Trip Update #10

Well, I'm getting closer and closer to being back on schedule... Monday, July 15th Woke up after a second night in paradise - a floating guesthouse on the lake in the middle of nowhere, Thailand. This is the last day of my three day excursion with C&C Jungle Tours (not to be confused with C&C Music Factory - remember "Pump Up the Jam"?). The first item today was to take a rather uninteresting jungle walk over a mildly barren hill and along a paved roadway for about an hour with a guide who didn't speak English. Not quite sure what I was supposed to get out of this, so I just smiled and said thank you. This is an essential tool to survival in a foreign land - the smile and thank you. Learn it well, my young apprentice. The next item was a much better jungle walk, for which I was joined by 6 other people on random trips with this C&C Jungle Tour company. After about an hour's journey, we reached a cave - and a very unlit cave at that. Another non-English speaking guide-type person proceeded to light up an oil lamp and motioned for us to follow him. Somehow it escaped this whole crew that having one lamp for seven people through narrow entrance passages on rocky and slippery terrain won't quite cut it. So four of the other tourists backed out, leaving me, the guide, and one other person as the lone spelunkers. And of course, I was last, so I couldn't see a damn thing. It was fun bumping into very hard rocks with my head and knees and toes and shins and all that. Really it was. Trust me. It was worth it though - the feeling of venturing into a cavern barely able to maneuver through narrow crevices only to find yourself in a huge room is kinda cool. The last item on the agenda was to ride the railway over the actual Bridge over River Kwai, but some other girl got really really really sick and had to be rushed back into town. Somehow, this meant that I couldn't be dropped at the train station, but being in the situation I was without being able to communicate effectively, I simply smiled and said thank you. Almost forgot - the mountains in Thailand are rather peculiar looking. The silhouette of the mountains against the horizon is very random. Imagine a 5 year old's scribble or doodle of one continuous line across a page; this is what the mountains look like. Tuesday, July 16th Not feeling very well today. Tough luck. I had already booked a day trip to Ayuthaya, which was one of the previous capitals of Thailand. The first capital was Sukothai, then Ayuthaya, and now Bangkok. In each case, the new capital was established after the Burmese took over the existing capital and ruined and pillaged it. Needless to say, Thais are not generally fond of Burmese people. Ayuthaya was neat - bunch of old buildings made of brick with Buddhas everywhere. I think Mojo Nixon should rewrite his song "Elvis is Everywhere" to "The Buddha is Everywhere". Though the place was interesting, there's only so much of ruined buildings that I can take - they all start looking the same after the first 15 minutes, regardless of the function of the structure in its previous life. So, I was quite ready to go by the end of the day. Back in Bangkok, I boarded an overnight bus to Chiang Mai, which is way up north in Thailand. Thanks to my comfy down-feather travel pillow (recommended my Scott), I was able to catch some zzzzzzz's. Wednesday, July 17th Arrived in Chiang Mai at 6am. After wandering around a bit to check out hotel prices and trekking prices, I settled on a place called "Nice Place". This is a rather apt name, since it says it all in one phrase. You know that it's not a crappy place or a wonderful place, it tells you right in the name. Life would be so much simpler if everything were so named - KFC could be "overpriced fast food" and Taco Bell could be "drunk/hungover food" and White Castle could be "dain bramaged food". Chiang Mai is Buddhist temple central. There are over 200 temples in this town. So, I spent some time looking around and checking out a few temples. It's just really neat to walk along what appears to be a normal everyday street by most people's definitions, and then all of a sudden be confronted by this beautifully constructed and adorned multiple-level golden A-frame roofed temple every few blocks. Just strange. And kinda cool. At 6pm, I met a bunch of people that I would be stuck with over the next few days on a trekking expedition in the mountains of northern Thailand. We were given an overview of the expedition and what we needed to bring. Then we were let loose. To get better acquainted, a few of us went out and grabbed some dinner and drinks - nothing major. Another relatively low-key day. Thursday, July 18th Began the trek this morning. After having a Nice Shower, checking in my bag and my valuables at the Nice Safety Deposit Box, and getting some Nice Breakfast, we were on our way. There were 13 of us: 5 Brits, 3 Dutch, 3 Americans, and 2 Kiwis. The split was 7 guys, 6 women - not bad at all. We were headed to an area called Pai, which was a good 4-hour drive away. So, we packed into a songtaew (the pick-up truck with a canopy) with our 3 guides and the driver and off we went. Since there was not nearly enough room for us all to sit, two of the guides stood on the tailgate and held on to the roof. Slowly, we started trading places with them for a change of pace. Then, one of the guides hopped onto the roof. Not to be outdone, I hopped up there and joined him. Don't worry - we were wearing our seatbelts! :-) I've been known in the past to drive my car on cruise control and standing up so my head is through the open sunroof - this was a similar sensation. (From the audience, a collective "you idiot!") After our 4-hour drive, we arrived at a Lisu hill tribe village. One chief guide Chan explained the Lisu traditions and conventions, and then we were on our way for a 2-hour hike through the jungle to the next village, where we would stay the night. The path was extremely slippery, so it didn't take long before people were falling. Soon, we even devised a scoring system for falls - 1 point for minor falls and 3 points for major falls. By the end of the two hours, we had lost count because one of the British girls apparently had Teflon for shoes and kept us laughing the whole way. At the Lahu village, we played a little soccer (I was goalie, as usual). My team lost, but not until I was replaced at goal and moved to forward, where I scored two goals. Yes, they were off two very good assists, but hey - I scored! No, I didn't take off my shirt a la Brandi Chastain since I wasn't wearing a shirt. We all had dinner soon afterwards - a homecooked Thai meal, family style with all of us sitting in a big circle. After dinner, the village kids came and sang along with the guitar for us - incredibly adorable. You know how kids sing - with no regard for pitch, volume, rhythm... brought tears to our eyes. Our sleeping quarters were one huge room with a bunch of mattresses on the floor - very communal. The shower was a tap flowing into a bucket. And the bathrooms were umm... squatters. Many of you know what squatters are, and many do not. Those who do not, please ask me some other time for a description. So we sat around, sang songs, drank beer, smoked cigarettes (mostly), and just got to know one another. Really a wonderful day. Friday, July 19th Woke up late this morning and didn't get out of the village until 11:00 or so - a full two hours behind schedule, or so they told us. It had rained all night, so the points were sure to rack up today on the slip-o-meter. But, we were all given walking sticks to use. Apparently, this was the missing link - we recorded a very low number of falls. Oh well. We stopped by a waterfall after a two hour hike to rinse off the thick layer of sweat, sunscreen, and bug spray. Very refreshing. After lunch, we hiked another hour or so before mounting up for an hour long elephant ride. This was incredible - the scenery was gorgeous untouched jungle, and we were riding on elephants. The pictures are sure to be stunning. Of course, just riding on elephants wasn't enough, so we got a hold of a few slingshots and tried to pelt each other with balled up leaves. When am I ever going to get a chance to do that again? After another brief hike, we arrived at a Karen tribe village, where our head guide Chan was from. Same type of setup as the night before. This evening's activity was a local game, which was eerily like a drinking game, except whenever someone messed up, they were the recipient of a char smear on their face from the underbelly of a cooking pot. Different. Saturday, July 20th Our last day on this trek - boo hoo! The major activity today was a 2-hour bamboo raft trip. The raft is as follows – a bunch of bamboo stalks tied together. Then three of us plus a guide are placed on each raft. Each of us has another bamboo stalk to push against the stream bottom to propel us along. This quickly became competitive as we were trying to steal the sticks from other rafts, tip them over, or any number of crazy ludicrous things. But it was definitely good fun. My boat won, which ironically had all three Americans on it. The other American fellow wasted no time in chanting "U.S.A." repeatedly, to the groans of everyone else present. Apparently, it's a commonly held belief that Americans are very arrogant. This fellow was not helping the cause (through the chanting and other conversations that he had with folks). I'm sure that people from other countries to an extent are hearing what they want to hear, but I can see some truth behind these allegations. Most people also claimed that I am very different from the typical American that they meet. So I don't quite know what to believe. But, I guess whether we like it or not, we are all ambassadors of our respective countries and we just need to remember that. This 3 day trek may have been the highlight of my trip so far -it's difficult to say. I just had an incredible time in an incredibly beautiful area. It was simply perfect. Sunday, July 21st Hopped on a government bus for a 6 hour ride to Chiang Khong. This was a luxury bus, fully equipped with A/C. Unfortunately, the A/C was too strong and I froze my tail off. Oh well. Chiang Khong is a border town from which I crossed the Mekong river to get into Laos. Laos is a country - really, it is. Go look on the map. In fact, Hank Hill's neighbor Hanh is from Laos. So I spent the night in this sleepy little town on the Laos side called Huie Xay, not to be confused with the neighboring towns of Louie Xay and Dewey Xay. My room was the most basic possible - a full bed with four walls and not much more. In fact the four walls weren't really finished walls - my side of the wall had the beams exposed. But there were some friendly spiders that were sharing the room with me. Bumped into a guy that was on the bus from Chiang Mai with me at a restaurant and I ended up hanging out with the group he was with for the rest of the evening. They were enjoying a few bottles of the local rice whiskey. Before I myself partook, I figured that I should examine the bottle. It read "1999 Bordeaux". Oh well, bottoms up! After finishing this bottle, the waitress told us that they were out. I think she was secretly trying to get rid of us, since one person in our party was busy feeding his dinner to the shrubberies. Till next week, -Paraag Tidbits: 1. It's rainy season here. This means that it's impossible for clothes to dry, so my bag smells like umm... wet underwear. Yecch! 2. The humidity also causes it to not take much to begin sweating. And sweating is like "breaking the seal" - once you start, it's difficult to stop. 3. The unit of currency in Thailand is the baht. To pronounce this word, imagine Arnold Schwarzenegger saying "Baht I don't want fries with that" and there you have it. 4. I've had a strikingly small amount of satay in Thailand. But I've had enough chicken fried rice to last me a lifetime. This is the "fish and chips" or "cheeseburger and fries" of Southeast Asia without a doubt.