Greetings From Chiang Mai... Part 2

I can't show you the pictures, but I'm sure you get the point...

"So something crazy happened during our one-day trekking excursion inthe jungle an hour and a half outside Chiang Mai.

Much like we have tubing and kayaking down the rivers in the Great
White North, the Thai people build long bamboo rafts to race (quite
dangerously) down the river. Our "rafter", or whatever the f-ck you call him, was a total joker. Crashing us into rocks on purpose,
making us lose our balance, splashing us with his big-ass pole, etc.
Fun and games, right? Well we bashed up our raft so bad that
eventually my leg fell through it and in trying to free myself from
the death-trap essentially destroyed the craft making it unseaworthy.

"Major lepair", he says to us as we all pull our three rafts to the
banks. About two minutes after we disembark, it begins to rain...
coldly. Different from the warm rain I've experienced thus far. Then
hail. Our guides begin to laugh and are slightly amazed. Then it
became... uh, not-so-funny... as hailstones the size of golfballs
begin to bombard us. Luckily we had already disembarked. A group of us gathered close to the rocks and used a couple of the girls' sarongs as a shelter to protect us from these massive ice cubes dropping on us by the hundreds. Enough to keep the stones from bruising or concussing you but not enough to shield you from receiving the odd whack in the head from a large one. There were a few minor injuries but, luckily, no one was seriously hurt. Unfortunately, we weren't permitted to bring our cameras on the raft so no one was able to capture the moment. The hail lasted a total of about 6 minutes. However, two hours later, after our lunch, while driving out of the village, it happened again. This time we were able to snap a few photos.

The hailstones you see in my hand were average size for the second downpour (it melted quickly so these ones were a bit smaller than when I collected them). The average size of the first ones were larger, as I saw two or three stones in the first downpour close to the size of tennis balls. You can see in the second picture how ecstatic one of our guides was. She'd never seen hail before in her life. In the third picture you can see the mist and condensation across the village as the ice rapidly melted in the 35 degree weather.

My pain is your pleasure.

Tommorow we leave from Chiang Mai and head to Chiangrai for three days then off to Ko Samet.

Cheers,

Dave"

Originally posted by darvlay
I can't show you the pictures, but I'm sure you get the point...

"So something crazy happened during our one-day trekking excursion inthe jungle an hour and a half outside Chiang Mai.

Much like we have tubing and kayaking down the rivers in the Great
White North, the Thai people build long bamboo rafts to race (quite
dangerously) down the river. ...[text shortened]... from Chiang Mai and head to Chiangrai for three days then off to Ko Samet.

Cheers,

Dave"