This morning bright and early I’m ready to head off, I’ve packed a real minimum of items and it all fits into my brand new rucksack, I’m very impressed and eagerly await Poo.
Poo arrives dead on time and as we wander away from the GH he tells me that it’s actually only me on the tour because the other person didn’t get back to him and he hasn’t been able to find them so would I pay an extra 400bht! I was more disappointed about it only being me on the tour than the extra money he was asking for and toyed with the thought of running up to the other tour office and doing the two hour elephant trek and boat trip tour. In actual fact Poo gave me a lift to their office but the more I thought about it the more I wanted to do more walking rather than riding so in the end opted for the lone tour and somehow managed to haggle myself out of 200bht!! I’ve no idea how I did this. When he originally asked for 400 more I said it was too much and I couldn’t pay that so he suggested 200 instead. I actually shouldn’t have paid any more at all, but I kinda felt bad for him and it did sound like a great trip with lots of walking. Can you see where this is going yet??
Dusit, my guide, meets us at the local bus station to take a bus to Mae Chang (I think it was) which takes around 45 minutes and we leave at 9.30am. When we get to Mae Chang Dusit says we’re going to have a look around the local market; now I love local markets but I wasn’t on a market tour!
It's not only the French that eat frogs!!
Dusit then wanted to take a song-thaw (a shared minibus) to Mae Salong but not until 11.00am so we were hanging around walking back and forth in this market till it was time to go. Finally we get in the song-thaw which takes us a further hours ride where we stop for lunch at a road side café before waiting for another tuck to take the last leg. When we arrive d in Mae Salong Dusit insisted on guiding me around more market stalls, all of these selling souvenirs! Ok I’m getting a little peeved off at this point and kindly point out that I really don’t want any souvenirs at the moment. The area is very well known for its tea and Chinese culture and a lot of the stalls were tea stalls where the ladies serving gave free samples of hot tea which was nice. Dusit found a stall where he seemed to know the lady and said we would rest for a while here! Rest? Huh? From what? We hadn’t done anything yet! Aaagh! All of a sudden the elephants and the boat trip were looking oh so very appealing.
At 2.30pm we eventually set off from the town on our trek towards the village. Now I am going to use the word trek very lightly from now on in as it really wasn’t, it was a moderate stroll at its very best!
Dead wildlife along the way!
The first hour was spent walking along a road before we arrived first to visit an Akha village. The village was nice to see, there were a couple of old ladies drying rice and peanuts who we bought a drink from and watched while the pre-school were just chucking out and around 10 very tiny kids came running through the village.
The local 7 - 11!
Preschool chuck out time!
We set off again and I asked Dusit how far he thought it was to the village where we were staying and he said an hour and half through the jungle. Ok, so not the several hours walking I had been promised but time was ticking on I guess. After about 20 minutes of walking along the road again we finally branched off and I thought great now perhaps we’ll get going! No such luck, where we had branched off was literally cutting a couple of corners off of the road and after 20 minutes my guide informed me we were nearly there! I have to say I was disappointed by the extent of today’s ‘trekking’. I think this tour is more a hill tribe visit than a trekking tour.
The other thing with doing this kind of tour on your own is of course the lack of someone else to chat to or experience it all with. Just me and a guide can be a little challenging at times.
When we arrived in the village and made our way to meet Jeva a few people came out to see what was going on but mostly there went about their everyday business which was nice and not a costume or neck ring in sight!
The 7-11 for the Lahu tribe
The house where we are staying is best described as on stilts and mostly made from bamboo with the roof covered in grasses or thatch. The house is just one room with a small area partitioned off at the end where the family sleep, the floor is covered in reed and bamboo and all lashed together for sturdiness. Inside the one room there is a stone platform with a fire burning and this is where all the cooking and socialising is done.
The men cooking dinner
Outside are more buildings, a rice store, the toilet, and a pig pen there was also a raised reeded platform where the washing of plates and clothes is done and bodies if you’re not too shy!
The rice store and washing platform
Each of the buildings are beautifully constructed with a thatched roof, even the pig pen! The village itself is a very pretty village, very traditional in design and material use.
Pigs!
There is no electricity supply to the village but many homes have solar panels than can run a single bulb in the main house, but not a TV or wii in sight! Heaven! Jeva lives here with his wife and two children, two girls 6 and 10 months. They have another three children but they’re away during the week at school in the local town. Dusit shows me around the village, we visited the school for the young kids not yet away to school, and the elders house. A little later back at Jeva’s house preparation for dinner begins in earnest by Dusit and Jeva. There is a constant huge pot of rice on the go and the men go about making a chilli sauce, fried eggs and tomatoes and stir fried vegetables. An amazing amount of food seemed to be being prepared and all of it freshly prepared and cooked.
The Lahu tribe, along with many Thais, sit on the floor rather than sit at tables and on chairs and in Jeva’s house or indeed anywhere I saw in the village there weren’t any chairs at all. Dinner is served around a round wicked table which sits around 10 inches off of the floor and we sit crossed legged around it.
Jeva’s wife didn’t join us for dinner tonight she was away somewhere else in the village with the baby but Ellenna joins us but only after I think she sees us enjoying the great food. There’s certainly no set regime for any of the kids it seems and apart from the fact there’s also not a great deal of discipline it really doesn’t seem to have done any of them any harm. There were absolutely no tears the whole time I was in the village and in actual fact Ellenna didn’t stop laughing and giggling the whole time I was there, she has a laugh just like Kates so was super cute the whole time, apart from when she was kicking the puppies of course!
I forgot to mention that, so outside the house there are chickens everywhere all with chicks and about six puppies curled up just below the veranda and a mother pig in the pig pen with about eight babies that can get out of the pen when they’re not feeding on the mum and somewhere there’s a tiny little kitten hanging around. Its brilliant because as well whenever someone is on the bamboo platform that serves as the washing up area every animal in the immediate vicinity is there waiting for any food that may drop, puppies, chickens, piglets and kittens! As well, under the house a lot of the animals hang out as any food that is dropped on the floor and not wanted in the house is simply pushed through the bamboo slats onto the floor below. It’s a great recycling plan.
The kids here seem very independent very early on and tend to do their own thing a lot of the time. Even the baby is left to stagger around on the open veranda while her mum is doing something else, I think they instinctively know from a very early age what’s safe and what’s not. Just before dinner I noticed Hellenna over on the washing platform dunking her head in a huge container of water, I thought she was just playing about and cooling down but then I saw her get the shampoo and 10 minutes later she comes back into the house spotlessly clean wrapped in a towel looking very cute and very grown up and five minutes later arrives back in a beautiful little jumpsuit, all on her own.
After dinner Jeva’s wife returns with the baby and has a bite to eat while a couple of neighbours turn up and help themselves to some rice and we all sit around while Jeva and Dusit chat away. It would have been nice if there had of been someone else with me at this point to wile away the time with. I was able to chat a little and join in with Jeva and his family, through Dusit, but it wasn’t easy and my Thai is nonexistent apart from hello and thank you! Instead I filled my time playing with Ellenna and marveling at the friendliness and hospitality of this family.
This evening, I’m fortunate, in that there is a wedding taking place which is very interesting. The wedding took place at the brides house and all their family and friends were crammed into the building, drinking orangeade, eating nuts and sweets and chatting and laughing.
The wedding ceremony
The village elder performs the ceremony and when he arrives he gets the happy couple to drink from the same glass before lighting a candle and wrapping white cotton around each of their wrists as a sign of good luck and then that’s it, job done! The ceremony took about 5 minutes, the guests didn’t stop chattering the whole way through and the bride was wearing a lovely black top accompanied by tracksuit bottoms. Just think of the money they saved on the dress! ;-)
It was a very interesting experience though and one I was privileged to be a part of and witness. The bit I’m glad I missed though was the killing of the chicken and the cooking and sharing of the food. We left as the chicken was being manhandled and protesting widely to it!
Back at Jeva’s house we chatted some more and drank hot tea and played with the kids.
Jeva and his wife checking out the British pound!
Jevas wife rolling a cigarette from babmboo
They prepared a sleeping mat for me and a blanket and I even got a mosquito net which was impressive although Dusit slept 3 foot away and didn’t have one so I’m not sure it was really needed but a very nice thought all the same. Hellenna had said she wanted to sleep with me under the net but in the end she was so tired out she fell asleep where she was and Jeva took her to her bed.
Now lets talk bugs! Now I have no real problem with the dark and certainly in a village like this I can’t see there being any major problems, that is until you decide to visit the loo to find two ‘massive’ spiders there happily eating cockroaches! I can’t imagine the spiders here are dangerous otherwise I’m sure Dusit would have said and I don’t mind spiders in general but these were huge and almost put me off the reason for visiting the loo!
Two massive loo guests!
To make up for it though on the short walk back to the house you get a fantastic star gazing experience, there are a few lone lights around and as such the sky is just amazing. Now if only they had wifi I could look up the constellations on my iphone! ;-)
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