Friday through Sunday.
Have I got a deal for you! You give me $40 and I'll make sure that you hike up steep hills for 3 days, sweat, get poured on, sweat some more, be bit by mosquitos, sweat even more, walk through caves with thousands of bats and spiders, get shit on by bats, sleep on dirty mats, fall into the mud, be accosted by tribal villagers, and did I mention sweat? Sounds enticing, huh? Well, that's exactly what tourists do when they are in Chiang Mai and sign up for one of the hill tribe treks. And amazingly, we all find a way to love the experience. I had a great time because of the 9 other people on my trek -- 7 Americans, an Aussie and a Norwegian. We ranged from ages 19 to 32 and we comprised of students, teachers, web designers and the joyfully unemployed.
The trek was 3-days, 2-nights, mostly spent hiking the hills of northern Thailand near its border with Burma/Myanmar. The hikes are on hills that feel like they have 45 degree inclines and declines, so you are always wishing that you were walking downhill when you are marching up, and vice versa. Usually you would hike for about 2 hours at a time, and then stop for another activity. For instance, on our 2nd day we hiked and then went down a river on 2 bamboo rafts gondola-style (of course my team won, and that had nothing to do with the fact that we had a 6'4" well-built former basketball player leading our efforts). We also rode elephants which was fun though surprisingly uneventful with the exception of watching one go to the bathroom... I was waiting for one of them to do something drastic and see one of my co-trekkers plummet off the animal.
The villages themselves were poor, but not as poor as I expected... mainly because trekkers come through every day and the villagers hawk all of their hand made goods. The goods are cheap, both in price and quality as one neckless I bought broke the next morning (after we'd left the village -- talk about good timing!). These villages have running water, but still use and outhouse, which was downright scary, especially when I had to pee in the middle of the night. The entire time I was in the outhouse I kept thinking of the final scene of the Blair Witch Project; which on the positive side is slightly more comforting than The Shining.
The most bizarre part of the the trip had to be the 2nd village we stayed in (I think it was the Lahu tribe). The entire experience there could have been 2 episodes of the Jerry Springer show combined with an episode of Cops. Apparently we came around when 2 brothers were fighting over some girl. And the brothers would do anything to get at one another. They were stopped by the numerous tribes women who came between them... only to pull one of those "I'm walking away this second but in another 10 I'm going to charge the other guy" routines, a la Dr. Evil in Austin Powers. And apparently, chivalry never made it to this part of Thailand as one of the guys flat-out slapped one of the women in the face who was trying to stop him from fighting. Then there was screaming cursing across the village at each other... though I'm sure if there were subtitles I would have gotten a lot more out what they were saying. Add to the adventure that our Thai tour guide was getting drunk on some form to Thai moonshine. Combined, this all created a scene of bizarre, highly unintentional comedy. The icing on the cake was our tour guide's rousing rendition on the guitar of a song he wrote entitled "I'm Drunk" which appropriately is comprised exclusively of those two words. Unforgettable night.
My highlights on the trek were:
1) Breaking a bamboo stalk while crossing a small stream and gracefully falling on my ass in the water (as bamboo is what they use to make scaffolding in this part of the world, maybe I should stop eating?)
2) Alf -- a 22 year old Asian-American recent college graduate who chose to call himself the name of a puppet alien instead of something else short for Alfred -- walking headfirst into a piece of hanging stone in a cave and falling straight to the floor, seemingly out cold, and then popping up 10 seconds later proclaiming "I'm fine, let's keep going." Alf would play our Herbie (from the book The Goal -- the only thing I got out of our 3 Operations core classes at Wharton; Herbie is the slow, fat kid on a hike who is so slow that people have to keep waiting for him, screwing up the organization of the walk), slowing us down with his personal tragicomedy... like losing his camera while falling in the mud, only to discover it 15 minutes later as the heavens decided to give us a shower -- so he and the guide had to hike back up a hill and mud in the driving rain.
3) Our guide Noi absolutely hammered singing "I'm drunk" and then trying to hit on the two college girls who were sisters... when one said no and decided to go to sleep, Noi literally slid a foot over on a bench and started working on the other sister
4) Brad, one of the Americans on the trip, impersonating the lady-boy at our hostel who signed us all up for the trip. The lady-boy, Rooney, overtly hit on the men, with very lewd sexual innuendos. At first they were funny, but one can only take so much "you leave room key with me and I give you 50 baht discount" types of jokes. Brad had Rooney's distinctive voice and speech pattern down to a T.
5) Our discovery that one of the few things to disguise the overwhelming scent of 10 sweaty, unwashed hikers who haven't been near a shower for 3 days is a cave of bat shit. Bat shit sitting in a cave fermenting can overcome just about anything. It's that potent. The US should have bottled that stuff up and used it in Vietnam instead of Agent Orange and Napalm to get the otherside to come out of their holes. From my hike, I'm completely surprised Alfred the Butler was able to go into the Bat Cave at all. Simply brutal.
My hike was the last part of the active portion of my trip. Early July 5, I headed down to the Thai islands of Ko Phi Phi and Ko Samui for diving and some beach time.
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Posted by: gas powered scooters | June 10, 2009 at 05:50 PM