So
Joanna and I decided to take the advice of the Brits and do a two day trek through the jungle. I can tell you now that it was amazing, but I want to go into more depth about it here.
It's 9:18 pm and Jo just checked her email and I wantd to write the post so she's just gone to go read for a bit. Our journey started at 9 o'clock yesterday morning, and we hadn't slept a whole lot the night before as you can tell from the post below. So we were tired, but ready so we crammed some stuff into the ruck sacs the hostel gave us and crammed in with eight other people into a sung tao(7 of which were British, one of which was Canadian) with our guide. The first thing we thought was that what the hell is with all these Brits? we sound british enough after the last three!. The drive should've only taken a couple of hours but we were taken to a waterfall to look at. The waterfall was huge, and beautiful of course, like most things over here(except for the sewage lines that run under the sidewalk, gross). But anyway, we walked the path up to the falls with Kyle, our new Canadian friend from Toronto. We took some pictures and I climbed down some rocks to be cooled by the mist. Joanna and Kyle followed, and soon Jo got adventurous and waded through the foot deep stream that started the river, and over to the other side. then Kyle and I followed and we got soaked by all the mist we were wading through. The mist was sooo nice though because its so damn hot here all the time. Before we knew it we had started a trend and soon everyone and their mom was doing it. We stopped or lunch at a little outside restaurant and were given a lot of fried rice with vegitables and some corriander soup. The rice was delicious but I'm not a big fan of corriander so Jo(who loves it) ate mine. I'm getting moe used to eating rice and noodle dishes for breakfast, but it is a bit of a change from the west's sugary breakfasts.

So after the falls we got back in the sung tao and headed for our starting point in a national park an hour away. When we got there we were given lifejackets to tie to our packs for the bamboo rafting we would be doing the following day. Some of us asked if the trekking would be very difficult because "I'm fairly unfit" said one of the Brits. I agreed, I'm hella unfit. Our guide, whose name is Doh, responded with a saying that he would use for the rest of the tour when asked about the difficulty or the duration of the trek. "Not hard, up and down." Up is freaking right. Within about twenty minutes of hiking we started walking straight up the mountainside, no cutting corners, just up. That portion lasted about 25 minutes, and we really needed a rest at the top. Not hard my ass. In his defence, the rest of the hiking wasn't as "lets walk in a straight line up a mountain" as much as the first bit, and the views from those mountains were Freaking unbeleivable. Nononono, more like unreal. There were so many different kinds of trees and the hills were totally covered, not patchy bits or anything. The brush was thick and the downhil was downhill, but it all had this kind of sureal look to it because I really realized where I was, Thailand. Up until this trek most of what I had seen of thailand was in the cities and temples, and course it's very easy to see where you are but there is something about seeing large open space that are completely alien way more real. We stopped for some water at one of the hill tribes and our guide told us that the hill tribes have their own language and that most houses are raised off of the ground because of the slants of the hills. He also showed us a two note flute he has from his village made from an old cow horn. It was pretty cool to see. When we left I asked him where we were going to next. He just pointed vaguely at the huge hill infront of us. Of course we were going up that huge hill, "up and down" just like he said. at the top of another hill we stopped for a drink of water and I sat down on a log. When I put my head down I saw something red between my toes, and when I pulled my toes apart I saw a little leech had sucked onto the skin between my toes! gross. I flicked it(shrieked and flailed my leg) and it fell onto the ground infront of me. Doh sat down beside me and told me not to worry about the bite, then he picked up the leech with a leaf and then set the leaf of fire, all while everyone else huddled around to watch. It was bizarre, I didn't even feel it it bite me and there was a lot of blood for that tiny thing.

A couple of hours later as we approched the village we were to sleep in, Doh dissappeared mumbling something about getting cups. He re-appeared with a long branch of large bamboo and started to cut it into pieces and he started making everyone a bamboo cup for our time in the village. It was really cool and Jo and I both still have ours. It's amazing what kinds of things Thais use bamboo for. When we got to the village we were shown the house we were all sleeping in, with a toilet out side and a fireplace with logs around it next to the toilet. Showering was another adventure because there they have a little hut with a basin and a bucket to dunk yourself with. The water was cold but refreshing, and we all smelled terrible(our guide told us we had to shower or no dinner). we were given curry with chicken on rice with fried beans and spices for dinner and it was excellent. Everyone slept in one big room in double beds/bed shaped blankets over bamboo. We all had mosquito nets but we didn't really need them, we were also exausted and were in bed by 9 o'clock. Jo and I thought we would have great sleeps, wrong...ish. Unlike the rest of the world, the roosters in Thailand Cockle doodle doo whenever they fell like it, not just at sunrise, all the time. By morning Jo and I wanted to murder very last one. but it wasn't all bad, I'm not really a light sleeper so they only woke me up around 4 then 5 then 6 and then 7 and eventually I just stayed up. Freaking roosters. Our guide wokeus up at 8 o'clock ad we ate some very nice scrambled eggs with onion and tomatoes and toast and pinaple jam.

*Sidenote, Jo and I have had pinaple almost everyday we've been here and it tastes amazing. Also Jo could eat all the fruit in the world if it were infront of her. I had no idea.

So After breakfast we climbed another big ass hill, right away, but this time it was a lot more refreshing and we both really liked it. After awhile we started going down the huge hill and it was really really steep. I was behind a bunch of slow girls(no offence) who were being a little too cautious so I jumped ahead of them to the front of the group with Kyle and our guide. Our guide showed us that if you move faster downhill its actually easier on your legs(well this guide speak any english and he started to go faster so we did too), soon we were pretty much running downhill and it was a blast. At the bottom of the hill was the village where the elephants are kept. Then we saw them, and it was really incredibly unbeleivably cool to actually see let alone ride on them. Elephants. We walked onto a higher platform and were shown how to step on the elephants head to get on the seat. It did feel a little bit inhumane, but the elephant didn't even seem to notice!. Joanna and I were like giddy little school girls, giggling and repeat the phrase " o my god I can't beleive we're actually doing this, elephants! hehehehe". The elephant we were on was part of a little family of elephants in this group. There was a little elephant who followed its mum the whole way!. We were taken on an hour long ride down the river on them. It was so cool, they would just march right into the water and not be pulled by the current or anything. And the baby would submerge itself and swim around, and man was it cute. The hair on the elephants was way more corse than we both expected and the skin was really cool to touch aswell. After the elephants we got to another village and put our life jackets on for the rafting part of the day. The rats were made up of very long pieces of large bamboo tied together, with a cross sticking up at one end to hold our back packs. Kyle and I were told to stand at the back of one of the two that we used, and were given long pieces of bamboo to help steer with. The girls were to stand in the middle, and none of them were given bamboo. Apparrently that's a nono. Needless to say the girls were a bit annoyed but they gave in. we started down stream with a thai boy in the front steering and Kyle and I to steer the back end. It was a lot harder than I expected it to be. The current is strong and pushing is hard aswell. We had only been rafting about thirty minutes when we pulled over to the side of the river and the girls were told to get off and walk for the next bit, the boys however were needed for our brute strength to navigate some through some big rocks. If that isn't blatant sexism I don't know what is. But I didn't care though right? I was still on the boat. The girls put up a good fight but the guides explained that they need to do it on every trek. The girls agreed and we headed through the rocks. The rocks weren't particularily difficult to go around, just big. The rest of the river was lots of fun and Kyle, Joanna and got to jump in at one point to have a swim. The day ended with phad thai for lunch and and very bumpy ride home. I know that Joanna and I both are really glad we went on the trek and experienced a lot of incredible things in 48 hours. I'm tired and I don't have the camera with me so I'll post some pictures soon.
This post took me a longer time than I expected but I'm glad I got it all down.

If you managed to read all of this congrajulations, if you skipped to the bottom you missed out, so stop being so lazy and read through it.