The day after our cookery class Beth & I set off on a three day trek up into the hills of northern Thailand to mingle with the hill tribes and no doubt battle with the elements and take a few cold showers. We both had a pinch of trepidation over this as we had no idea what kind of a group we would get, we'd been told it was a minimum of 6 and a maximum of 12. As it happened we got a bloody good group. We had the required crazed German by the name of Helmut who was definitely out to do his own thing. (Apparently he runs some kind of adventure tour back home so this was a kind of fact-finding mission. He kept dissappearing off to jump in streams or harass the locals.) We also had a mercifully un-loud American called Lee who turned out to be one of the most fascinating men we'd ever encountered, he'd done everything. I kid you not. He's an ER surgeon who is also a blacksmith & printmaker who's writting a book on diets and Nordic walking. He also speaks Japanese and lives on a huge farm in New York with two turtles called Martha & Not Martha. He was a great guy to talk with but...he didn't stop talking. Ever. Not once. Seriously.
Anyhow, the trek started off well with a brief stop at a waterfall were Beth & I stripped off and dived in along with our new found friends Rachael & Ethan, (who live on a highly exclusive boat), then quickly dived right back out again when we realised how chuffing cold the water was and how much the falls hurt.
After that we got the opportunity to dip our feet in a blissfully relaxing hot spring. Given the walk we had to take next I can't help but think we shouldn't have done that bit after, but hey, I didn't design the place.
The walk was tough for a confirmed lazy-bugger like myself. And it was hot. And my feet hurt. And I wanted my Mum. But the walk did have a purpose and that was to get us to our first hill tribe. Beth & I were dead excited about this and many questions raced through our minds. what would they be like? How would they react to us? Would we see true rural life? Where were we to sleep? As it happened it was a little dissapointing in certain aspects. We kind of just arrived in the village and then settled down to drink their beer. There was no big welcome, no dancing and chanting, no introductions or tour of the village. It all seemed a little awkward. "Hello, I've just come to see your quaint little village. I'm from the West you know. Goodness me, is that a mangy chicken? How terribly rustic. Would you mind if I used your internet access? No internet access you say, dear me. Well maybe I'll just drink your beer then." It all made me feel even more like an outsider than I'd expected. That said, it was a cool place, chickens & pigs everywhere and loads of dogs who were utterly failing to annoy the aforementioned chickens or pigs. When we asked a villager why the obviously hungry dogs don't eat the chickens he just chuckled and mimed chucking a rock at the dog's head. Guess that'd work.
After supper we sat around a campfire and our superb guide, Lucky, entertained us with a variety of tricks that all involved making us look daft. After which we headed off to our communal sleeping hall.
Suffice to say that where there's chickens there's roosters and the feckers made sure that my first night's sleep was a quick one. That and the astonishing cold that crept right down deep into my bones meant I didn't exactly curl up tight in the arms of Morpheous, more like that I arm-wrestled him in a confined space filled with water, roosters and other annoyances and lost spectacularly. Oh well, there was always tomorrow.
A bloody rooster.
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