Two days ago I embarked on yet another once in a life time experience. This time it was trekking through the Thai jungle to visit different hill tribe villages, ride an elephant and bamboo raft down a river. All this action was packed into just two days, with one night spent in the jungle.

We were taken to meet the guides and the other people on our trek (two french girls and a guy) then set off from Chiang Mai around 10:00 in the morning. Our first stop on the way to the jungle was a local market so our guides could buy some food to cook up for dinner that evening. The market was amazing with so many different types of food and the guide walked us around explaining things as he went.

One of the first stalls he took us to was selling Iguana meat, intestines and chicken innards – umm yummy! Then he showed us some of the bugs they eat, insisting they were tasty. Before leaving Korea Emily had insisted she would try a cricket, but faced with them she wasn’t quite so keen and we both decided snacking on chocolate seemed like a much better option! The guide also showed us some edible bamboo and a mushroom stall. He said when people collect mushroom in the jungle they can tell if they are poisonous or not by mixing them with water If the water turns black that means the mushroom are poisonous.

After we’d looked around the market and bought some water for our trek it was onto the first experience of the day, the Mork Fa waterfall. This was a spectacular looking waterfall with a very shallow pool underneath. It was possible to swim in the waterfall but not having any swimming clothes and not wanting to be wet for the trek I opted not to. There was so much spray coming from the mass of water falling over the rock I got a good cooling off just watching  the others swimming.

Once we been to the waterfall we stopped at a roadside cafe for a dinner of fried rice and vegetables before moving on to the beginning of the trek. This took us into the Bong Duet national park where our first stop was the Pong Duat geyser. Here it is said the water coming out of the ground can reach temperatures in excess of 90 degrees. Just getting close to the geyser you could feel the air temperature rise, it was certainly am amazing sight to behold. From there we began our trek into the jungle.

The trek began with a long climb up a very steep hill. Before we were even half an hour into the trek I was dripping with sweat and very very hot. This I was to find would last until we reached the camp for the night and peeled our dripping sweat soaked clothes off.

As the hill got steeper and steeper I hoped it wouldn’t be like that the whole way as I don’t think I’d have made it if it was. Luckily just as I was drastically over heating the hill evened out giving me a well earned break walking along flatter ground for a bit.

The walk took us through many different types of jungle from thick green leafy jungle to wider paths with just a few trees around. The ground changed from dark mud to read mud, wet to dry each time giving us something new to look at and try to remember before the scenery changed yet again. Throughout the entire walk we could here the noises of the jungle. The most prominent of these was a fly thing apparently belonging to the beetle family. The guide said it was called Zacada (but he didn’t know how to spell it so that spelling is almost definitely wrong) which made a noise akin to that of an 80’s style computer game. it was very bizarre.

We passed through our first hill tribe village after walking for about half an hour. It was a Karen tribe village but I only caught a glimpse of two people there. One was a little boy who turned on his heel and ran as soon as he saw me, the other was a woman doing her washing.

The next village was also a Karen tribe village. It was supposed to be the village where we stayed for the night, but when we arrived there the guide recommended we continue walking to the elephant camp and spend the night there instead. Once again we barley got a glimpse of the village and it’s people.

We arrived at the elephant camp dripping with sweat and utterly exhausted just as the light was fading. We had been walking for four hours and now had the arduous task of showering in a bamboo hut using a bucket of water in the dark. Luckily candles were provided and we were soon washed and feeling much better.

The guides cooked us a fantastic dinner of curried chicken and potatoes and two different types of stir fried veg with pineapple for desert. All of it was delicious and after sampling some moonshine whisky we all retired to bed in our long bamboo hut with full stomachs and ready to sleep.

* Posted by j150vsc on 06/07/2007.