trekking in thailand

picture this: we are in the middle of nowhere, having walked for many hours through the doi inthanon national park, staying in a hill tribe village with the native karen people and suddenly, after a few chang beers and thai whiskey shots (p.s., not a good combo), our trustee guide, neo, begins breaking out in song. this boy loves to sing and we caught him earlier in the day singing "my humps" which was hilarious because we had to explain what the song was about - but this time, at night, he begins to sing LIVING ON A F*CKIN PRAYER!!! we pretty much lost our shit and tried to take a video, but my camera was dead. booooo! it was the funniest ever watching this litttle thai dude belt out bon jovi. he knew the most random western songs and would sing to us and when he got tired of singing, he would tell us stories or joke about ladyboys.
the trek was amazing. definitely a challenge (we walked in total 28 km in three days in the hottest season here) with steep inclines and the constant threat of dehydration, but i made it and it was worth it. we stopped at a total of 3 waterfalls, all equally amazing and breathtaking (not to mention refreshing!). at the beginning of the trip we rode elephants which was pretty cool. not quite what i thought, but our guide on the elephant let us sit up front on its' head when all the other groups had to sit in the basket/seat thing. pretty cool. elephants LOVE bananas too and ours was greedy, constantly throwing its' trunk back towards us for more and when we didn't feed it, it would blow snot chunks on us...no lie. i had the hugest loogie ever on my arm and almost barfed. nasty. then it would splash us with stagnant water that i'm pretty sure was contaminated with a few foreign diseases and parasites - good thing we kept our mouths shut! at the end, we got to go bamboo rafting after riding in the back of a pick up truck (can you say sketch!?!). since it's the songkran water festival/new years coming up on the 12th everyone is all about splashing and i have a feeling we'll spend a few solid days being wet once it arrives. all along the river we rafted on kids were splashing us and laughing and we splashed back - very fun, very wet.
had no intentions of seeing livestock before we left, but all along the trek we encountered water buffalo, pigs, dogs and ..uh oh.... chickens. a little concerned about the whole bird flu thing as you're supposed to avoid live chickens at all costs (especially sketchy looking ones with no back feathers...?!?), but we figured they wouldn't be bringing tourists out there if there was any kind of risk. guess we'll have to just wait and see.... i'm sure we'll survive!
got back from the trek yesterday, exhausted, hungry and dirty! nevertheless, we met up the 9 other people we were trekking with and had dinner at the night bazaar, followed by some real muay thai boxing. wow. walked in just as a canadian dude was in the ring and fully knocked out his opponent and won the match. like, out cold - it took a few minutes for him to come to. we tracked down the canadian later to congratulate him and chatted for a bit about the fights, training and his stay in thailand. turns out we witnessed his first thai fight - not too shabby! the dude was huge though. towered over the thai guy. anyway, we watched probably 4 or 5 fights in total and it was pretty awesome, with the exception of the two 14 year olds kicking the crap out of eachother. even though it's an art, it's hard to watch kids go at it (apparently they fighth as young as 6). surrounding the ring is a row of bars/pubs/discos and we found ourselves a nice english run pub where one of the girls in our group decided we needed our proper thai initiation and ordered us "buckets". buckets are basically a mickey of sangsom (thai) whiskey (not nearly as harsh as JD, but same percentage), red bull and coke, or as i like to refer to them, barf in a bucket. it was soooo nasty but we drank them (you stick a bunch of straws in and pass it around) and needless to say after the 4th bucket, we were feelin' pretty licked. today is not so good, but a fresh mango smoothie this morning helped replenish some of those damaged brain cells. also in the thai boxing area, we had heard that following the fights there would be a ladyboy cabaret show. turns out there wasn't cause the fights ended late, but tonight there is one and we might just check it out with our group of trekky friends! the whole ladyboy phenomenon is a little odd here. i mean, it's just like transvestites, but it seems like every gay man in thailand dresses as a woman. and it's a bit confusing because i definitely spotted a few checking out not just ken, but me too. not sure what theyr'e after - not that we're interested. anyway, they're harmless and fun to watch them work it. our friend heather adn i actually danced to "hollaback girl" with a ladyboy - check that one off the list! it was kind of surreal dancing to gwen stefani in the middle of a muay thai fight, drinking buckets, in thailand. i definitely have to pinch myself every now and then to reassure me that this is real. we've had a lot of amazing experiences so far and the journey isn't even half over yet.
tomorrow we fly down to the gulf of thailand for some much needed r and r on the beach. even though we're on vacation, we've been non stop since we landed and spending some time in the sand with no schedule will come as a warm welcome. looking forward to trying some snorkelling and sea kayaking hopefully.
a la prochaine....