Sleep is highly over rated

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Sunrise is a time of day but in the villages is starts HOURS before the event. First the dogs barking, then the roosters join in, followed by the people. No need to set the alarm today!

As we are going through our daily ritual of gathering clothes, filling bottles and bladders with water and Gatorade, Bunna and Mambo start packing up their gear. In all the preparation we miss the commotion as Bunna is unrolling his belt that he'd placed next to his pillow and is greeted with a wonderful little surprise in the form of a small scorpion! The sting delivered, the little monster promptly became goo on the underside of Bunna's boot! Very surprised to hear of all this, Nathalie immediately goes into first aide mode and whips out the kit we drag everywhere. Stunned, she's a bit disappointed to see Bunna putting toothpaste on the sting and trying to avoid the fuss everyone is making. Not willing to hear any of it, Nat goes for the Benadryl cream and the tablets, giving him instructions and triple checking to make sure he's not getting faint or anything else for that matter. He is after all a team member and the driver for this little adventure. As the day goes on, he will be subjected to hand checks and questions just to make sure he's ok....

Today's route is about half jungle road and the rest is back to our friend Mr. Pavement. The jungle section is wonderful and we see a number of villages and kids going off to school. All of the laughter and scream aimed straight at us, the ego is no more and we better learn fast to delight in its sound and no question too far what is behind it. Considering where we are and that it's about as far off the usual 'barang' path, we continue to take it in stride..

Bring on the pavement and break out the iPods! The morning done it's time to get to work and deal with the lumber trucks, buses, ubiquitous Camry and the motorbikes, all heading speedily somewhere and we happen to be in their way. We have a treat today though. Bunna has decided that it would be better to stay behind us, shielding us from the mayhem and forcing all those coming up to take the other side of the road. Never having had a pace vehicle follow us, it felt very 'rock starish' and something we will certainly enjoy any time we are on the open roads....Thanks Bunna!

Another day done, so it's off to our place of rest. The Commune Police Chief has agreed to put our merry little band up for the night so in search of his abode we go....heading down the proper village road (read very small and very narrow) just to find ourselves confronted by a road block, a giant set-up for a wedding. Yes it actually does block the entire road with no way around! Hmm, really? You can block the entire road? Even Bunna and Mombo are scratching their heads....time to find a way around. After a few more turns and dead ends we finally find a path in the original direction we intended to take....um well think the other side of the tracks! Finally we find the way and arrive at the Police Chief's home.

Very kind to take us in, we start unloading our gear. A process we have become very accustomed to, and our hosts make the now familiar comments about the amount of stuff we are hauling, not to mention BBQ, who is placed in a tree that contains another BBQ like conure, this one with an auze blue head, company for out exiled mascot!

Mandy baths in private this time (cheer from Nat) we all work at removing the day's grit and red dirt. OMG the water was SO cold and felt amazing. Hard to imagine such pleasure in a little bucket with a handle!

Mombo, who's taken it upon himself to cook every supper that presents itself, is hard a work cutting and chopping. Tonight is Lak Lok and soup, fa new favorites of us all!

During clean up and cooking time we notice very loud music and then the sounds of TV, finding out that they have full electricity and satellite! Very cool because we need to charge the GPS that keeps us going all day but not cool we come to find out as the TV marathon at cinema volume levels continues until almost midnight! Ear plugs don't even put a dent in the decibels! Finally some quiet, that is until some strange person walks near the gates and the pack of dogs goes nutty with the barking! The repeats itself until about 3:30 am when the palm sugar pickup dude arrives in his very large truck and at least 15 passengers! So, now we have dogs, sugar pick up and something like 20 people all very well awake carrying on like everyone else should be except its three thirty and then about ten minutes after the truck pulls out we get prayers for a dead neighbor chanted by a dude who packs enough speakers and woofers to make Metallica seem like chamber music types ...in the end, none of us managed more than 2 hours of sleep...Another sleep deprived day starts at 5:30...

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