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Published: February 17th 2010
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The start of our hill tribe trek adventure started at 9:15 when Ray picked us up - kind of surprised to see that we would be doing the one hour journey up the hills in a vehicle like a sawngthaew. There were 5 of us at this point - 2 guys from Cornwall (Dan and Joe) and a French guy who could barely speak English called Emmanuel (luckily Joe spoke French) We went to pick up the other 5 from their guesthouses (a Danish couple, an Austrian couple and Greg a sole traveller from California)
We stopped off at the police station as you have to hand in copies of passports before going on a trek. A Canadian policeman warned us of a disease mosquittos were carrying at the moment (which wasn't malaria) which gives you diahorrea and vomitting for 30days which from the look on people's faces scared them as much as it scared me!
We zoomed off up windey roads up the hills - the driver overtook anything slow regardless of whether it was on a corner or not! We stopped at a market and bought water for the day ahead.
The first stop was a
waterfall - we walked a short while through the jungle from the dam to get to it. It was stunning, had tiers coming down and pools to swim in. The water was too cold for either Chris or me! We had lunch there which was egg fried rice and mango (anyone who knows Chirs....he did very well over the next few days eating most of the food put in front of him!!!)
Next stop was a temple. There were lots and lots of steps to climb and a gold buddha looking out over the valley when we finally reached the top. Some absolutely beautiful views.
We bundled back into the truck and a while later were dumped at the edge of a jungle. Ray didn't know where the path was...uhoh! We just kind of walked through the jungle, with Ray occassionally stating that he didn't know where we were going - whether in jest or pure seriousness we did make it to our camp! Along the way Ray stopped to show us snake skin, spider holes and some interesting insects, we also stopped at a waterfall which was even colder than the last one so it only had
feet dipped in it!
We arrived at the camp which was as small group of huts which belonged to 3 families from the Karen tribe. It was located an hour away from their main camp. There was a camp fire in the middle of the area which we were glad of later on in the evening! It gets surprisingly cold up there in the hills. Chat a guy from the Karen tribe made us a pretty decent fire. He recruited Greg to help him and so was known as Rambo from there on after (only by Chat)
I wandered to the hut kitchen before dinner to try some of the food they were cooking. I tried the spiciest fish curry I think I've ever had - it burnt my lips and left them numb for at least 5 mins afterwards. Not surprsingly we didn't get served that - we had a chicken curry which was a lot milder instead.
After dinner we all sat round the fire and drank Chang beer with Ray and Chat. There was a guitar - not that any of us could play it! But then...2 Karen tribe guys arrived on mopeds bearing
musical talent and rice whisky! One of the guys took the guitar and the song Zombie (by the Cranberries) was played over and over! It was the funniest! We were all belting out this song! They then played a Thai song and I think wanted the same response as they got from Zombie, but none of us knew the words, it seemed that they didn't know them either and any Thai words would do. So they pulled us up off the logs and we danced away to this song!
We slept that night in a big hut which had one big bamboo decking and we were separated from the next pair along by a mosquitto net. I went to bed fairly warm, but woke up frozen! It was very cold and the sleeping bag and the blanket didn't seem to be very good at keeping us warm! Nonetheless it was a pretty good nights sleep!
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