traveled. Some of the travelers had been to places like Nepal, Dominican Republic,Israel and Tanzania. Listening to everyone's stories made my sense of wanderlust grow even more. After lunch we rode a sangtao for about 30 minutes up the mountain and further through the jungle, until we arrived at another bamboo hut equipped with rafts, life jackets, and helmets.Here we divided into four different rafts, each raft with four people and an instructor. In our raft we had two guys who were from New York.They were friendly and shared stories of their travel experience through Thailand and South East Asia. The rafting trip lasted two hours and was a total blast. We went through some serious rapids and got stuck on boulders in the river.We got completely soaked. This was also our first excursion where we used the gopro which we caught some great footage on. Along the ride we saw small indigenous tribes living along the banks of the river. The ride itself was pretty funny. Our instructor who was a small Thai man with a thick accent would yell commands at us like "go to work", "get down", "left", or "right". At times it was hard to understand what he was saying over the roar of the rapids and his heavy accent. He would tell us  to "go to work", which meant paddle, and we would hear "get down", so we would all get on our knees in the raft and stop paddling. Our guide would then start yelling at us. It was pretty fun, this happened many times, which made our trip even more entertaining. At the end of our rafting trip we took a van ride deeper through the jungle to a small village. The villagers were immigrants from China who came to Thailand to create an opium farm. After recent government intervention the opium farm was shut down and turned into a regular farm.Visiting the village was really neat. There were children playing soccer, women weaving, and men gardening. We didnt get a chance to interact much with anyone from the village but we were able to get a tour of their living quarters. Their houses were primitive and their life style was simple but they still had a few luxury items like a satellite dish. I also noticed one man listening to his ipod as he gardened and another man looking at an iphone. It was kind of a strange sight and not something that I expected. Before leaving the village their was an old woman selling jewelry and I decided to buy a silver elephant bracelet from her as a fun memo of our visit. After the village tour we made our way back to the van and headed back to Chiang Mai. Back in the city Ryan and I did our usual walk to the night market to get dinner. We didn't have much energy to do anything else, so after dinner we went back to our hotel to relax and end our fun filled day.