Long Neck Villiage

I think at this point in the trip, I was feeling really refreshed and adjusted to their time. I had the best day before on the scooter ride, and was super excited to see the Long Neck Village.
We had a long day ahead, we needed to grab breakfast, head to the village, take few hour scooter ride back to Pai, grab our bags, turn in our scooters, catch a 4:00 bus, and find a hotel.
So we were off!
We couldn't find many breakfast places, but found this one spot that had seating with open windows so we decided to dine there.
Unfortunately it was the sickest meal, and most expensive.
Some highlights of my breakfast was: rolled up fake lunch meat, and a hot dog.

After choking down my breakfast we headed out to find the village. We found some great things along the way.
We saw our first elephant! At this point we didnt know much about Elephants. We didnt know that if their ears are perked up, that meant they are angry and could possibly charge. I just thought it was cute :)

I had no idea I was traveling with a real live Tarzan.

I thought this was hilarious. What a smart little ele

We ran into this amazing bridge. The jungle was so beautiful. I loved parking the scooter on the side and exploring.

These cute little kids must have been in school, and were taking a break to cool off.
I wanted one of them so bad, haha they were so cute!

We had to cross all these rivers, which was so so fun...until we realized the bottom was full of moss. I almost crashed my scooter! But FUN.


This sign was kind of cool.

We entered the village and it was nothing like we expected. It was amazing just as we thought, but we later read things from a travel book about the village that made me feel strange about being there.
We read that the government wouldnt let them leave the village because they brought in so much money from tourist.
It was kind of strange just walking through their homes, and lives and taking pictures of them.
We used my zoom lens so it wasnt as invasive.
We also bought things from them, to help them, and not make us feel as bad for asking for pictures.
This lady had post cards made of her. I think she must be the most well known.



She put these rings on my wrist. They were $3 which was probably a lot to them. Her sales strategy was a good one. Put them on dumb blonds that cant get them off so they have to buy them.

Here is a younger girl. I believe the older they get, the more rings they wear.

This is a young girl without her rings on. You can see how long her neck is already stretched.

I really love this next picture. They didnt have one word in common, but still managed to interact so cute. They were both smiling and laughing without saying a word.

These 2 little girls were my very favorite of the whole trip. They were so precious.


A few others photos from the village



Whenever I visit different countries, I always like to think about their day to day lives in comparison to mine. I feel incredibly lucky, and grateful for all that I have.



These ladies were sitting in this spot when we arrived and hadnt moved when we left. I wondered about what their lives were like and had been like. I wondered if they were happy, and if they knew how different life was outside of the village.

As we left the village we realized we needed to get on the road. We didnt have a lot of time.
We didnt have the time to stop for lunch so we stopped at this little stand on the side of the road that was selling fried bananas and fried sweet potato wedges.
We filled up our tanks and started up the steep steep road.
We were really excited for our scooter ride back. We had a blast the day before and looked forward to it.
Russ scooter kept dying and we just thought it was over heating. He had to keep pulling off to the side of the road, and restarting it.
Until....nothing. It would turn over at all. It was TOAST.
Here we were, off the side of the road 20 min from where we had just left and about 5 hrs to where we were going. We waited a bit and tried to start it again. Nothing.
He pulled it off the side of the road.

While pulling it off the road, he also stepped in a thorn bush and had hundreds of tiny little thorns in his foot. Poor guy.
He whipped out his knife and was scraping all the thorns out.

We loaded everything on my trusty pink scooter when a truck full of Thai people pulled over and started talking to us in Thai. They didnt speak one word of English and we only knew how to say hi, and thank you in Thai.
After a long time of them trying to talk to us, and after a lot of hand gestures we finally figured out they were saying it was a fire hazard having it off the side of the dry dry road.
So they loaded up the scooter and went back to where we just came from.

I followed...laughing.

You never know how people are going to react when things like this happen. Especially when you are in a far off country, not speaking their language and a bus to catch. But I was very impressed with Russ and how he kept his cool. I knew he could possible lose it at any moment...scooter broken down, thorns in the foot, bus to catch. But he just looked up at the mountain, shook his fist and said "well, you got the best of me this time mountain" with a big ol smile on his face.
We left the scooter with a very small little repair shop and loaded up on the scooter.

I decided to be his Ipod, which Im sure made the LONG trek home even longer, but we laughed a lot. Mostly because we didnt know a lot of the words we were singing.
The hills were so steep Russ would have to get off and walk to the top and hop back on. It took ALL day.
We did stop for a sweet photo opp though

LONG story short.
It took us forever to get back.
The scooter rental place was PISSED.
We missed our bus.
So the scooter rental place made us hire a truck taxi, drive all the way back which was about 2 hrs in a car both ways. We didn't get back until almost 2 in the morning and we had to be in Chiang Mei by 7 in the morning and no one was leaving Pai that night.
So we had to hire a taxi to come pick us up at 4 AM to so we could be to Chiang Mei for our big day with the elephants!
Looks like another night of just a couple hrs of sleep!