Wow!! In preparation for driving on the opposite side of the road, today my trekking group and I got to witness Thailand road-rules...or lack of...! The cars drive on which ever side of the road they want! It is madness. We travelled first by tuk tuk (ie. tourist coffin on 3 wheels) and then by songtaew, which was kind of like sitting in the back of my grandad's ute, bouncing over the hills of Wah Hae (...that equals 'sore bum' to those fortunate enough not to have experienced it their whole childhood!!). The tour program says "Take off your watches and forget about time, we eat when we are hungry and sleep when we are tired".....which is great, except it was more like, we eat when our tour guide is hungry and sleep when he is tired ;-) Our guide, Seksun, was an absolute pro, racing up the steepest hills, ducking under vines carrying 2 large packs and 5 days worth of the food. Seksun tended to get hungry around 3pm and 9pm....oh my poor hungry stomach almost killed me...ha ha ha!!
Guess what! ......All meals were veg. ha. :-D
Today we:
*Travelled to the markets to stock up for the trip
*Drove (bounced around) for about 2 hours to our trekking region
*Ate lunch and these date/nutty things traditional to thailand (the shells of these were missing the little warning label saying 'excessive consumption may have a laxative effect'!!!!!)
*Trekked 2hrs up the steepest hill I've ever seen (this was when i started to regret packing 4 shoes and 500 pairs of clean underwear!)
*Arrived at the Karen Village
*Trekked more
*Set up camp on the floor of a traditional hut at Ban Huay Din Dtum.
*Cooked and ate a thai meal on the floor with Lisu people ("Ban" in Thailand means village)
*Bathed in the coldest water!! (see photo for wicked shower set up)
*Mingled with another tour group of about 12 international people and played the simplest drinking game ever...sober.....and still failed miserably!!! Haha! I think everyone felt a little blonde that night!!
*Sat around the campfire till the early hours of the morning, enjoying the heat, the beer, the guitar and the stars.
**For Choompie. Who likes to play drinking games with her 10 year old students. :-D**
You know the *stamp stamp clap* accompaniment Queen uses in We Will Rock You?? Everybody sits in a circle and does that. (when you get lazy instead of stamping, slap your knees twice and then clap). Everyone around the circle is numbered in order. I was number 5. On the *stamp stamp*, the person who starts calls out their number, and on the *clap* they call out a random number (let's say 8).
*Stamp stamp*....*Clap*
"Five"..........."Eight"
Then without losing the beat, the person who is number eight has to say their number and then pass it on to the next person.
.......*Stamp stamp* *Clap*
......."Five"..............."Eight"
.......*Stamp stamp* *Clap*
......."Eight"............."Fourteen"
.......*Stamp stamp* *Clap*
......."Fourteen"........"Three"
You can't return the chant to the person who sent it to you, and you can't get out of time. When ever someone messed up, the person who got them out got to smear their face with black muck from the bottom of the cooking pot. Check out the photos! It was so funny watching the people with no rhythm play. Or playing with an Irish number 8 and a Kiwi number 6!!!
. . . .Me - "Fiwve, ate"
. . . .Irish - "Eeeeeeht, siiicks"
. . . .Kiwi -"Sex, Tin"...
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