Jungle trek - day 84,85,86

After being picked up from our hostel and taken to see the tourist police (a place where they keep a copy of your passport when you go into the jungle), we were driven to a local market and then a little place in the hills where we had a nice lunch. From there we started our trek through the jungle. We walked for a good 4 hours, going up the hill through the bamboo jungle. Our group consisted of 12 people, 9 french and 3 dutch! Our guides were P (he was a famous singer in Thailand a few years ago! he was awesome! we had such good laughs with him... he kept on saying "I'm a Rambo" and swooshing around cutting bamboos with his machete!!), Noom and Nikki. There was also a stray dog that followed us all the way from the very first day. The first night we slept in a camp belonging to one of the hill tribes. Dinner was very good and we spent the evening around a campfire watching our guides do some "white magic" tricks. We all slept in one big room made of bamboo and not exactly wind or water tight... the matresses were very thin and the temperature dropped so much that even with 6 blankets we were cold! The second day we walked through the jungle again and went elephant riding for a bit. After that we split up and there were only 6 of us left. Our lunch were some very good noodles wrapped up in a banana leaf, which we ate with some bamboo chopsticks that P cut for us. We walked some more in the afternoon and saw a farm (we tried some very good pomelos) and a church. We stayed in the village of the Lahu people, another hill tribe. We saw a dead pig being prepared for a dinner feast and then headed to our own little hut. There was no electricity in the village, so we had to do everything with candlelight. Dinner was very good again. We spent the evening around some candles, listening to P sing and play some of his songs on a guitar. We slept on some very thin matresses again and had lots of blankets, except it was so incredibly cold that we didn't sleep well at all... The next morning we started walking again until we got to a little restaurant where we had a good lunch. There was a karaoke box there, so we saw P on TV! There were lots of his songs that you could sing a long to on that karaoke box! After lunch we were taken to the river by a pick-up truck and after getting changed, we got into a raft and rafted down the river. The water was very very cold, but it was good fun! After a while we switched from the normal raft to a bamboo raft... it was a fun experience! The bamboo raft is kind of submerged so you're sitting in the water and it has a tendency to sink on the left side and then the right side and back again, so you spend your time trying to balance it out! After that we were brought back to Chiang Mai by pick-up truck. We are at the Spicythai hostel now, waiting for our bus to Bangkok. It is supposed to leave at 22h and arrive around 7h tomorrow morning. We are gonna go to Soi 1 Guesthouse in Bangkok to pick up our luggage and then find a way out of Bangkok that does not involve a plane...

Weather: bloody hot during the day and freezing cold at night