Into the Wild

Mork Fa Falls - breathtaking in more ways than one!
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It was so incredible to wake up each morning in bamboo and teak houses to a jungle shrouded in mist.  Our three day, two night foray into the jungle - home to many hill tribes - was fantastic.  I've been on lots of organized tours, and I'm always leery.  They are so often hit and miss.  When it's bad, it's usually rude folk who have no respect for the local culture and expect everything to be just like home.  We had none of those types!

Our group had great diversity - Jen and Greg from Canada, Evelyn from Germany, Chris and Hannah from the UK, and Leah and Elaine from Ireland.  Our guide, Montri (mohn-tree) was really great.  Very informative, serious, good sense of humor, concerned for our safety, a hill tribe native, and very professional (unlike another guide we met along the way who was cracking beers at 8:30 in the morning!).  Our porter, Niwa (nee-wah) wasn't as outgoing, but we sure appreciated the hundred pounds of fresh food he packed in for us.

I never thought knowing five or six chords would be useful!

It was tough working our way through the thick jungle!
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The tour started with quite a bit of stop-and-go.  Our transport was of the local basic type - a pick-up truck with benches down the sides and a canopy over the top.  After a requisite stop-off at the tourist police and a last-chance market run (where I got my last, up-to-the minute presidential update from Pat), we headed to the gorgeous Mork Fa waterfall.  For the first time since I've been here, the weather wasn't sweltering.  Since the pool was only about five feet deep, and since still had lots more seat time, I chose to strip down for the spray, but not dive in.

A view from home #1 on our first night. Gorgeous! This is paradise!
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Then we were off to lunch at a side of the road stand.  They think farangs (foreigners) can't handle the heat of Thai food, so much of the food we get starts out VERY plain.  Icky plain, almost.  After some soy and sweet chili sauce, things get a bit more palatable.  As an added bonus, the farther from town you get, the more elbow room there is in the toilets - a great feature when you're squatting!

Finally we arrived at our launching point where we were offered the opportunity to swim in some hot springs.  They were hot, almost to the point of scalding, so we opted out.  In all my hot spring experience, I've never felt water that hot before.  Well, a few minutes into the jungle, I got my explanation.  It was geyser run-off!  Apparently this part of Thailand is a geo-thermal hot spot.  It was really strange to see geysers in the middle of the jungle!

Where we laid our heads for the night. The hanging stuff is mosquito nets to prevent against malaria and dengue infected mosquitos.
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The trail was fairly easy-going.  Lots of uphill, and it was pretty warm (but cool for the tropics).  We were quite a spectacle.  The third and final day of the tour includes bamboo rafting, but the jackets aren't available at the launching point.  So, we each had a bright yellow and orange jacket strapped on as we worked our way through the thick jungle.  Pat, at 6'7", would have hated it.  In Arcata, when a tree is growing at his head level, he insists on leaving the sidewalk to go around instead of ducking under it.  The ceiling height on the trail for the first hour was all my height (5'7") or less.  I spent lots of time ducking!

Another group bamboo rafting. I don't know how sea worthy these things are, but it worked out well for me!
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After seeing lots of awesome "mushroom" flowers, we finally broke free of the thickest jungle and got quite a view out over the canopy!  Our guides were overly generous with breaks, but we appreciated it in all the heat.  The last leg was basically a slide down the red, slippery jungle clay  to a sketchy bamboo bridge over the river, and ta-da!  We've arrived!  After getting set up in our basic lodgings - a firm mattress, a really firm pillow, and two small blankets on a floor mat - we got showers!  Not the kind you'd imagine, but there was a tap and a bucket for me to dump (COLD!!) water over myself.  It was breathtaking, but I was happy to feel so clean!

The resort across the river from where we ate our lunch on the last day.
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In what would become his classic style, Tri (short for Montri), made us way too much food for dinner.  Sweet and sour chicken over rice, potato curry, and bean sprout stir fry.  The canadians then busted out their secret stash of chocolate cookies for dessert before we settled in a for a night of card games and guitar picking.  Finally my "skills" came in handy!  I never thought knowing five or six chords and two songs would be useful!

In the morning I took a walk to enjoy the "silence" of the jungle (excepting the birds and bugs), and delighted in the mystical morning until I ran into a yak/cow on the trail.  Back to camp!  The second day was by far my favorite.  We learned lots about plants from Tri.  I had raw sesame seeds, blew bubbles from the stem of a soap plant, ate the cousin of a chestnut, and got to eat cucumbers the size and shape of a spaghetti squash.  Weird!  The best part of the day was stopping off at a rice field where a family was working.  It's harvest season and they were threshing the rice.

Trail side geysers - in the jungle! Weird!
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One at a time, we got to remove our shoes and step onto the tarp which catches all the rice grains.  We used what looked like giant numchucks to gather the root end of the cut rice stalks.  After they were secured, you basically had a giant axe in your hands with the "blade" being the grain end of the rice stalks.  A board made of four big bamboo stalks lashed together sat in the center of the tarp.  Now you thresh!  Swing and pound the rice stalks againg the bamboo, shaking each time until all the grains have fallen onto the tarp.  Then load up again!  Wow!  What hard work!

Another downhill slide led us to an elephant camp where too much food was again served.  Then we climbed onto the elephants to ride to the next village.  The trainers were much nicer to these elephants, and one of them "Butterfly" (who had no idea that it's a girl's name in my culture) flirted endlessly with me as we made our way down river.  How flattering!  :)

Our second night was at the "River Front Hotel," as Tri called it.  It really was!  The first night we had the whole village to ourselves, but here we ran into several other trekking groups.  The locals were also around more at this village, though, so that made up for it.  We got to play with the kids and hang out with them.  We had a porch with a fire pit overlooking the river.  After (too much) dinner, we played music and chatted late into the night.  Fun!

We woke on our last day to the sound of the roosters crowing and the locals chopping away at the bamboo poles floating in the water to fashion our rafts.  The front of the raft had a bamboo tripod where all our bags were hung.  We all balanced out behind the bags as our guides "poled" us down the river - much like being in Venice, I imagine!  Going through the rapids was interesting.  I held onto the fibers that lashed the bamboo poles together, but we got soaked.  In white water, the raft is pulled a few feet under, and you have no choice but to go down with it or float away!  It was great!

An uneventful lunch (except for being hassled, of course) and a bumpy ride home led to a few hours of rest and a night out with the group.  It was pretty boring, which was disappointing.  Evelyn (the German girl) and I agreed that things were boring, so we dragged the group to a Karaoke bar.  Karaoke here is very different.  All the songs have a suped up techno beat - including Hotel California - and lots of weird additions is Thai.  Imagine the surprise on our faces when we got up to sing "I Will Survive" and we had never even heard the first few minutes of the song.  Strange!

Now Nicole and I are off to Laos.  We'll cross the border tonight and get a boat hopefully tomorrow afternoon to Luang Prabang - a beautiful French colonial town.  Can't wait!