Tuesday night we went to see Muay Thai boxing. This was also incredible. the women were my favorite. Tara and I tried our hand at it, but I think both of us are too smiley for boxing. Then wednesday we set out for a two day trek in the mountains. we jumped on the "van" which is a big glorified (not so much) taxi, where you sit sideways, and in our case, with 13 people on about 5 feet of wood. Thank goodness for motion sickness pills! We stopped at a karen longneck village, which was sadly set up for tourists to buy their local artifacts. I knew this, but I bought some anyway, because apparently the government has put the karen there and based on one translation, they may or may not be permitted to leave. We also stopped a local market, where, yes mom, I ate this grasshopper (see below). It wasn't so bad. not so great either. I won the respect of all these spanish guys though (there were 5 on the trip, and they paid a good amount of attention to tara and I while we struggled up the mountain). The rest of the trip went like this: we hiked for 3 hours up a VERY steep hill. I lost about 5 pounds that day. we stayed on top of a mountain, listened to a thai guy sing a romanian song taught to him by an australian, ate amazing homemade food, got massages by the locals (amazing), woke up, hiked down the mountain for 3 hours, whitewater rafted down the river, sat on a bamboo raft for a while, ate more homemade pad thai, then pilled back into the van for our long and sleepy ride back to chiang mai.
Back in Chiang mai, tara went off to an elephant sanctuary, while I pampered myself with a massage from teh women at the chiang mai women's prison ($5.50 of the best money I've ever spent). Saturday we were VERY sad to leave, but tara had amoebic dysentary by then and I was anxious for some beach relaxation time. I'm now in ko samui, after riding on teh smallest plane of my life, and loving the sun and the absolute power to sleep as long as I want!
