Thailand: Jungle loud but tranquil

The jungle of Chiang Mai gives visitors an alternative experience of Thailand. Photo / Thinkstock

Thailand hums with sound, but in its forests the noise soothes, writes Christina Rexrode.

Deciding to escape the chaotic, crowded streets of Bangkok, I veered north instead toward an ancient city called Chiang Mai because I'd heard there would be waterfalls and elephants in the nearby countryside, and a chance to at least get a little closer to another side of Thailand.

This manageable city has leafy parks, inviting art galleries and little children wandering around in school uniform. It is hardly a place, though, where time has stopped. Motorbikes zoom around toting three people apiece, some texting, some clutching kittens, some reading books. The place is dotted with 7-Elevens, the sidewalks crammed both with backpackers and businesses meant to cater to them. Rent a bike from a stand on one side of the street. Wash your clothes at a laundromat on the other.

There is also an abundance of trekking companies in Chiang Mai, all offering what seem like similar packages, so we picked one, Buddy Tours, that was cheap, with an easy-to-navigate website, and signed up for a two-day, one-night jungle hike.

The tour company picked us up in a van the next morning, and we met our companions: three Canadians celebrating their recent college graduation and a retired couple from Belgium. Eventually, our driver deposited us in the bend of a hilly road somewhere in the Mae Tang Valley, and we set out with our Thai guide.

The tropical jungle we hiked through was loud with a shrieking cacophony of insects, but it was tranquil all the same. We played in waterfalls, ate fried rice packaged up in banana leaves, packed away our watches because there was no need for them. Our guide knew the woods like someone who had been in them his whole life, picking herbs, spotting a stick bug that was all but invisible to me, trying to coax out a tarantula out of its hole.

That evening we stayed in a one-room cabin in a hill-tribe village, a place with a tiny school and maybe a few dozen houses and little else. Children wearing shorts and T-shirts chased each other around their yards, water buffalo meandered on the single street and, in the evening, after our guide cooked dinner, we built a fire and some of the villagers stopped by to see us - some to sell hand-made bracelets or bottled water and beer, but some just to see the farang - the Thai word for foreigner.

The bathroom was an outhouse and bed was a blanket on a wooden floor. The next morning, our guide cooked eggs, and we hiked again and cooled off in more waterfalls. A pickup truck took us to the Huay Poeng Elephant Camp, where we rode elephants and bought them bananas, and then to a river where guides rowed us on bamboo rafts along a lazy stream.

Occasionally, you feel like you're in the middle of nowhere, then you happen upon a roadside stand selling popsicles and a house with a satellite TV dish.

I was glad I'd decided to ditch the disorder of the city for the playground of the jungle.

CHECKLIST

Getting there: Thai Airways flies daily from Auckland to Bangkok. From here you can catch a regional airline to Chiang Mai or travel by train.

- AAP