Chiang Mai : An Unforgettable Journey

Hello guys, and welcome back! Today I want to give you guys an insight on what has been going on. I'm sure my friends reading this will know that my class went on a 6 day and 5 night residential trip to Chiang Mai, which is in Thailand. I have to say that trip will be one that I will never forget, and will be stuck in my mind for years to come. Alright then let's start the journey, shall we?

It was a rather sunny Sunday morning on the 28th of June, and my class were expected to be at the school before or at 10:30am, so we could get things going and head for the airport. We all said our goodbyes to our parents, and with friends and teachers by our sides, we set off for a journey that has yet to be found...

Us taking one last photo before setting off

We reached the airport in no time, and after the tedious work of checking in and immigration, we headed off to our gate and boarded the plane. The airplane staff greeted us in a formal fashion I would say haha. After that we took our seats, waited for the pilot to finish his precautionary checks, and off we went. The airplane ride was quite calm, and I indulged myself with some chicken rice and soft drinks. After 2 and a half hours of nonstop flying, we finally reached Chiang Mai, and I can remember vaguely that my first impression of the place was, "My god this place is beautiful, the view is just magnificent". After we stepped off the plane, we checked through immigration and baggage reclaim, and then headed off in this ginormous bus to the place that we will be staying at, PREM International School. When we reached, the place was scattered with greenery, a rather eye catching first impression I must say. We were greeted by the staff of Adam, Robert and Mike, and they introduced themselves and told us which apartments we'll be staying in and such. After the briefing, we were welcomed into our new homes for the next 6 days, and the place was actually brilliant, we had air conditioning, en suite bathrooms and even a comfy bed! Time flies, and it was time for dinner. The dinner was exquisite, filled with authentic thai dishes like sticky rice and a tomato chilli paste of some sort. It had to be one of the best welcoming dinners I have ever eaten! After dinner we were given a briefing of what's happening tomorrow, and headed to our apartments to pack for the next day. 

Day 2 dawned upon us, and we rose from our comfy beds, got dressed up and met up in the courtyard outside of our apartments. We are all split into 2 groups, A and B, and group A will be doing the daunting 2 day 1 night trek first and we'll be doing the community service and rock climbing first, and then we switch over. We bid farewell and best wishes to group A and we headed off in separate directions. We found out that we will be doing dirty work for the community service, as we'll be building the foundation of a building that is yet to be built to house more people. It was an excruciating 5 hours of labour, at one point I felt like collapsing to the ground dead. Our hard work paid off as we were greeted by a scrumptious lunch right after. They had ice cream and everything! Then we had to do another 1-2 hours of hard work, I guess it was worth it considering we had built a pretty solid foundation. After all the suffering and agony, we played with the little kids that were living there, games such as football and volleyball were played. 3 pm struck and it was time to say goodbye to the kids, and once that was done we headed back to our apartments in PREM, where we had almost 2 hours of free time before dinner. Dinner was wonderful, and we headed to sleep, anticipating tomorrow's rock climbing... And didn't I forget to mention that we went to a night bazaar and ate dinner there? The food was absolutely amazing! As well as getting to see the nightlife of Thailand, it was a truly authentic experience.

A picture with the kids!

The next day, we headed to a place far away from the city, into the mountains for our rock climbing activity. The staff were hilarious, as they were cracking up jokes all day long. I only managed to complete half a rock mountain, the fear of heights got the better of me and I simply couldn't do it, compared to my friends who all have completed at least a rock mountain. Well I guess the rock climbing was "rock solid" HAHA... Never mind about that, I was just trying to lighten up the story with a pun. Anyways after the rock climbing we went abseiling, and to me this was one of the highlights of the entire trip. We went into this 40m deep cave, where we had to zip-line to the other side of the cave, and abseil down. I was the first to go, and trust me at that time I had the intention of wetting myself... But surprisingly I did it, I conquered my fears and made it safe and sound to the bottom. *Almost* conquering my fear of heights was definitely a great achievement. That night we welcomed back group A and they told us about the trek, from what I heard at that point it was going to be horrendous and challenging, sounds horrific to me!

After we did rock climbing and abseiling
(Ignore my outrageous pose, didn't know what I was doing)

Wednesday arrived, and it was our time to do the trek. We went to Tesco first and bought some ingredients to cook on top of the mountain, yes you heard that correctly we would be cooking our OWN food. After grocery shopping, we headed to the start point of our trek, which was just beside a tarred road at the bottom of a hill. So, we packed loads of water, geared up and got on with it. The first 1-2 hours or so was ok, but when we reached a waterfall, things started to take a turn for the worse. We needed to climb a slope at about a 50 degree angle, and that was absolutely exhausting, up to the point where we had to stop and take a rest every 10 minutes or so. But we encouraged each other throughout the trek, and never gave up. 3 hours had gone by, and our first checkpoint and lunch spot was in sight, just needing to climb one last slope. Finally we were on top, and the view? Mind blowing, it felt like we were on top of the world. After that we 3 more hours of excruciating trekking, and with a bit of motivation from my fellow friends, we finally made it! That night we cooked pasta, and it was actually really delicious! After dinner we played some games in front of the campfire, and then it was time to sleep...

The view from our lunch site, absolutely gorgeous!

 To be honest, all of us hadn't had a good sleep, due to the continuous cock a doodle doing of the roosters at 2 am in the morning. To add insult to injury, they were doing that non stop until 4 am, so we had to deal with it for 2 hours straight... Morning finally came, and after some packing and breakfast, we said thank you to the people of that village and headed back down the mountain to where we started. It was another 5 hours of trekking, but most of is downhill instead of uphill, so it was way easier. In that time, I felt that our group formed a really close bond with each other, its as if we were not friends anymore, but family. When we reached the end, we all breathed a sigh of relief and we were actually pretty shocked that we made it, so the lesson there was "anything is possible". After we returned to our apartments, the other group were still out doing their rock climbing activity, so to pass the time we played UNO, the legendary card game that is growing popular by the day! Once the other group had arrived we all had a scrumptious dinner and headed for bed.

Us after the trek, we all looked really tired...

The last day dawned upon us, in what has been a flurry of activities, friendship and adventure. We all couldn't believe it was the last day, well I guess time flies when you're having the time of your life. On the last day we did a couple of activities, such as doing a low ropes course and learning Muay Thai! After those activities, we had one last lunch, and with all of our bags and luggages packed and ready to go, we bid farewell to the awesome staff there and headed for the airport. Once had arrived at the airport, we checked in, and found out that we had 2 hours of free time before boarding. So we just sat around socialising with each other, some even played a game whose name I can't say due to the "interesting"name it has. Once the hours had gone by, we boarded the plane, and a 2 hour flight laid ahead. Reaching home to Kuala Lumpur gave all of us a welcoming feeling, but most of us were already missing Thailand. We made our way to the exit where the bus was waiting for us. The ride was alright, socialised and all, but it was also the day when one of our good friends, Leeann, will be leaving. She has been at ISP since the start, and we all were sad that it was time for her to leave. When we reached back at school, we were all relieved to see our loving parents again. We all gave Leeann a goodbye hug, and I wished the best of luck for her in the future. 

I can confidently say, that I have grasped a lot of experience from this trip, and in my opinion this was the best trip so far, not only I have gained experience, but I also have transformed into a new me... I also would like to thank my friends, for always being there for me, in a way I'm pretty lucky to have friends like them. I hope you guys enjoyed my story of my trip, and as always, have a fantastic day. Adios!