Home » Thailand » Southeast Asia 2000 - Travel Diary, Part 4: Hilltribe trekking and hospitalisation

The hilltribe trek became a very interesting experience for other reasons than we had intended. During the journey we walked through some amazing jungle scenery in the hills outside Chiang Mai and visited a genuine hilltribe village, but unfortunately my main memory is of the severe diarrhoea that I suffered from. Eventually I was taken to a hospital in Chiang Mai where my condition quickly improved. My travel insurance in Gjensidige Forsikring turned out to be of little help in this situation, as Gjensidige failed to acknowledge to the hospital that they would cover my expenses, and I therefore ended up having to pay the hospital bill myself.

Southeast Asia 2000 - Travel Diary, Part 4: Hilltribe trekking and hospitalisation

Jan Arild Teland
2006-05-08 18:27:08

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I wasn't able to eat much. For several weeks I would continue eating less than normal.

Since I was feeling quite good, we walked around in Chiang Mai for a while. Having missed the elephant riding and bamboo rafting from the Hilltribe trek, we wanted to take a one-day tour which included these activities. There were lots of companies arranging such tours, so we went around to check out some prices. In the first office we visited, there was just one guy who was busy chatting on the Internet. When we arrived, he went away and came back with another guy who didn't even speak English! I wonder if this company ever sells any tours!

After relaxing at the hotel for a while, we went up to the night market and looked around. Eventually went into an Internet cafe where I spent one and a half hour writing a detailed e-mail to all my friends about the recent jungle experience. Unfortunately, when I pushed the "send" button I got a "Javascript error" of some kind, and the whole e-mail was lost! This was definitely not my lucky day! However, May Tina had been sitting on the computer next to me and had written about the same thing, so eventually I pasted her story into my e-mail and added a few extra lines.

We went back to the night market, and as an evening meal I had a small cheeseburger at Burger King. At the time I didn't feel like eating Thai food. In fact, the smell of certain spices and the thought of noodles made me sick. Six months later, this feeling has still not completely vanished. It's a shame because it meant us eating Western food for the rest of our stay in Thailand, and consequently missing out on parts of the "Thai experience". And I'm not even sure if Thai food really was at all to blame for my problems! In fact, I suspect it might have been due to the meal at Chester's Grill the day before the Hilltribe trek. However, there's no use arguing rationally with your stomach, it just doesn't work :-)

Back at the hotel, we went to bed almost at once and slept well throughout the night.