Hill Tribes of Thailand
Hiking Through the Rain
Forest
July 1992
My
sister, Kathy, told me that I was beginning to play life to safely. She told me
I had to take more risks. She said I was just traveling to Europe but I really
needed to expand my horizons. At the time I had four weeks of vacation in a
year and in her mind that was enough time to take a big ambitious trip.
“Don’t
be afraid to go to trip by yourself,” she told me. “You’ll meet people. Don’t
just travel to places your friends want to travel. Go where you want to go. Don’t
be such a coward”.
I
took her advice and booked a trip with Boulder Adventure, a travel company from
Boulder Colorado. I didn’t pay attention
to the name of the company and assumed the trip was geared towards people who were
hippie-like, like the people from Boulder. It wasn’t until the trip was over
that I finally read the name correctly and this trip really was a Bolder Adventure.
I
was to spend three weeks in Thailand. Five of those days would be in the
mountains in the high hills with a group of people who live so remotely they
are not even included in the Thai government census count. They’re left alone and they leave the rest of
the world alone, oblivious to the fast-changing pace of the rest of humanity.
Day One- Starting
the Hike
I
was never someone who appreciated the great outdoors. I never went camping. The
glaring sun bothered my eyes. Bugs annoyed me. I don’t like to hike. I liked to
take the bus through life.
So
when I found myself in Thailand about to embark on a five-day hike to the
rainforest I panicked. A lot. Really a lot. Holy shit. I can’t do this. I
probably could’ve used a little anxiety medication but none was available. So
my guide made the offer that I could stay behind in the quiet village of Chang
Mai and after five days somebody would come get me and rejoin me with the
group.
To
add to my anxiety, I had picked up a little food poisoning. So had Gail, another
woman on the group. So we had to spend the early morning at the local medical
clinic where I was most grateful for the antibiotics and electrolytes given to
us for just a few dollars. As my strength came back so did my carriage and I
decided to rough it with the others. But when are seven porters showed up, my
courage waivers again.
“Why do we need porters,” I ask in a confused
state.
“They
will carry our tents and food and water and everything else we will need for
the next couple days,” Rae told me. “You’ll just have to carry your small
pack.”
“Tents?”
“Well they’re really more like big mosquito
nets, not really tents,” she said casually.
I have never been in a tent. I never slept
outdoors. I thought we would hike a few hours to our lodge where we would sleep
in beds. I thought we would go to a place that maybe had toilets. I thought we
would do without TV but that would be okay.
But tents, I don’t do tents.
Rae
was now strongly encouraging me to stay behind. As I couldn’t believe what she
was telling me about the next couple days, she couldn’t believe what I was
telling her about my experiences or lack there of. She now saw me as one huge liability to the
group. She started telling me that there was no shaman staying behind. She
offered suggestions on what I could do with my time here. She began to speak as
if this decision was a done deal. Just
around that time my stubborn, self-defeating defiance kicked him. I was not
going to be left behind. I was coming along no matter what.
Then
Gail surrendered. She said she was just too weak to make the trip. I knew she
couldn’t make it. But she was 20 years older than me. I excused her decision to
stay behind because she was so damn old. But as for me I was going.
So.
mid-morning, we set off for our 5-day journey.
It was the seven porters, our local guide, our trip guide and the four
of us. We would be gone for five days and we would stop at a different village
each night and meet with the village chief and the shamans and the spirit men. Children were going to sing and dance for us.
And I was going to see a world that was beyond my realm of thinking. I was
going to throw caution to the wind. I
was going to suck up all of the hardships. And I was just going to put 1 foot
in front of the other. One step at a time. And as I ran out of clichés, I run
out of courage and energy. My feet ached and my calves ached and I had a
blister. And I was sweating profusely. The sweat was burning my eyes and we
were only one hour into the hike. One hour down, 119 hours until we got back to
civilization again. It was too late now. I couldn’t turn back. And I realized
maybe I should’ve swallowed my pride and stayed behind. I was already over my
head.
We
were on the move. We were moving slowly but we were moving. The rain forest is
slippery and dense. So sometimes we were traveling at a mile and a half an
hour. We fell a lot. We slipped in the mud. And we had sort of an unspoken
rule. We had to give our status report as we were falling. “I’m okay, I’m okay,
I’m okay,” we would inform the others.
“Do you need help getting up” one of us would
offer.
“Grab my bag” or “grab my camera” or “do you
see my walking stick” would be the usual response.
None
of us really suffered much more than a few scrapes and bruised pride. We would
get right back up, muddied and a little shaken but ready to move right on an
attempt to convey our fall was no big deal.
We
were told before we left to bring only one long pair of pants for the hike and
a pair of shorts for the evening and sleepwear. We also brought a long sleeve
shirt, a short sleeve shirt, two pair of the panties and our toiletries. We
were not encouraged to bring anything else because we had to carry it
ourselves. The others did bring camera equipment, journals, flasks of vodka,
flashlights and a book to read at night. As for me, I wanted to lighten my load
even more so I only brought one pair of panties in my sincere effort to carry a
lighter pack.
So when I scanned myself after three hours,
and saw my long pants caked with mud, I looked forward to the opportunity to
change into my shorts later. It would feel great to have something dry and
clean on right now.
We are now three hours into our journey and a
big first event was creeping up on me. I have to relieve myself and I
have never urinated outside before. I wasn’t going to see a toilet for five
days. And my old Catholic school bladder that once had an eight-hour capacity
has diminished to maybe four hours on a good day. That gave me one hour to figure
out what to do. But the more focused on the task at hand, the more urgent the
urge to go got. I looked around to assess the situation. We were walking a
straight line and there is no cleared sheltered area. I don’t see any obvious
options.
“Rae,” I whisper. I” have to go to the
bathroom”.
“Okay go ahead,” she says, “you don’t need my
permission”.
“Well, where do I go?”
“What do you mean”, she asks a bit confused.
“I’ve never done this before. Do I just
pullover?”
“You’ve never done what before?” She really
can’t understand what I’m asking.
“Gone to the bathroom outside”, I tell her a
little embarrassed.
“You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
“Nope.”
“You should’ve stayed behind”. She said in a
joking tone but I don’t really think she was joking. “Go to the end of the line.
We’ll keep walking and catch up with us”.
Grateful
for her instructions, I stayed behind and waited until everyone was completely
out of view. At that moment we were trudging down the hill. I dropped my
backpack in front of me, squatted and started to relieve myself when I realized
that it was a mistake to put my backpack in front of me. I snatched up just in
time to save it from getting drenched in my own urine. But my quick action
caused me to lose my balance and my knees took the brunt of it. I stumbled forward. I was now covered in mud
and urine. Needless to say this first event didn’t go well.
I caught up with the group and Rae wanted to know
how was my first time.
We
spent the afternoon picking leeches off of us even though we covered all of our
skin as best we could. These insidious bugs creep through our sleeves and pant
legs and bore themselves into our skin. They filled up on our blood. And when
we pulled them off of us, they burst open and splatter blood all over us. No
matter how hard we try to secured openings in our clothing, they found a way to
our drill into our skin.
After
six hours we finally made it to our first village. We were going to sleep that
night in the log house, the common lodge for all the villagers. The lodge was
nothing more than a long bamboo floor about 40’ x 20’. There was a bamboo wall
on one side and a flat roof. The lodge was built on stilts and rested about 8
feet above ground. To get up there we had to climb a bamboo ladder that had six
or seven inconsistently placed prongs. So climbing up was a struggle. This was
going to be home for tonight and I was so so grateful for their kind
hospitality.
We
were invited to change into our evening attire of a clean T-shirt and clean
shorts. It was a bit uncomfortable for all of us as we watched the villagers
watch is change our clothes right in front of them. Many of them had never seen
white people before. And the village women were bare breasted so they couldn’t
quite get what a bra was. The sight of our bras brought inquiry and laughter. I
felt as if I was on exhibit like being at the zoo but this time I was the
animal on display.
I have a seat on the floor and near me was the
opium man, an old man curled up in a fetal position with a water pipe entwined
around his long, thin fingers. His fingernails were long and dirty. He wore a
tattered, stained red sarong. His chest was hollow and hairless. So what’s his
head. And his eyes were watery and yellowed. They stared back and forth as he
sucked from the tube of the pipe.
A
man sitting next to him spoke to our local guide. “He wants to know if you want
some” said the guide. I looked at opium man. His lips were chapped and cracked.
His blood was on the tip of the pipe. I’m not a smoker. But I was hurting. And
this was the only relief in sight. I contemplated the offer for a second but
then I reneged. This was not the time to start experimenting with opium. I need
my wits about me if I was going to survive these next five days.
We spent the evening listening to the village
chief say something. This would be translated to a dialect that our local Thai
guy understand. Then he would translate that to us in English. Needless to say
the conversation was a little slow and hard to follow.
Suddenly
I felt a sensation on my rear end. I felt a tickling movement. I ignored it but
then I felt it again. I didn’t know what to do since there was no private place
to retreat. We were in a large wide open room, all of us together. So I got up
and moved away from the crowd. As discreetly as I could I slid my hand down the
back of my pants. I felt something
slimy. I shot my hand right out of my pants and panicked. What the hell was
down there? I took inventory again and again
felt this thing. I had a damn leech boring into my ass. now what I do? I needed to get the damn thing
out of me and I needed help. What how do you ask the strangers to get a damn
leech off your damn fat ass?
I
didn’t ask for help. But I didn’t surrender all sense of dignity. On my own I pulled and pulled until I got all
or at least most of that thing out of me. My hand was bloody and I have nowhere
to clean myself. So I had to take my bottled water and clean myself off right
there in the middle of the Chief’s riveting speech on the spirits of the
ancestors of the village.
No
sooner had I finished my self surgery when Amy realized that she too was
hosting a leech on her ass. Unlike me, she asked for help. So I hold a
flashlight. Her husband pulled her pants down and held her. And Rae took a lit
match to the leech and burn him out.
Relieved Amy pulled up her pants. I noticed her shorts were covered by a ring of
blood. So I looked at my own shorts and realized my shorts were in the same bloody
condition. Now I had a long pair of pants covered in mud and a pair of shorts
covered in the blood and one pair of panties. It was going to be a long five
days.
THIS STORY WILL CONTINUE TOMORROW.
