Hilltribe Trekking

I've been trekking up north for the past few days with two other Aussies and a Scottish couple and have never gotten so dirty in all my life. I am a walking slab of mud! But I had such an awesome, eventful experience. Here are a couple of highlights...

After climbing a waterfall (twice in two months!) we ate lunch with a Tibetan hilltribe before trekking through some breathtaking scenery and passing through a few remote villages, where long-standing traditions and tribal laws are still adhered to and where such things as electricity are non-existent. The tribes living in these villages originate from Myanmar, Tibet, South China and Mongolia and have until recently relied on opium and amphetamines as a primary source of income - the Thai government has come down hard on the drug trade in recent years and apparently thousands of tribe members have been killed as a result. I felt a little uncomfortable 'watching' these tribes, as to me it seemed almost like a human zoo, however I was assured by our knowledgeable guide that part of the profits from the trek go to the villages and that outside interest in the tribes has prevented the Thai government from forcing assimilation.

We stayed overnight in one village belonging to the Palong (?) tribe. They cooked for us and the women and children performed a few songs and dances, which was hilarious since the kids were buggered and weren't performing with a great deal of enthusiam, much to the annoyance of the proud elders. They in turn asked us to sing a song for them yet we all came down with the fits of the giggles and were unable to grant their wishes. They were looking at us puzzled, which only served to make us laugh all the much harder. They are terrible, those moments when you can't stop yourself from laughing!

For about 15kms I rode on the head of an elephant through forrest and rugged farmland... that was a test of balance! With the Scottish couple sitting on a chair behind me, I tried so hard not to fall off or to faint when the elephant in front kept farting (nothing stinks more than elephants' farts!!!). We got a bit of a soaking as well, when our elephant felt the need to have a drink from a stream and sprayed us with half of what it's lonk trunk soaked up.

We sailed down a river on bamboo rafts for about an hour this morning, which would have normally been a very relaxing journey, however the guy paddling my raft wasn't what one would call normal. While the other paddlers seemed to be calm and careful, mine decided to jump off the raft ten minutes into the journey and lunge at a water-snake while I was left on the raft without a paddle. He eventually swam back to the raft and handed me the half-alive snake to hold, assuring me it was too far gone to bite. Then while the other paddlers stopped their rafts as we approached a huge fallen tree and advised the other Aussies and Scots to hop off while they lifted the raft out of the water over the tree, my paddler decided to be adventurous and steered the raft straight for the tree. He screamed 'duck!' and so I did, protecting my head with my arms, and after being scraped by the overhead branches and knocked on the elbows with another (I have a huge black bruise now!) we came out the otherside where the others were looking at us in horror. After that little episode, the other paddlers had a bit of a go at my paddler, after which the rest of the journey was smooth sailing... although I was still holding the snake!

What else??? Oh, I stacked it big time on a pebbly path! That was quite embarassing haha.