Bush bashing and Survival training

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We set off early in the morning in the truck to make the short drive to the kids school, in order to go camping with 200 of the scouts there. When we arrived we had to wait around whilst they did formal things like saluting and standing in columns. Whilst waiting, we were approached by a scout leader (a 40 year old guy complete with shorts and neck-tie - not a good look), who got us all to write our names next to some Thai text on a piece of paper, then split us up and made us stand with our assigned columns. I was with Tarapon and her group of "Sparrows", Yeo and his group of "Lions", and a chubby woman who was the 'Leader' and insisted on giving me an incredibly silly scout leader hat to wear. After a while of wondering exactly what we had signed, and watching the scouts stand still in a very purposeful fashion, it was deemed time to leave, and the first 2 columns set off. At this point the scout leaders told us to put our bags in the truck and they would be taken to the campsite for us, which we declined to do, seeing as Dada had said it was only a 6k walk, and we wanted to be hardcore, unlike the kids, who all jumped at the chance. This soon turned out to be a bad plan.

3 minutes into the walk and Tarapon and Yeo had led us off the road and through the trees to a river, where we stopped to remove our shoes, and then waded across. Getting out of the river took quite a while as the 'path' started at the top of the river bank, and we were very much at the bottom, 10m below. Eventually we all managed to climb up, though Michai (from Baan Dada) had to help a few of the smaller kids and the chubby scout leader. Then we headed onwards, up a steep hill, that was only slightly better than the river bank in terms of steepness, though at least it wasn't wet. We reached the top in the end, the kids having no issues, and sat around for about 10 minutes waiting for the scout leader and Michai (who was helping her). Then we set off again, and any idea that it might've been a good idea to get the orienteering instructions in English was banished as I had no idea where we were, and there was no sign of a path. Occasionally there appeared to be a gap in the bushes that could've been a path, though it was more likely the result of 20 kids and Michai with his machete preceeding me. It took us quite a while to complete this section of the walk as quite a lot of it required the 1m high kids to duck to avoid branches, making a tad difficult for me plus my backpack, but I managed to keep up okay.

About an hour into the walk we came to the top of what Michai insisted was a mountain, breaking free from the spiky bushes full of insects to an amazing view over the hills. Then we ran down the hillside to get back to the river. Halfway down, (unsurprisingly) one of the kids tripped and sprained his ankle, so we had to stop. At this point the kids were forced to stop laughing at my pack as I was able to produce a bandage, paracetamol, bananas, and a phone to arrange a motorbike to pick him up at the next village. Then we were back to descending the hill, and eventually got to the bottom, where we crossed some farmland, waded across the river again, went through some more trees, and ended up at the temple at Ban Mire; then we slid down the hill on the other side back to the river where we go swimming, and waded across (again). From there on the hike was a bit easier, and we were actually following paths, or at least walking through rubber tree plantations which don't bite or scratch at you. At one point we came to a little village, in which the kids immediately located the only shop, and broke off to buy sweets and meat. Then we were back to out hike, crossing the river again, but otherwise generally sticking to footpaths.

Just when it was starting to seem easy, we again turned away from the perfectly good road we were walking on to go through the bushes again. Luckily they weren't so thick on this hill, and we saw a very cool bird that was jet black with bright blue wingtips. After a while we reached the river for the fifth time, and crossed it. This time I didn't bother taking off my shoes as Michai said it was very slippy and we were nearly there. This turned out to be a good idea as it soon became apparent that we weren't crossing the river, but wading downstream. This was probably preferable to walking in the spiky plants lining the bank, but definitely not the easiest path! After about 1km, we clambered out, and found the others, who had already set up camp, and were working on various bamboo structures.

I found the other volunteers setting up the tents, and discovered that only me and Pol had gone on the bush-bashing trek through the river. It turned out that the Thai writing me and Pol had put our names down next to translated to agreeing to go on the "difficult walk". Would've been nice to know that beforehand but oh well! We spent the afternoon:
- Making a table out of bamboo, or more precisely watching as SoOng made it in a very professional manner for a 13 year old
- Gathering wood - (picking up the wood left behind from where the kids had chopped down trees with their machetes)
- Lighting a fire - possibly the easiest task until you wade through a river with your lighter in your pocket, and have to use an old-school army fire starter instead
- Building a dam in the river - I think the boys were feeling out done on the bamboo building
We spent the evening cooking something fried out of egg, tofu and veges, which was actually quite tasty, and then chilling round the campfire. At about 9 one of the trees fell down roughly 1 inch from 2 tents, which caused some commotion, but not much else happened.

The next day we were woken by sounds of woodcutting and cooking at 4.30am. Considering this far far too early to even consider being awake, let alone out of bed, I attempted to go back to sleep. Unfortunately, scouts can be very noisy when they want to be, and by half 5 I had given up on any chance of sleeping, and got up to find Sean attempting to re-light the fire using the coals from the night before. We had breakfast around 7, and were informed that today we had free time. So, feeling more like the scouts' pets than useful volunteers, me, Mathijs and Matte went for a walk. We started off along the road that had carried everyone but me and Pol to the camp the day before. We ended up going to a little shop where we stocked up on biscuits, then we cut across the river and over some farmland. Once across a few fields we came to the slight obstacle of a bamboo fence, but rather than turn back we just ducked under, and attempted to cross the next field without being to inconspicuous. This failed epically as, miles from anywhere in the middle of the Thai countryside, being white is comparable to being an alien, and the farmer chilling in a little hut on the other side of the field gave us some very strange looks. Once across we waded through a little stream, and then climbed the bank on the far side. From there, we didn't really know where we were and Mathijs' gps locator which we were relying on to find our way back, decided it was tired and stopped working. Working on the idea that we would go up and look for where we were from the top of the hill, we ducked under another fence, this one barbed wire, and hiked through the bushes up to the top of the hill where there was an amazing view over where we had been walking. Then, seeing as the gps was still broken, Mathijs got out his compass and we headed back down towards the river. Eventually we hit the river again, crossed over, and followed a nice path through the rubber trees the rest of the way back to camp.

In the end, our 1 hour max walk took us 3 hours, and we were starving when we got back, so we sat down for lunch, and then spent the afternoon making a bench out of bamboo without being helped by any of the 10 year old boys who could've probably done it faster. The only thing that we really had issues with was making rope from the bamboo, and after spending about an hour making maybe 10 pieces, a random Thai guy walked past, took the bamboo off me, and made about 25 pieces in about 2 minutes. Personally I think it was the fact that his machete was sharp and mine was blunt that made him so much quicker, but that is the object of some debate. Then we cooked our dinner, and chilled out on our awesome bench. The evening was punctuated with SoOng and Michai occasionally turning up to check on the sticky rice that they were cooking on our fire using bamboo as a pot, and Michai chilling out with us occasionally as he was on camp-patrol duty and bored, but otherwise not much happened as all the kids were in bed by nine.

For our final day we managed to get up at the late hour of 7.30, and spent the morning doing "International Scouting by Farangs". This sounds pretty interesting, right up until you find out that you are the farangs, and you are meant to teach a group of scouts who have spent the last 2 days hacking through a jungle, creating tables and fences and, in Michai's case, an entire hut to sleep in, out of bamboo, and fishing for dinner with spears. In the end we dismissed most of our scouting knowledge as useless in comparison, and fell back to the easy task of teaching English, as it was probably one of the only things we were better at. Throughout the morning we got assigned 4 groups of 30-40 scouts, which we then split in 2. This meant that me, Matte and Mathijs did eight 15 minute long lessons on campfire songs (Boom Chicka Boom and Everywhere We Go), whilst Pol and Sean did the same but teaching the kids the names of common survival items (Compass, Spear, Machete, Spork etc). In the end I think it was a success, and we got all the kids singing and dancing to Boom Chika Boom - Mathijs in particular was very good at thinking of different voices to sing the 6 line song in - me and Matte did high, low, quick, loud, quiet, Mathijs did Robot, Elephant, Dog, Ghost, Monster and Frog, to name but a few! By the end we were all thoroughly sick of the lyrics though!

We finished off the trip with an incredibly bumpy ride back to Baan Dada in the big truck, and spent the evening recovering from the aches caused by sleeping on yoga mats for 2 nights, riding in the truck, and, in my case, being bitten/stung by a "Daezen" (cross between a giant ant and a wasp that left a mark the size of my hand :/), and in Mathijs' case grabbing hold of a tree covered in microscopic thorns!

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Photos

Michai
The only scout with no uniform, a slingshot and a spear

Crossing the river
2 minutes in

International Scouting by Farang...
Boom Chika Boom

Crossing the river
2 minutes into thee walk