Trekking in Chiang Mai... or Israel?

I had signed up for my 3 day/2 night trip through Northern Thailand expecting an adventure, but got a bit more than I bargained for (not including the treacherous bus trip up there). When doing some research online after booking my trip, I found that the guesthouse I'd be staying in for one night in Chiang Mai catered to Israeli tourists. A rather odd thing, I thought. Then when I got to the travel agency to meet the bus (the one that would later break down) I realized all the other tourists there were Israeli. I started looking around the travel agency and saw clues that hadn't been obvious to me before - an El Al sticker, a small Israeli flag included in a Thailand mural, books on the shelf in Hebrew. Somehow I had managed to stumble into an all Israeli travel agency and hadn't realized it. But the trip was already booked, so I went ahead. Once we got to the bus, we were joined by other riders of all different nationalities so I stopped worrying about it.

During the bus ride, I talked with the American living in Chiang Mai and he told me that yes, I had signed up for a tour that catered to the Israeli market. The bus stopped outside of town and put those of us on my tour in a mini bus. I debated whether or not I should go with the minibus that was heading into town and just book another tour, since I didn't need to pay for the tour until onsite and wouldn't lose anything financially. But I would have to start the research over again, with no guarantee of finding something better, and would have to wait at least another day to go. I decided to go to the guesthouse where we were to check in for our tour and check things out first. Once I got there, I realized therer was at least one Canadian on the trip so I decided to go ahead. As it turned out, he was the only other non-Israeli among the approximately 50 of us! We were divided into various Jeeps with Matthew, the Canadian, and I put in our own Jeep.

The rest of the trip was a little bizarre as the Thai tour guides all spoke Hebrew to us. It was good and bad that Matthew happened to be Jewish and had been to Hebrew school. The positive side was he was able to translate for me when the guides would tell us what time to be up in the morning but the negative side was that he was able to talk to the other guests, which made me even more the odd man out. About half of the group was in their 20s (it's very common for Israelis to travel after they get out of the army, which everyone has to do some time in, including the women and Thailand and Central/South America are their favorite destinations) but none of those spoke ANY English. We did eventually get talking to an older couple and two older men, who found it very surprising that the others didn't speak English.