trekking in chiang mai

We booked a trekking trip that was leaving CM the next morning. The first day was about 5 hours of hiking through the jungle of the national park, arriving at dinnertime in a Karen hill-tribe (long-neck) for the evening. The jungle was beautiful though the northern part of the country now is overrun with forest fires from all of the slash-and-burning they do there. The air was dense with smoke which when inhaled, was equated to smoking 45 packs of cigarettes a day or something equally horrible. After about a week and a half in northern Thailand and laos (where it was the same), you could definitely feel it in your lungs and in your eyes.