The River Kwai, Pai, and trekking in Chiang Mai

Both of us were pretty exhausted by the end of the trip, relaxing on one of the bamboo rafts that we pushed down the river with long bamboo poles.
Rafting down the river on the final day. The life-jackets and helmets were a little excessive, considering the river was so low that we could barely fit the raft between the river rocks. We livened things up by racing the boat ahead of us and getting in a pretty massive water fight.
The children of the village came out to sing us, as well as the other 10 tour groups, some songs. We were hoping to get to learn a little bit about the culture of the people, but the only real interactions that we had were with some women trying to sell handicrafts and massages. When we went on a walk through the very small town we did see people preparing a huge pig for slaughter, which is not a sight we see everyday.
The spectacular view of sunset from the Lahu village where we spent the first night. Our bamboo hut was perched on the top of a mountain where we could see the mountains stretching off in every direction.
Our trekking companions NW of Chiang Mai. We did a three day trek up into the mountains. It included riding elephants (yay!), visiting some hill tribe villages, and rafting. We also got to meet a bunch of cool Europeans our parents age. We stayed up late around the fire and played drinking games with them the first night. Jonas, the guy in the colorful hat, could never figure out the rules, which is always good for a laugh.
Amanda's dreams come true as she finally gets to ride an elephant. It's harder to stay balanced on their heads than the mahuts (the Thai elephant trainers) make it look. It was a hot day and the elephants would periodically blow water and or snot out of their trunks all over us. The Swedish guy we were with got some in his mouth.
One night after a few beers we decided to float a banana leaf that we had gotten with some take away food that looked like a boat. We ceremoniously lighted a candle and stuck it in the middle of the boat. We went down to the riverbank and Colin shoved it off, getting a bit muddy in the process and almost loosing his flip flop. Amanda was pretty frightened when she saw the Monster of the Black Lagoon follow her back to the bungalow.
bAmanda tries to hide from the blazing sun by Pai Canyon outside of town. It's the wintertime here now, so all of the deciduous trees have dropped their leaves and the landscape looked like a cowboy on a skinny horse should have trotted past us as we walked around.
Amanda on a hike we did one day when we rented a motorbike. We hopped from rock to rock across a small river about one billion times and eventually had to give up before we reached the waterfall that was supposedly up there. We did find some really big leaves though.
The guesthouse we stayed in at Pai, a "hippie" village to the NE of Chiang Mai. Now there are a bunch of tourists dressed up in their finest flowing duds drinking shots of wheatgrass. We got to our bungalow by crossing a rickety bamboo bridge from town.
One of the hundreds of Buddha statues at Sukothai, this one with gold-leaf on his fingernails. The Golden Age of Thai sculpture occurred during the Sukothai Period, so we got to see many beautiful statues of the Buddha.
Three Khmer style Praangs in Sukothai, another former capital of the Thai Kingdom. They were originally built by the Hindu Kmers for Bhrama, Shiva, and Vishnu, but like everything else in Thailand, are now filled with Buddhas. We rented bikes and rode around the archeological park in the heat of the day like usual.
When we were in Lopburi we stumbled upon a big festival celebrating the times of King Narai (1600s). There was tons of good food, music, parades, and lights strung up on the old palace and in the trees. People were dressed up in period appropriate attire and we also saw some of the finest examples of puffy pants to date.
In Lopburi, another town with ruins...and tons of monkeys! Loads of tourists come here mainly so the monkeys can jump on their heads. We of course wisely use our hard earned knowledge from being in Asia for six months and stay away from the filthy buggers and just imitate them.
All around SE Asia people wrap spiritually significant trees with ribbons. There were a lot of them at Erawan.
One of the seven tiers of Erawan Falls near Kanchanaburi. We spent the day hiking to them all and swimming at the topmost one, which is supposed to look like a three-headed elephant. We couldn't quite see it... At one of them there was a huge rock that the water had carved a slide into. We saw an old European man sliding down it, so of course we had to try it out too.
The infamous Bridge over the River Kwai in Kanchanaburi, West of Bangkok. If you do't know the story, the Japanese forced British and Australian POWs (as well as many many more Burmese, Malay, and South Indian forced laborers) to build this railway in order to get supplies to their troops. Many of them died from starvation and disease in the process. It's still in use today as a railway bridge, so when you're walking across it you have to jump onto these platforms spaced every 10 meters to get out of the way if a train comes by.
Chinese New Year, Bangkok. Chinese New Year and Valentines Day happened to fall on the same day this year. We chose to celebrate Chinese New Year thinking that there should be a pretty big blow out in Bangkok. The main street in China Town was closed to cars and the streets were flooded with people and vendors. We wandered around the street waiting for something to happen as there were rumors of a parade. Around 3 the streets sectioned off and the road cleared and we waited in the front row for hours, and hours, and hours. By 7PM we were sandwiched between people shoving and pushing, now in the back row and were finally pushed out of the crowd and onto the street. We called it a day and headed back to Ed's place for a romantic dinner of noodle soup and 7-Eleven beer drank out of a tin cup.