Northern Thailand: 3 days with Tom

Tom, our private tourist guide for the next three days, he's very precise and exactly at 9 in front of our hotel. 30 years old, smart appearance, cheeky just to the right point, and a really nice companion. In spite of appearances he spent the first few hours only talking like a kid: about women and money, to then finally relax and fall silent.

The day will see as first plan an insipid idea to go rafting, which is really hard to call so as I would say the level of difficulty is up to 1 out of 10. Still it's enough to make my bottom.

Second stage is a 30-minute long elephant walk, throughout a river and a little wood. The bad luck gave us the hungriest mammal amongst all and we ran out of the sugar cane they gave us to feed the animal during the walk in less than 5 minutes. Our tiredness due to to the effort made to keep tight on the pachyderm, finally pays off with the view of the elephant pups.

The advantage of having a private guide is that we can stop wherever, whenever and as long as we want. In fact we often ask Tom to stop on our way, to get off and see the farmers into the rice fields, the somewhere lost Monk village, a school, a little local emporium, a nice waterfall in the middle of the jungle to enjoy some fresh bathing.

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The super dangerous rafting

2011 © Giovanna Puccia. All rights reserved

2011 © Giovanna Puccia. All rights reserved

Ask us if we are happy?!?

Little village in the north.

Lunch break in a local restaurant, those little bananas were great.

We leave again on our way to Doi Inanthon Nationalpark stopping by at Wat Doi Khong Moo. Unfortunately it's too late and we can't enter it, bad luck we'll try again tomorrow.

We end our day, watching a football game, particularly appreciated by the local folks. Sebastiano would like to take part to a game at least and the coach deceives him that this might be possible later on, but this time actually will never come!

Such a surprise to see the coach working as a chef at the barbecue Tom had organized for us. Another big surprise was to realize that the same coach-chef also covers many others positions within the community, one of which being a professor.

Tom and the coach-chef-professor prepare a picnic-like Thai dinner for us, using a never seen before device: it's a pot-pan with a whole in the middle where the brazier has to be placed and on the sides you have to put some water where you'll cook spaghetti and vegetables.....Anyways you can take a better look at that in the picture and try to understand what I mean because I have no idea about I might call it in Italian.

Warming-up to NOT take to the field

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We admire the terraces illuminated by the artificial lights to make the plants (flowers, vegetables and so on grow faster). We ask if this is or not a waste of energy but Tom straightaway assures us that the energy comes from the several waterfalls around us. We keep chatting with Tom for long before going back to our well-equipped tents. 

During the night it seemed like the biggest thunderstorm had to come but, instead, it was only a strong wind that from time to time seemed to be close to blow our tent away.

Keep reading... Keep reading.... My travel story continues in the next post!