Advertisement
Published: March 16th 2007
Edit Blog Post
We arrived back from the jungle on Wednesday afternoon but have been too tired to update since then!
We left on Monday morning at about 9am after breakfast and travelled about 1 hour to Doi Intanon National Park in an open back jeep to begin our trekking. We had a quick stop at a local market to pick up supplies such as water and toilet roll.
Our first stop was elephant trekking where we shared our elephant with a girl we met travelling on her own - called Rachel - we had the seat on his back but she had to sit on the elephant’s neck! We began our trek across the National Park, going up and down hill our elephant sometimes refusing to follow the others and making his own way, stopping occasionally to feed him bananas. However our elephant was very very greedy and when we didn’t feed him he would get angry and kind of growled at us before blowing elephant snot up Laurens arm!! Which she then wiped all over my tee shirt! The elephant trekking was good but not so much of a trek as walking round in a circle
around a designated area, however it was fun none the less!
After the elephant trekking we got back in the jeep for about 20 minutes where we pulled up at the start of our trek! We walked about 30 minutes before stopping at a small river where we had lunch - fried rice with vegetables - and a nice swim in the freezing water!
We then began our ascent up to the Hill Tribe Village where we would stay that night. The walk it self was very hard (at least for Lauren!) We spent 2 1/2 hours walking uphill in the blistering heat! Skip was at the front with all the guys chatting to our guide Tarzan (who has to be seen to be believed, as he is so funny!) and Lauren spent the journey at the back with Rachel and two Swedish girls one of whom was called Mirim and the other I think was Therse and JoJo the guide who followed the stragglers letting them have lots of breaks and fanning all the girls with dry leaves!
When we finally made it to the top everyone was very relived and had a 10 minutes sit
Halfway
this was us halfway up the huge mountain looking tired and worn out!! down before the guys went off to play football on a hard mud surface with wooden goals, whilst the girls chatted to the hill tribe villagers.
Supper that night was rice with a selection of different stir-fries and curries, some spicy and some not. Both of us tried a bit of everything!
After supper we sat down and got to know our group a bit better. There were 4 guys in sets of 2 - Tommy and Adam and Iain and Gal. There was Rachel who we already knew a bit as we had gone with her to the night market the previous night, the two Swedish girls who spoke quite good English but not always enough to understand! The final two were a couple on their honeymoon from Belgium (they spoke French though) called Stephanie and Didier who were lovely. They spoke the least English but Didier was so sweet and willing to learn and an all round nice guy. Our two guides were JoJo and Tarzan. Tarzan was the funniest and craziest person we have met in Thailand his laugh honestly has to be heard for you to believe it, and spent all night getting drunk
singing songs such as "No woman I Cry, No Chang Beer I die” His favourite expressions where "sad story", "its illegal", "I don’t lie, I only joke" and "OH my Buddha" - for when something goes wrong! JoJo didn’t speak as good English as Tarzan but was lovely and made a real effort to talk to everyone.
We slept in a hut - all of us together with mosquito nets and sleeping bags. We retired to bed about midnight and were rudely awaken at about 4am when the villager’s rooster decided to crow outside our hut before the sun even started to rise!
We surfaced about 9am for breakfast of toast with butter and jam, and a scrambled egg - which Tarzan tried to make us believe was elephant egg which gives you some indication of how crazy he was!
After breakfast the group separated into two groups as 3 people - Rachel, Gal and Iain were only doing a 2-day trek compared to our 3 day one. We said our fond farewells and headed off our separate ways. Our guide for the next two days was Tarzan as JoJo went with the 2-day trekkers.
The second
day was a hard morning. We climbed uphill again constantly for the next hour and a half until we thought we couldn’t do anymore. Finally we reached the peak of about 2000ft and Tarzan announced that the rest of the day was downhill - much to our relief! We stopped for lunch again by a small river where we had noodle soup with spring onion and cabbage - which both of us agree was the best meal have had so far in Thailand cooked by one old lady from the Hill Tribe Village.
We then carried on trekking for about 44 minutes (which was Tarzans favourite - and seemingly only time span he knew!) and came to a waterfall where we all jumped in cooled off.
Again after this waterfall we trekked for another "44 minutes!!" and then we stopped at a bigger one, which was to be our stop for the night. This time we stayed in huts of two people by the waterfall. Our supper was the selection of curries again this time cooked by the coolest old dude ever! He was deaf and couldn’t walk too well or speak much (or any) English but he sat with us after supper drinking Chang Beer!
The night was interesting. We retired to our huts about 1am after Skip gashing open his leg by having one too many Chang Beers and walking into the table! We all got pretty scared during the night as the huts were very creaky and made strange noises.
We were awoken in the morning about 10am - lie in!! And had breakfast the same as before only this time had hard-boiled not scrambled egg. Skip managed to have three eggs, as Lauren and Tommy both didn’t want theirs!
The third day would have been a fairly easy downhill walk if the weather hadn’t got hotter. We were walking where there was not much shade so we were getting so so hot. Finally we stopped for lunch where we had noodles with beef and vegetable, which were nice, and fried banana skins with chilli dip to pick at!
After lunch we headed off to Bamboo rafting. We shared our raft with the two Swedish girls and had the funniest raft man every. He was constantly shouting and singing and splashing us and everyone on the other rafts - "No Wet, No Fun" he kept shouting. We carried on down the river for a bit but when we got to some rapids with lots of rocks we all had to get off and then walk round and get on the other side. Skip however decided to stay on the raft and got to raft the dangerous bit. It was only after we got back to the hotel that we learned that last year a Japanese tourist died doing that bit!!
After rafting we got the jeep back to the hotel and crashed out for a couple of hours before heading off to Muay Thai! - That’s Thai Boxing for those who unlike Skip aren't Marshall Art’s freaks! We went off to the boxing as a big group where we met 3 new people - an American called Nick and a couple from New Zealand who were all really friendly!
We crashed out about 1am and had a massive lie in after our hectic few days!
(Sorry about the lack of pictures still but this computer takes 15minutes to load one picture!! hopefully will try to find a faster one soon!!)
Advertisement
Tot: 0.069s; Tpl: 0.02s; cc: 6; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0349s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
carolyn
non-member comment
I'm impressed
Wow - what an amazing trip - how did you manage Lauren when you haven't walked to the end of the garden for 2 years!? Glad the guides and fellow trekkers are all so friendly and that you are trying all that 'foreign' food!