2 days/1 night - group adventure - day 2.

Everything was great, until the middle of the night...

I was woken up by the cold around 4AM, the kind I felt in Serbia during the coldest winter months, at least that's how it felt. Although the temperature was not below 0 degrees, it was around 10, which is the lowest since I've been here in Thailand. I was sleeping in shorts and a t-shirt, and I only had one thin blanket that we were given, so it was almost impossible to retain heat. On the uncomfortable mattress placed directly on the floor, I was turning from one side to the other, unable to fall into a deep sleep.

Around 7AM, I finally got up and went outside to catch the first rays of the sun. It was cold, but now that I had survived all this, it was incredible to be in such a place, on the mountain, with all the wild nature. Besides me, there was one guy and the guide outside... I took a bag of chips and a juice from a small icebox in the camp, and that was my first 'meal' of the day (everything we 'bought' we had to write down on a cardboard sheet next to our name and pay at the end of our stay in this camp).

By 10AM, everyone had slowly gotten up, and breakfast was served: toast, eggs, jam, butter, and watermelon. After breakfast, we packed up and started hiking towards the other adventures... Here I was a bit disappointed because I had to leave my original group since they had already visited certain places that I hadn't, so I joined another group. Ron gave me a small bamboo cup as a parting gift, which he made and shaped while we were hiking, and he engraved a mountain and an elephant on it as a souvenir of this tour <3 (he made two, the other he gave to a 4-year-old kid who was with us).

After a bit more hiking, we reached a paved road where a songthaew was waiting for us, and somehow we all squeezed inside and headed to bamboo rafting! Unfortunately, I completely forgot to bring my action camera to capture some moments, but maybe it's better because it was a lot of fun and I didn't have to focus on filming! We rode on rafts made of thick bamboo trunks along the river and rapids, around rocks, and through the forest. I'll leave a link to someone's short YouTube clip that somewhat shows what it looked like.

After rafting, we took the songthaew again and headed to a restaurant to have lunch with pad thai and more fruit. Both groups briefly reunited there, and some new ones arrived, all for lunch.

After lunch, we headed to the elephant sanctuary. A bit of songthaew, a bit of walking, and we reached the place where the elephants roamed freely, and where we fed and bathed them. They had a real little oasis for themselves, with plenty of water and food brought by the people working there (some even voluntarily). First, we had a short general briefing about Asian elephants (which are different from those in Africa), and soon after, we fed them, took pictures, and then bathed them. This sanctuary is ethical, meaning the elephants are neither tied up nor can anyone harm them in any way, such as riding, which was a practice throughout history. We spent about an hour at this place, and then headed back to Chiang Mai, all tired but full of beautiful impressions and eternal memories...