Chiang Mai hot...Chang Beer cold

Its been a week....what a week. The songkran festival as its know in these parts is suppose to be from the 13th till 15th...not so...the whole week is pretty much a drentching. Last thursday we started our trek into the mountains...which so far has been the highlight of the trip by far. Yes we rode elephants and rafted on bamboo and saw hill tribes but I find more and more that it has been the people that Ive met during these events that have effected me more. Our tour guides through the hill for three days and two nights were very very cool. Everyone on the trek was equally as neat. A handfull of brits, four canucks and some northern europeans....all cool, all liked to party. The guides...Tarzan, Tiger, Joe Joe, Mr L...fuckin badass. The first day they were cutting vines to swing over ravines, trying to catch and kill small jungle mamals and drinking chang beer like fish...they do quite well with our drinking games too...not to mention their fondness for opium...and now I know why. If they werent cliff jumping they were killing snakes with sticks. They all spoke a bit of english and most everything they said was hillarious or inapropriate. We played and talked about soccer alot which made me like them even more. When we rafted on saturday on the bamboo, our guide was a ten year old who had a fondness for menthol cigarettes...which he smoked two at a time. Unfortunate that this past week has little photo documentation cause there was way too much water involved...meh. Today we went to the sunday market...which was very large and we also bungie jumped. They gave me a certificate to prove so. Quite a rush...definitely not the last time I do that. 50 meters high, couple seconds of free fall. Staying a couple more days. Soccer on the tube, Clubbing tonight. Hopefully muai thai boxing match tomorrow. We may rent motorbikes....nervous to say the least. To laos on tuesday....slow boat for a couple days, then tubing for another....more excuses to drink and meet people, heavily...horray! Then fly to hanoi and tour down the coast. I could get used to this. Peae.