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Published: October 15th 2007
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The campaign against nature was victorious!!! We had quite the adventure out in the Jungle of northern Thailand. We experienced everything from primative villages to food poisoning,
and we survived! The trek started off fairly well, everyone was really excited to get out there. The transport here seems to be done riding in the back of a covered truck bed on benches. Driving in the trucks can make a person feel motion sickness quite signifigantly, especially once you get into the mountians. But there were no issues with that. We finally arrived at the head of the trail and we hiked for 2-3 hours and arrived at a waterfall. This was supposed to be a feature of the trek and you could see that in the really rainy season it would be quite impressive. Where I am standing would be completly underwater.
After the waterfall we hiked another 2 hours to a village of the Lahu tribe. These people were really far removed from civilization. The kids were excited to see us, they would do things to get you to take a photo of them and then they would run over to see the picture on the digital cameras.
When we first arrived they were bowling with seeds from a huge bean plant although there seemed to be some rules of the game that I couldn't figure out. Anyway they were quite friendly and laughing all the time. After they got tired of bowling the older boys had a ball and were basically hacking it, keeping it in air with feet, hands, heads or whatever. I joined in and then they started tossing me the ball to kick it. After a few times they thought it was funny to throw it at me. I think they were trying to get me dirty. The ground was a reddish clay, and it was almost always muddy since it is the end of the rainy season. After the meal they came to our table to sell us hand made souvenirs, the kids sang and we gave them candy and pencils. Then the Night from Hell began!
I think the rice from our lunch was the cause of a food poisoning attack in our hut. Ingrid, Marrit, and Charlotte were up every hour or so running to the toilet or just to the edge of the hut and throwing up. Then you
throw in the roosters crowing at 12, 2, 4, and 6 I thought the damn things only went in the mornings. Once I think some cats came and scared the roosters away but then they were making some awful sounds for 10 minutes. Also the sounds of pigs right underneath the hut, dogs in the village, crickets and frogs that are like 100 times louder than ours basically made for a night with very little sleeping being done. Even for me and one other dutch girl who didn't get sick.
The next day the three girls who were sick all night were much to weak to do our hike so our guide (her name was Nai, that's right if you've been keeping track it was 3 dutch girls, charlotte, our guide and me, 5 girls and just one man) anyway our guide hired 2 rangers and one village boy to drive motorcycles with the girls on the back. Apparently they were quite careful driving through the jungle. Flora, Nai and I had a 4 hour walk to meet them at the rafting camp.
The raft was kind of sketchy, basically just 9 bamboo logs straped together, but luckily
the water didn't have a high grade of rapids. The village we arrived at was a bit closer to civilization but it was still quite primative. Spending the night there was
much more pleasant! After about 11 hours of sleep we began the third day.
Driving one and a half hours in the truck made people feel a bit sick, but we arrived at an Elephant camp. The elephants were awesome! We rode them for about 45 minutes and they even crossed a river twice. The water was up well over their knees and covering their bellies it was really cool, our elephant didn't spray much but the other two both sprayed the dutch riders with their trunks. After a quick stop at an orchid farm on the way home we arrived safely, happily, and in
extreme need of a hot shower! That night we went to a night market and then to a bar with our fellow trekkers and the Thai band played lots of popular western songs and we had a pretty good party!
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Kyle
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Food Poisoning
Glad to hear you`re better Charlotte! Food poisoning is nasty business!