We Comin' to America Today

It's true, the Fishers have returned to the US. We'll be spending the next couple of days in southern California with my grandparents. They're throwing us a belated wedding reception, plus we're celebrating my birthday here. But we'll have plenty of time to talk about our plans and endeavors back in our country of origin (though they may not be quite as exciting)--we still have one last Thai adventure to cover.

For our last few days in Thailand, we traveled north to the city of Chiang Mai. We took a sleeper train there, which helped the 13 hour trip go by very quickly.

We spent our first two days there on a treck through the jungle. First, we rode around on an elephant for about an hour, feeding it and enjoying the scenery. Boy do they eat a lot.

Once we finished with the elephants, we began our hike.

It was about a 3 hour hike through the jungle up into the "mountains" as I call them.  The first 20 minutes of the hike were along the road, and this was quite deceiving--the last hour or so was straight up the side of the mountain on what can only be described as slippery mud. However, the view when we got to the top was amazing. 

We stayed in a hill tribe village with the 10 other people in our group. They fed us and we all slept in a room covered in mosquito nets.

The next day, we hiked back down the hill/mountain, including a stop to swim at a waterfall.

We ended the trip by white water and bamboo rafting (during the white water rafting I became reminiscint of the aches of paddling a kayak). Needless to say, we were relieved to get back to a clean bed and a shower. We spent the evening talking with a couple of Buddhist monks. We also found a diner that served the most amazing hamburgers and cheese fries.

The next day, we woke up early to do Flight of the Gibbons. This is supposed to be the most amazing thing to do in Thailand, and it lived up to its reputation.  The best way to describe it is as a ziplining tour through the jungle.

We were outfitted with equipment and went from tree top to tree top ziplining and bungee jumping. Our only complaint was that it wasn't long enough.

So now after spending 36 of 48 hours on either a plane or a train, we are back in the United States and happy to be here. We had a wonderful time in Thailand, but there's nothing like being able to converse with people in English or order a Domino's pizza delivered right to your door at midnight.