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Published: January 18th 2011
Woke up to alarm at 7.30, think I must be immune to the animal / bird noises at this guest house by now, some i'm still not too sure what they are, some even sound like a cross between a dog and Mr Cockadoodledo - quite disturbing so maybe my mind is telling me to sleep and block it all out, ha..... I took my yoga mat and got a quick half hour session in on the rooftop before i was due to start my 3 day stint in the jungle...... Then had quick chill out with tea up there before the truck came to pick me up for the 'adventure'......
Ten of us were driven to the same market i'd been to before on the mountain bike trail, seems the place for everyone to stop to pick up any rations they need, tho tbh i found the 7/ 11 just over the road to the market better as fresh food wasn't really ideal for a 3 day trek! Kind've knowing i'd have 'issues' with the food I left room in my rucksack for enough to get me by on for 3 days - basically packets upon packets of rice cakes and cashew nuts was about the best choice along with enough loo roll - how exciting, ha.....
It turned out I was wise to bring food supplies as almost as soon as we arrived we were given a packet of unedible food for lunch. Mine promptly went in the bin, I'd already had one food disaster on the plane and didnt think the jungle would be a wise place for another one and so played it safe! We then got dropped off at our first of many waterfalls and took in the view, it was pretty spectacular compared to most i've seen mentioned on similar tours i've been on over the years,that turn out to be nothing special apart from amazing backgrounds to do yoga from..... We then drove on (Hang on, i thought this was supposed to be a trek! But not minding not having to lug the rusksack around i'm not complaining too much!!!) to a temple. This turned out to be amazing - it was up A LOT of steps - the first bit of exercise we'd had so far and it was already after lunch! (This def doesn't seem to be as hardcore as the boot camp bike ride in the rain forest my first week here!!) Anyway it's basically lots of really old ruins mixed in with newish ones. The ones that stood out for me were the carvings in the outside wall of many faces, some happy, some not so happy, they were actually a little spooky and I wondered what reason they were there, were they in memory of some village massacre hundreds of thousands of years ago? Or maybe someone just fancied putting the villagers faces into the wall in loving memory? Who knows? We definitely didnt, but it was still really cool to see! We then passed a few other really interesting Budha sculptures, some they were even sporting woolly hats (wonder if that's just for the cold season!), others were surrounded by angels, and one was even given a cigarette lighter to hold!!! We then came across some building work disturbing the tranquility of the place, but still being carried out by the monks, all in all definitely one of the most interesting and picturesque temples i've been to, actually the only one where everything was outside rather than inside.....
We then drove on a bit further and finally started the trekking to our place of abode for the night complete with rucksacks this time, for once i packed light (well rice cakes don't weigh a lot do they, ha!!) so the extra weight for the long distance wasn't too bad! The main thing that our tour guide for the day pointed out was the most ginormous spider that i've ever seen! The trek was a couple of hours long and quite easy going, although everyone else seemed t fine it hard, hmmm,guest my mountain bike training and cycling up in Pai must have paid off :-)
We then arrived at base camp, lit a fire, the guide put on some Nirvana and REM and we all got to know each other, or rather most of us got to know each other! There was a cool Aussie family of 4, Rob, Diane, Kate and Sam, 2 Dutch guys, an Israeli girl called Debi and an unsociable French couple whose names i never got to know...... (you can tell from this ones we didnt get to know!!) Everyone else was lovely including our tour guide who kept us entertained for the next few hours.
Now this is when it starts to turn a bit wrong - dinner arrived, hmmm, well cold rice was about all i could even consider eating, so I had that washed down with my rice cakes, looks like it's gonna be rice, rice and more rice for the next 3 days - well i guess the jungle is all about survival, ha! i do at least have some cereals to look forward to for breakfast in the morning, but before i even think about breakfast, there's 'the night' to get through..... At first glance our room seemed quite cosy, until we actually got up into our 'beds' which consisted of a hard bamboo base, a skanky eiderdown and an even more skankier smelling blanket and a pillow which I wouldn't even know how to begin to describe other than it was more like a very hard prayer cushion than resembling a pillow of any kind! now i was brought up camping and so i'm in no way a snob, but this was DIRE!!! Oh and i forgot to mention the dark squat loo where at night you have to juggle the loo roll along with a torch in a festival type smelling vicinity.... Well at least at a festival after a few drinks this isnt so bad, but after a bowl of cold rice it was slightly different.... Still i thought it was only for 2 nights and the day times would be great so it's be an 'experience'.......
The experience turned out to be one i'd rather 'forget'!!! And this is probably (apart from the disabled loo in Bangkok incident) as negative as it's got so far!! After much trouble getting to sleep i woke up at 2 am freezing cold and needing the loo, now i knew if i even attempted the hole in the ground thing of a loo contraption in the dark i'd be even colder when i got back, so managed to fight it off, but lay there tossing and turning to the sound of the waterfall that by now more resembled a leaking pipe than anything remotely nice and someone snoring (I swear it was the french person next to me although i could just be being biased here ;-P) along with getting colder by the minute.... After 2 hours i'd decided that I'd quit the 3 day trek and just do the 2 nights. Apart from the horrendous night of no sleep the final factor was that apart from the moody french couple everyone else was only doing 2 days and it was getting less appealing by the minute as i lay there freezing cold with nothing but cold rice on offering for the next 2 days.... (ok the daytimes would be brilliant but when it's night time you don't think of that when you know you have another night like this to get through!!
Finally at some point around 4ish I must've dropped off as the next thing i knew i'd found a really nice comfiest of pillows and was sorted, only to find out that it was 7am and the pillow was just a dream (THAT was not fair, haha!!) and i'd actually woken up minus a pillow at all (well not that you could call the thing they gave us a pillow!!). It did seem slightly warmer, however 2 more days of the french people and the prison like conditions at night re-confirmed my decision that i'd made overnight to quit a day early ...
to be cont......
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Penny
non-member comment
What is it with French people on treks? I had really horrible French people on my trek too, they totally ignored me and made me feel really lonely. I had the horrible 'beds' too, how can they expect people to sleep on them? I know your pain lol!