This is from December 22, 2004 - My SE Asia trip
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I just got back from our 3 day, 2 night trek to the hillside villages. It was great! There were 8 of us. I liked everybody a lot, we had a great mix of people:
Eva, 66 year old lady from Ireland. She had great stories and has done some really ballsy things in her life. A wierd fact - she is a good friend of Frank Mc Court, the guy who wrote Angelas ashes. She had some good scoop about him - her sister dated him and he wrote about her in "Tis", his other book. I knew exactly who she was! I could ask her anything about all the characters in the books - crazy. I loved Angelas ashes. She travels solo extensively.
Jacob - older guy from Norway who really likes fish and was stung by a scorpion while we were sitting by the fire the second night. He was quiet but had a good sense of humor.
Oscar - 77 year old guy from Belgium but has lived everywhere. He is one of the most interesting people I have ever met. Crazy, crazy stoies. In addition to that, he kept pretending to hit on Eva and some of the older hilltribe women. Like when we saw an old woman at the side of the road when we were riding elephants he would say 'hey sweetheart! you want a date? you got black teeth?" He got married in Vegas a few years ago and they want to go back to Vegas now to get a divorce, then take a road trip.
Alan and Mike - guys from Australia who had funny stories about snakes and animals, toilets, we had hillarious conversations. They teased me about being such a wimp. Yes, I was the biggest wimp on the trip. These people were hard-core.
Slevin and Dimiti - cute young couple from France - they didn't speak english very well - I wish I knew more french. Three of us shared an elephant on the elephant ride.
Our guide was Noom, a thai guy with a fu man chu facial hair thing.
And me, who was called "yuppie" and "city person" and "wimp"..haha. I didn't have a little bag for my camera so I used my coach purse. Oscar said "you going to the opera?"
We had to get up really, really early so I did what any reasonable person should do - play pool until 2AM at the corner bar with an English guy and an Irish guy so that I would be really tired for the next day. (One of them cheats at pool really bad and I told them that was NOT how I was taught at home by my friends Mike and Turck!)
So we left Monday morning - we all had to pile in the back of a truck and drove for 2-3 hours out to the Burmese/Thai border in the middle of nowhere, where there were checkpoints with military guys. Oscar and another thai guy threw up off the back of the truck because we were so carsick. We hiked to the first village - it was so cute, wooden houses on stilts and farm animals running everywhere. We all slept together in a big treehouse under mosquito nets. It was the massive treehouse you dream of as a kid - I loved it. Not comfortable, but fun. We all passed out as soon as we got there and I joked that I was so tired that I would pay someone to bring me a bedpan because I was too tired to go to the bathroom. The bathroom was in a little wooden shack, I have a picture of it, the toilet of your worst nightmare. I won't even tell you about it now, it will take too long.
The village people cooked mild thai food for dinner, it was very good and we all ate at a big communal table. We had interesting conversations. These people like to talk about toilets as much as I do! I was the most boring person there. Everybody had some story like "when I was at Everst base camp..." or "when I drove from Alaska to Argentina, I..." "when I was at elephant camp and learned how to slide down an elephants trunk..." Mike the Aussie told us about how he was on some trek where there were crabs in the toilet. Then they were served crab for dinner. Funny stuff. After dinner, the village children ran to our table and sold us handicrafts like hats and bags, woven stuff. It was all like 50 cents or a dollar. I liked my hat so much that I wore it for 3 days and it's in every picture. It's going to be hard not to wear it in Chicago. The village people observed us and we watched them. It was kind of strange. None of them knew a word of english, none, so we talked about them and we could tell that they were doing the same. This particular tribe was from Burma.
The next morning we woke up to sounds of the farm. It was SO loud.
COCK A DOODLE DOOOOO!COCK A DOODLE DOOOOOO!
OINK SNORT OINK OINK BARK BARK SNORT
the chickens and roosters would beat their wings FLAP FLAP FLAP
COCK A DOODLE DOOO!
they were all a couple of feet from the treehouse.
It started before dawn and went on for about 4 hours. It was insane. The loudest morning ever. EVER. Waking up at a cubs game would be quieter. It was awful.
Next day we hiked more then rafted down a river on bamboo rafts. I got soaked. Good scenery. Kind of like West Virginia, only jungle-y. It was a blast. Everyone stood on the rafts and some people paddled with long bamboo sticks.
Next night, new tribal village. This tribe was from China. They had Chinese features and colorful clothes. They were way more outgoing than the other one. Lots of them had black teeth from chewing betel nuts. One older tribe woman had a thing for Oscar and we teased him non-stop about it. Again, none of them spoke english. There was one mosquito net short that night so Oscar had to share one with Eva. They joked about how they were going to get busy under it. I told them what happens under the mosquito net stays in the mosquito net and not to worry. That night, phenomenal thai food for dinner. I had 3 bowls of red curry soup. YUM. They sold us more handicrafts and we sat on logs by the fire where Jacob got bitten by a big brown scorpion. He was in agony all night, poor guy. The village people had already gone to bed and we were on our own.
Repeat on the COCKADOODLE DOOO!
Next morning, elephant ride. Our elephant was huge. We called him Babar.
Another carsick ride back. We went past a golf course and everyone said at the same time "ya know, I kind of hate golf..." I knew I liked these people!
Tomorrow I'm taking an all day cooking class. I like the Libra guest house. They do laundry, treks, internet, cooking school, they got me my visa and it's only $5 a night. Kind of grungy but really homey. Even the bedbug that bit me didn't bite that hard. There are big communal tables and strangers eat together. I recognize people already like one of my pool buddies. I wonder what I'm going to do in Vietnam. I feel really comfortable here, I have people to do things with. I hope I find the same sort of situation in 'Nam.
Thanks for reading my rambling! I hope you all have a good week! I'll try to have some good stories for you later.
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