Survived the Jungle

,The local sticky rice plant...used for eating, animal feed and fermenting!

Our morning coffee...ahhh...dehydrated Nescafe, dry milk and sugar. (Along with us thats Kevin & Sven from Holland)Cute little village girl...a little camera shy.

Big bad Jungle...Actually it's quite nice when you get used to the bugs and the spiders... the noises that go bump in the night

Moonshine... Our fearless guide "Oh My Buddha"

7:15 am, a Stroll through the village

No electricity...so it's dinner a-la candlelight!

Oh these kids are like monkeys! They love shiny things and grab onto anything!

Night 2, our hut next to the river

Meet "Mojo", our Elephant...he just wants a banana!

Our hut in the hills...it's surreal looking at this again.

Hello again.
I survived my jungle trek. Ate some weird fruit, shat in some REALLY funky places and drank some hallucinogenic rice whiskey made by the locals. It was hard to tell what they were saying, but I think "take a shot" is pretty standard in every culture.
It was a crazy uphill battle the first day for about 8 kilometers. A VERY VERY steep mountain through very dense and humid jungle and my love affair with bamboo has been forever changed due to the intense heat and density of the jungle. I have always thought of bamboo the way that Hollywood portrayed it. Lush, cool and elegant. It's not. It's a real part of the jungle, and its thick and unforgiving and more of a pain in the arse than it's worth.

The first night we stayed with a village hill tribe near the border of Myanmar and China. About 90Kilometers away i thinkThe Hmong people belong to no country, bow to no king and cannot get passports to any neighboring country. They live on Thai soil, but technically don't belong to any nation. They are an agrarian culture who have lived in these hills for hundreds of years. Contact with people from the city pretty minimally. It was an interesting first night sleeping in the bamboo and thatch hut far above the tree line of the jungle. It was worth it to wake up in the morning with our hut completely shrouded in a cloud. I had always wondered what it would be like to swim in the clouds. Aside from dreams, this was as real as it will ever get.
The second night was a little different than the first as we camped on the big bad jungle floor with the BIG bugs and the unseen monsters lurking only a few feet from the hut. Our guide, "Moonshine", told us... "If you see me run...you better run too!" Safety briefings in Thai are so different. You don't quite get a clear picture of the situation and just kind of go with it. See what happens. Hope that the Boy Scout in you kicks in when you need it to.

The trek went well, and with minor incident. I can honestly say that the bugs in the jungle were not as horrific as I had imagined in my nightmares. Emily close you ears, but the spiders WERE the size of dinner plates. Moonshine told us they don't go after people, just whatever lands in their web. Thats why you don't get up to pee in the middle of the night. They build webs at night. I am suffering from a bit of the Thailand tummy torture this morning. Too much swimming in rivers and eating fruit that resembles insects I suppose. Its not so bad that i wasnt able to get a Thai massage last night. 500 Baht for a 2.5 hour full body massage.(about 30 bucks) The good thing was that the money went to recently released prisoners from the Chiang Mai Women's prison. A rehabilitation into society program if you will. Yes, my massuse WAS a former criminal, and by lethal death grip she had (but it fel so good) she must have been in prison for murder.
But hey, in a place where "Thai massage" can have SOOOOO many connotations, its nice to know that this was strictly medicinal and had no "happy endings".

I am in Chiang Mai for a few more days, and then its back on the train south to Ayyuthaya (uh..thats not spelled right) I think I'll head to Cambodia around Nov. 1st. Ill keep y'all posted.
Until then! Happy trails!