trek with Pen

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The next day, Marieke and I decided we'd like to do a trek to make up for our missed experience in Chiang Mai. We got hooked up with a local guide named Pen, who spoke impeccable english. There were six of us total, and we spent the day hiking up mountains, wading through streams, crawling through caves, and visiting a local tribe's (Karen tribe) village. It was an extremely interesting day. In the cave, there was a four foot snake blocking our path for a few minutes, and then a huge spider on the wall. The Karen village was functional, yet not untouched by modern civilization. They had pickup trucks, satellite dishes, and scooters. You could tell, however, they were very self sufficient and most of their life was based on being functional. Animals lived under their houses, and one room was often the only room in a house (bedroom, bathroom, and kitchen combined into one). All in all, a neat day.

During the evening, we were all sitting around the campfire, and I noticed a guy sitting next to me who looked very familiar. I pushed the thought aside and just continued talking for a while, but eventually it turned out we had met in Chiang Mai at Libra. His name was Andy, and he had gotten back from the trek the day I was supposed to leave (but was sitting around because I felt like shit). He was travelling with a guy he had met on the trek, with no solid plans for the coming days. After a few beers and talking for a while, we all (Marieke, Andy, Matt and myself) decided it'd be fun to go to Mae Hong Son together the following day since we all had rented scooters. We agreed to leave around 11 AM and then went to our rooms for some sleep...

*On a side note, I haven't put many pictures up because the internet is SO slow everywhere I go. It also won't let me add pictures once I "publish" the article... I was hoping to add pictures to each entry before publishing them, but since it's about a week after these events occurred now, I'll just publish the text and then do a picture entry later. Sorry there's not more pics! I have some good ones.

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