Chai Machete Tour....

Today we took a boat ride from Chiang Rai up the Mae Kok River 🚣‍♀️. Our tour guide Chai and his dog Panda met us at the dock (Chloë and Malcolm wore a snake 🐍) and we drove to the start of our trek 🚘 . We had a lot of climbing to do. Along the way we planted trees as part of a reforestation project 🌱. Chai carried a machete 🗡 , he used it to make many different toys for the children (a bamboo pop gun, elephant grass airplanes, a banana leaf hobby horse). He also used his machete to carve spoons 🥄, bowls 🥣, cups 🥛, cooking pots, and chopsticks 🥢 for our lunch. On the menu was pork 🥓, chicken🍗, eggs🥚, soup🍲 and noodles 🍝 that were all cooked over a fire. During lunch a giant bamboo tree 🎋 fell a few metres from our lunch spot (yikes). On the trek we walked through several hill tribe villages and saw farms of pineapple 🍍 , garlic and oolong tea🍵. We hiked a really long way and then jumped in the back of a pick up truck (two bikes 🚲 , seven people 🧒👧👱‍♀️🧔👩👨🏽‍🦳👨🏾and two wet dogs 🐕🐕 ) to ride to a natural hot spring. 🛁
- Geoff and ChloëRead more