I have a backlog of pictures to upload, but the internet is just too slow to get them all up.
We were the first of the group picked up. Our tour guide, Good, told us that there were going to be 12 in the back of the songthaew, but we figured/hoped he was joking.
He wasn’t. The twelve for the trek were myself, Pennie, Wiki, Amy (England), Freyja(England), Mr. Kim (Korea), Shane(USA), Shawn (USA,but pretty much a full time traveller) who are brothers with very original parents, it seems, Volker (Austria, living in Spain), Lucy (England), Moon (Vietnam), and Bill (USA). Good’s assistant, Ecky was also along. Good warned us that we’d get a little wet, as the Songkran Festival starts a little earlier in the countryside.
Songkran is the Thai New Year, and they used to shower the Buddha statues with water, but now they shower everyone with water. As we were driving to the trek area, kids on the street with buckets of water threw them at the truck. I got a little wet, but my position was such that I managed to avoid most of the onslaught.
Our first stop on the trek was an elephant ride. First time on an elephant, and probably my last. I don’t think they really get treated well. I was on a baby elephant with Mr. Kim. For a baby, it was huge, but also (and this is never good when dealing with elephants) a little reckless. He tended to do what he wanted, which more often than not entailed getting as close to the cliff edge as he could so I could peer down at certain doom.
After the elephant ride, we started off our hike. Not too bad at first, then Good told us that we’d only experienced a warm up thus far and that the next bit was tough. He was difficult to read, so once again I thought he was joking, and once again I was quite wrong. Rest of the trek was mostly up hill, and pretty tough. I managed okay, but a few people looked pretty beat by the time we reached the hill tribe village.
The “hotel” was a bamboo cabin that was pretty decent. Blankets as a bed, and a mosquito net. We all showered, and rehydrated. There was a girl from the village trying to sell some jewellery. When we told her we weren’t interested, she started at us blankly. I asked her what her name was and she said she’d tell me if I bought something. Later, Good would tell us that they buy the jewellery from the city, so it wasn’t even authentic hill tribe handicrafts. The view from the village was decent, but they slash and burn the jungle, so the sky was a little smoky.
Later, after dinner, some elderly woman came and asked if we were interested in a massage. We all said no, and once again we got the stare down. Quite an interesting selling tactic. During the night we sat around by candlelight while Good played guitar. There were dogs in the village that barked madly whenever someone moved from one building to the next. At one point I took a picture, with flash, of the darkness and there was someone standing watching us. Creepy.