Jungle Trek

Turns out we didn't miss the bus from Chiang Mai. We arrived at 230 for the departure of the last bus at...230. It turned out to be a minibus, and it was full (very tight). After a decently uncomfortable 6 hours, we arrived in Mae Hong Son. It was already late, and in order for Morten to be able to do a 3 day trek and make it in time for his bus to Bangkok, we needed to leave the next day. Rudi had heard of a good tour guide, so we decided to find her. By shear luck, she had a poster up in our guest house. We called her, and arranged to leave the next morning.

The hiking was heavy. The guide was a jungle expert, and the trail was pretty sparsely used (which was why she had to cut through a lot of it with a machete). I think the trail was used sometimes by the hill tribe people, and nobody else. We spent a lot of time crawling over, under, or around bamboo trees, and splashing up the river. For the first 30 minutes of the trek we tried to keep our feet dry. This was funny, because after we gave up and just got our shoes wet, we spent maybe 85% of our time hiking up the river, in the river. A lot of the time the ground cover came up over our heads, and there was quite a bit of communing with nature (bugs included).

The first day we hiked about 6 hours to a cave where we stayed the night. It was just the 3 of us and the guide, and she didn't bring any pots or pans, plates, utensils, anything. We cooked everything inside bamboo. When we got to the cave, we went out and collected some dead bamboo for firewood and she cut down some green bamboo. She made everything from those bamboo trees and her machete. The bands you see on the outside of the tree are places where it's actually solid through, the rest of it is hollow. You can use the segments to hold water (or rice and water, plugged with a banana tree leaf). She made plates by cutting a section and splitting it axially down the middle. She also made cups and a little scooper/spoon thing. Then we made a lot of rice and three different soups, as well as some tea from the skin of a vine she cut during the hike. This took a while, but I felt like survivor man. Well, I felt like I was on a trek with survivor (wo)man as my guide. It was impressive. We covered the floor of the cave with banana leaves and hunkered down with our sleeping bags. I was tired. I actually slept pretty well, for being in a cave. The next morning was eggs and toast, again cooked in bamboo. We ended up drinking a lot of river water, and no one got giardia! (yet)

The cave where we slept

The next day we hiked another 6 hours. It was sunny all morning, then shortly after some thunder rumbles, it started absolutely downpouring (just to prove it was an honest to goodness rain forest?). Luckily, we had ponchos with us that kept our sleeping bags mostly dry. Everything else had already been soaked from sweating and river splashing.

We finally arrived at her brother's house on a rice farm. After dinner, breakfast, and lunch cooked in bamboo, I was pretty excited to see that they had a real pot for cooking (no matter how cool the bamboo trick is). We slept upstairs on a deck type area. The whole house was made of bamboo. I think these people could build a space ship out of bamboo.

Since we were "fast walkers", we finished the last day of hiking in 3 hours. Got back into town at 130, just in time for Morten to shower and catch his 3:00 bus. Rudi and I went and ate cheeseburgers. And fries. It was delicious.

The snake vine she cut to make the tea

Rudi, Me, Morten

Tomorrow I try my luck at getting to the border town of Mae Sot. I'd like to go to Burma for a day.