stairs for our big “American” breakfast (Just about every menu has a breakfast item called “American breakfast", kinda funny). After that we jumped in the back of a pick up, mexi style and headed out! After about 45 minutes of a bumpy ride we stopped at a market to pick up some food, headlamps, TP, and whatever else seemed necessary. Hopped back in our luxury vehicle and drove another hour on some pretty windy roads. The first interesting part of the drive was when the driver came to a screeching halt, jumped out of the truck, grabbed the nearest stick of bamboo and started smacking a poor little snake (actually a poor GIANT snake) that was just trying to cross the road- apparently the driver LOVES snake and saw his dinner darting across the street, obviously he has to pray on it.
We finally made it to our first destination, a whiskey e finally made it to our first destination, a whiskey distillery. It may sound like we had just arrived at some nice, indoor, air conditioned spot, but that is not how they make whiskey here in Thailand, just out in the open air, brewed in plastic garbage cans, free for all bugs and animals to come get a drink whenever they feel like it. But that sure didn’t stop us from trying a few shots of it (at 9am). Just how we like it, nice and warm! After the tasting they offered some bottles for sale at 60 baht, $2 per bottle. The samples we tried were oh so delicious - we all had to buy a bottle for the trek.
From the distillery we continued 4-wheel style off into the jungle. Now it's time to start trekking. Mr. Ton, our tour guide, handed all of us a belt with a machete and sling shot, it was up to us to hunt for some ammo aka little rocks or pebbles, so badass. For the next hour we trekked through jungle sling shot in one hand and machete in the other launching our ammo at every moving leaf, bird, branch, rock, or lizard that caught our attention. Don't worry none of us had any success... Not even close! Next thing we know there is randomly some huge piles of fresh “elephant dung” in the trail and BAM! Two huge elephants right there in the
middle of the jungle that would be giving us a ride through the next couple hours of trekking. Half the people jumped on the two elephants and the other half kept walking behind. After about an hour it was our turn to jump on. There was a little bench tied on the elephant’s back (sad) that Cory and I sat on. It felt a little unstable and was quite a bit higher up than we were expecting it to be! I decided right away that this was not going to be the ride of my life, especially since we were on little, narrow, steep trails that seemed extremely unrealistic for an elephant to be tromping on. Each time the elephant would ta
ke a step Cory and I would lean from one extreme to the next. About 5 minutes in my hands were dripping in sweat, one clenching the side of the bench and the other gripping a hand full of Cory’s shorts. All I could think about was how screwed I would be if I fell off. Oh, and it didn’t help that right before we rode the elephants we watched one of them crush a whole coconut with it’s foot like it was a plastic easter egg. GREAT, imagine what it would do to someones head! At this point, Cory is laughing so hard he could barely speak. In my mind - this was no laughing matter! My plan was to leap on to the next tree the elephant squeezed past and shimmy my way down to safety. However, I didn’t want to live the next two days of trekking as the chicken so I toughed it out. The elephants took multiple breaks to either make a new river, or throw in another obstacle for our trekking experience. The elephant we were on chose to give everyone walking a little breeze…. It let out the biggest and longest toot I have ever, EVER, heard in my life. It took me a few seconds to realize what the little cutie pie was doing before I started laughing hysterically! We could not hold in our laughter if we had tried to. After that I decided the elephant ride was worth it.
The sun was setting and the crew was getting tired. I think we were all starting to wonder if we were ever going to get to the village. Our guide had been working on these bamboo croquet looking tools for quite some time and he then explained that they were our rat traps and that we would set them along the river and come back out at night to gather our rats. So at this point we knew we had to be getting close – we set the traps and kept on trekking… Next thing we knew Mr. Ton flips a log over – looked like the kind of log that they may have used back in the day as a bridge during rainy season but Mr. Ton wanted us to get it back to camp to use it as a bench! So sure enough the five dudes in the crew all manned up and carried the damn thing the rest of the way out of the jungle. When we made it out we set the log down and used our machetes to remove all of the bark – this is where Lindsay
did her part (she loves picking at things). Once we made it back we installed what turned out to be a crucial part of the campfire benches considering we had 10 people on the trek. It was time to crack of a bottle of the that homemade Thai Whiskey and share some campfire stories. Turns out we got really lucky with the crew and everyone had great traveling stories and awesome adventures to add to the conversation while we passed the bottle around.
After a fare amount of whiskey and an amazing dinner we mounted up the headlamps and went back out into the jungle to see if we had caught any rats for dessert. One of the villagers came with us this time and between him and Mr. Ton they had an amazing ability to spot some crazy wildlife out there! We didn’t end up getting any rats but we had a hell of a time tromping through the wilderness in the middle of the night.
The next day was another full day of trekking through the woods only this time we were hiking along a really cool little cre
ek with waterfalls and swimming holes all along. We stopped and had lunch at one of the swimming spots during the hottest part of the day and we all carved up some bamboo drinking cups to help pass the time. After the sun had calmed down a bit we set back out and this time it was a long haul up and over the second highest peak in all of Thailand – incredible views! The village the second night was crazy, I am not sure who had control of the place the villagers or the animals – literally hundreds (if not thousands) of chickens, pigs, dogs, cows, buffalo, roosters and cats roamed free at this place pissing and shitting all over the entire area… Not the most sanitary area we have seen while traveling - but hey, it's free fertilizer. It was kind of a rough night sleep because the roosters must have been co
nfused and started crowing around 3AM…
Day 3: We woke up to another amazing meal and set out. Today we were heading to the river and we were going to hop on a few bamboo river rafts and float our way back to civilization. I am not sure if mentioned this earlier but when we said “non-tourist” trek we meant it – when we first signed up we figured that was probably bullshit but they were right. We did not see a single person that was not a native hill tribe villager for the entire duration of the trek! It was a short trek into the rafting village on the river followed by an awesome few hours of rafting down the river!
That pretty much wraps up the trekking experience – we both would recommend trekking to anybody that comes out to Thailand and we would do it again in a heartbeat. There were a lot of difficult and uncomfortable moments but it was one of those experiences you can look back on and really appreciate!
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