Jungle treks are bad for your health
Trip Start
Jul 29, 2003
1
13
31
Trip End
Dec 01, 2003
Chiang Mai,
Thailand
Friday, September 26, 2003
Got back into Bangkok from Chiang Mai at 6am today having spent yet another 12 hours on a "luxury" bus driven by a psycho old man who stopped every hour for a smoke and decided to wake us up when we got back to Bangkok by playing a song about Simon Says...
Feel like I've aged about 80 years since doing the 3 day trek - I'm even more unfit than I thought I was. I can barely move my legs, have huge blisters on my heels and my hair as never looked so much like straw as it does now.
Despite all that the trek was really good fun and I would do it again if I wasn't such a fat couch potato.
We went out for a few drinks on Sunday night and met up with Herman who I worked with at the sanctuary again
About to board the elephants
. A few drinks turned into lots of drinks and we started chatting to 2 elderly couples from Middlesborough till about 2am?! Oh, then there was an earthquake. I thought I was just a bit drunk but swore the floor moved from under me and so did Kate. Janine was on the phone and completely oblivious even when the barmaid ran out shouting earthquake! It was only a minor one though.We completely stuffed ourselves on Thai food when we did the cooking course on Monday, which was run by a guy who must laugh more than anyone else I've ever seen. Trouble was he was mostly laughing at his own jokes which we didn't find very funny! He made us cook and eat far too much food - tom yum soup, stir fried mixed veg, fried rice, pad thai, green curry with chicken, penang curry, vegetable spring rolls, banana spring rolls and bananas in coconut milk.
Attempted to get an early night before our trek but it didnt really happen, and Luke, Rachel and Sam arrived on the overnight bus from Bangkok at 6am Tuesday morning, still a bit sleepy from their valium induced trip and ready top start the trek at 9am!
Our trekking guide was a guy called Bank, who was the same guy Luke had had before when he did the same trek 2 years ago
Arrival at the Lahu village
.There were 13 of us altogether - me, Janine, Kate, Luke, Rachel, Sam, 3 others from London (Kimberley, Celeste and Ollie), 2 Israeli guys (Kfir and Elisha) and 2 Germans (Susan and Paul).
There were only meant to be 12 people on the trek though which meant there wasnt enough space in the back of the truck so lucky me had to sit in the front in a space less than 50cm wide behind the gearstick! That was ok for a bit until Bank started telling me he loved me and singing songs about me in Thai, then laughing with the driver cos I had no clue what he was saying!
We stopped after about half an hour to get food from a market where there was a hilltribe woman with a scarily bleeding mouth who wouldn't leave us alone and kept trying to get us to buy jewellery.
After another hour of driving (where I had to listen to more of Bank's singing, including his variation of "I Shot the Sheriff" which used the lyrics "I shot the tourist, but I did not shoot the trekking guide" which prompted nervous laughter from me) we stopped somewhere near Pai for lunch and then had only a short drive to the Lisu hilltribe village where our trek (of death) started.
The Lisu hilltribe kids were obviously used to seeing disorientated tourists and quickly swiped a few of our things as soon as we arrived
Crisp thief boy and cereal bar thief boy
. One kid took Kimberley's bag of crisps and another took Celeste's cereal bar but no one could really be bothered to ask for them back, thinking they must be quite poor. We walked through the village and found crisp thief boy again who was hiding the bag of crisps under a little girl's blanket.We soon realised most of these children were little brats, one in particular, who kept jumping on and kicking people, and decided to piss on Rachel.
There was one quite cute little girl who took a liking to Kate although then she decided she wanted my camera and wouldn't let go of it, offering me 10 baht for it!
We set off on our trek down a stupidly steep hill, where me and Kimberley must've fallen over about 20 times. We reached a stream at the bottom, got pretty wet trying to cross it, and then had a stupidly steep uphill trek the other side. This is pretty much the extent of out trekking - horribly steep hills both up and down, along with streams which were impossible to cross without getting wet - which would be fine if my trainers had been waterproof, but since they weren't I had to constantly squelch around with soggy feet!
After about 2 hours walking we reached the Lahu village where we were to stay for that night
Janine and Kate making banana spring rolls
. The kids here were much nicer although Celeste wasn't too sure about their beetle fighting competitions!After dinner we were subjected to more of Bank's singing, accompanied by his guitar and eventually joined by all of us. Luckily I'd brought a pack of cards which were good entertainment as they were used for drinking games and Bas's (a guy from the next village) endless knowledge of card tricks which he remembered pretty well considering how much opium he'd smoked!
We left at about 11am the next day, accompanied by Bas, who was training to be a trekking guide. I wasn't too worried about the second day's trekking since Luke had told us the first day was the worst and I had survived that ok. I soon realised Luke's memory wasn't great. The second day was by far the worst! We spent about 4 hours trekking, stopping for lunch by a waterfall which I thought I was going to die getting to as the path was so steep with such a sheer drop. We got caught in a huge downpour of rain so we got completely soaked and my raincoat seemed to be letting more water in than it was keeping out. We arrived at an elephant camp had a bit of a break from walking while we sat on the elephants for just over an hour. In general it was 3 people to an elephant though, which meant one person had to sit on the head. Me and Janine quickly opted out so it was down to Kate who looked pretty scared for the first few minutes
Janine crossing a stream
. I swapped over with her halfway through and found it wasnt a lot different to riding a horse, apart from the fact the animal was a lot bigger and therefore a lot higher off the ground!We had another 30 mins trek after the elephants to get to the Karen hilltribe village where we were to stay for the second night. I couldn't have been happier when I saw it, I've never been so exhausted! What makes the whole thing worse is that the whole time, Bank and Bas barely even broke into a sweat, and could probably have carried on for hours!
Most people were so tired they ended up in bed after dinner and a shower, but I perked up again and sat up playing cards. We were joined by this guy who started showing us the worst card tricks in the world which made no sense and I tried telling him in Thai I didn't understand them but he didn't seem to understand me so I figured he spoke a different dialect until Bank informed us that he was deaf and dumb as a result of contracting dengue fever a few years ago. Anyway he seemed to take a bit of a shine to me and wouldn't leave me alone!
I thought I'd escape him when we left the next day but he came with us and kept walking behind me, stuffing flowers into my backpack but almost pushing me down the hill in the process! After more near death trekking where me and Janine were close to tears and I was sure I was going to have a heart attack we arrived at a viewpoint with some really amazing views (although Luke told us Bank told him on the last trek that someone had one died falling off there)
Lisu hilltribe kids
.Finally we reached a resort where we were to take a bamboo raft for an hour or so, to our final destination where a truck would pick us up and take us back to Chiang Mai. We were supposed to have 3-4 people on one raft but for some reason on one raft there were about 6 people and it started to sink so people were jumping onto other rafts and somehow Elisha decided to dive into the water (which was obviously fairly shallow) and ended up in a pool of blood after cutting his head open and smashing his teeth. He lay semi-conscious on a raft with all the Thai guys rushing off to get Bank, and was then rushed to a clinic to get stitches.
Meanwhile the rest of us got totally soaked while rafting. The mute guy (never actually found out his name!) was steering the front of our raft, with Luke steering the back, and me and Celeste in the middle. Luke fell off about 7 times and tried and failed to get me and Celeste in. Towards the end there was a huge drop and our raft kind of went the wrong way but it was too late to turn it around so we ended up going down the really steep bit and our raft just hit the bottom and everyone fell off except me, but I might as well have doen cos I couldn't have got much wetter.
Since I didn't have any dry clothes left (all the others were soaked with sweat!) I had to sit in a puddle all the way back to Chiang Mai where we had about 45 mins to get a shower and food before our journey back to Bangkok.
