Adventure Trekking in Thailand

July 07, 2016

Adventure Trekking in Thailand - Part I

Day 10-11 – June 23-24, 2016

Thursday - Friday

Nature is loud. It's 6:30am in the jungle near Mae Win, Mae Wang, about two hours drive southwest from Chiang Mai city. It's pouring rain. The crickets are chirping. The birds are singing and the dang rooster has been cock-a-doodle-doing since 4am. We are sleeping under mosquito netting in an open-air bamboo hut with a tin roof and a shared bathroom. The past two days have been a crazy little adventure. We have been trekking through the jungle in the hills of the Karen hill tribe villages.

On Thursday Boon and Kwan picked us up from the Lanna Hill House at 7am and we loaded our stuff into the back of a mini pick up truck with two benches on the sides and a metal roof. This was going to be our transportation for the next few days. No seatbelts or air conditioning—just some cutout windows in the plastic cover and some metal bars to hold on to so you don't fall out the back when we go over bumps.

It was a two and a half drive with a stop over at a local market for supplies. It was bumpy and hot and uncomfortable but still kind of fun. We sang songs and talked and tried to keep the little boys from fighting.

We arrived at a little house down an alley with a covered carport full of bikes and it was time to cycle through the Thai countryside. We all had bikes except Mikey who's still not confident enough for a ride like this. Jeff pulled him behind his bike in a little chariot. He loved it! Isaac was jealous after about 30 minutes of riding. It was unbelievably hot but the biking seemed to go in and out if the sun a little and the breeze from riding fast gave us a bit if relief. We stopped at the bottom of a Buddhist temple set high above on the hill. We thought it was just a little water break with a nice view. But turns out we had to ride to the top! It was so steep we had to get off and push our bikes. Kate and Isaac had hit their wall. It was hot and they were tired! Our guide, Boon, had to push Isaac's bike to the top for him. We cooked off under a pavilion at the top but Isaac couldn't pull it together yet. It took about 10 or 15 minutes and a stop off at a little store to buy some lays potato chips and a can of cold orange Fanta and then he just snapped back and decided he was going to finish first. He cycled the rest of the way

in the very front and never complained again! I was so proud of all of the kids for pushing through the heat. We were all dripping with sweat by the end of our two-hour ride and anxious to go bamboo rafting!

It was a picturesque jungle river in some parts. But it was sad to see so much trash on the banks of the river. We have seen no public trashcans in Thailand. Finding a garbage is almost impossible it feels like. I assume there isn't the infrastructure of city garbage collecting. I think there are dumps and I see a lot of burn bins by houses and we've seen a few garbage trucks but there is litter everywhere.

We changed into our swimsuits in the back of our canopied pick and headed to the river. We split up into three bamboo rafts, each with a boatman steering with a bamboo pole. I hate to say it but even though the river was dirty, it still felt good to cool off after the bike ride. We ran some small rapids and spent the hour looking for water snakes and splashing the cool water onto our legs. Jeff and Kate's raft floated down the whole river about 6" under water.

The road to the Karen village was steep and rutted and we bounced around in the back of the truck. "Bring all valuables" they told us as we got out to hike the last hour to the village with our passports and electronics shoved into our daypacks while the truck took the rest of our stuff. The cool temperature in the forest felt so good and Boon showed us all different kinds of plants and trees.

We settled into our bamboo hut and played with the chickens and fed the piglets and watched the villagers working in the rice paddies and took in the beautiful scenery of this jungle mountain valley. Sitting on the edge of Boon 2’s garden (our host in the Karen village was also named Boon) and looking out over the valley filled with rice paddies was a perfect place to sit and ponder and meditate. No wifi. No distractions. I sat on the ground with the kids and we just talked while we watched the happenings across the valley and imagined what it would be like if we had been born in this village.

That night we did a full-on Anthony Bordain style cooking lesson in Boon 2’s cooking hut. We sat on bamboo mats and cut vegetables on cutting boards made from tree trunks. We minced garlic by smashing it with a machete and then we cooked curries and stir-fries over an open fire inside Boon’s bamboo hut. I loved that the kids all wanted to help, especially with the cutting (which made me a little nervous being 3 or so hours from a hospital if anyone accidentally took off a finger). When the food was done, we all sat on the bamboo mat on the floor and ate. The food was probably the best we’ve had so far in Thailand. The whole experience was amazing! Jeff was in heaven! He only wished we had a camera crew there to capture the whole thing!

Walking back to our hut we could see a few lightning bugs floating through the air around us. After using the rustic facilities (an actual toilet (bonus)! in a bamboo hut with a plastic roof and lots of spiders. It also had a PVC pipe for a cold shower. No sink or soap and we had the only roll of TP in the whole village), we collapsed onto our mats on the floor and tucked our mosquito netting around us and listened to the cacophony of sounds outside that I would venture to say almost rivaled the decibels of midday traffic in Bangkok! Frogs, crickets, cicadas, birds, rushing water to irrigate the rice paddies and roosters at 4am.