Hill Tribe Trek cont..

Day 2: We woke up in the early morning after a restless sleep on the hard bamboo floor and after a freezing shower and the usual sitting around staring with crazy hair that occurs early in the morning Dad and I walked around the village a bit more. We got fairly lost in the village of people who, despite their relative proximity to Thailand's second largest city didn't speak much Thai, let alone English enough to tell us where our group was. The village was kind of like those gated communities where every house looks the same, except here the houses were made out of bamboo and the roofs of straw.
The first day of hiking had killed the group, and I'm pretty sure Bo had a hangover from all the whiskey he drank the night before so we took it easy with the hiking that day. Before we started our hike along the river however, we visited the local school. It was closed because it is summer over there but because the bamboo isn't so tight, we could see a bit through the cracks. It had two normal sized rooms, one classroom and one office for the teacher. There was one teacher for the entire village and about 30 children in the school. Because there were not enough students of any one age to fill a separate grade, nor enough teachers for divisions, school was the same for everyone ages 5-18. The school was fairly bare save a small bulky TV in the classroom and cages filled with rabbits in the teachers office for the children to play with.
The hike wasn't strenuous, or at least not as bad as the preceding day, rather it was scenic and deep in the heart of the jungle. It felt as though we were transported into one of those great Vietnam was movies- Platoon or Apocolypse Now or something. It wasn't hard to imagine rifles slinged accross our backs, dirt smudged accross our cheek bones and the distant noises of the Vietcong driving our thirst for blood. However, the trek wasn't as violent as my Vietnam fantasies.
After an hour or two of hiking in the early afternoon we settled at a beautiful cascading waterfall with a sandy bottom from the immense force of the falls crushing the rocks below. We dropped our stuff off at the hut we'd be staying in that night, literally seconds away from the lanky falls and took a nice dip in the small but refreshing waters. The Argentinians climbed the slippery rocks to a nice pocket around 15 feet up into the falls as we looked on anxiously below. Bo seemed especially nervous because he was liable for any injuries yet we were all laughing and having a good time.
That night was mostly spent talking around the table outside our hut and playing with the little girl who lived with her family there. The family there was from the Lahu villiage and sold little things for the tourists in this pitstop along the trek route. Although not the most refreshing of foods after a long mountain hike they sold oreos and lays potato chips (including seaweed flavored ones) and of course lots of beer which is where they made most of their profits. The little girl was the best though, an adorable little 3 year old girl from the hills, she had made playmates out of the tourists as she had no one near her age to play with and 22 year old backpackers were good enough for her. We called her Suri, in part becasue we couldn't really ask her her name and in part becasue she had a mysterious likeness to Tom Cruise's daughter.
On Saturday we spent the early morning at the falls talking to some British girls coming through with a guide on a private tour. They were very friendly, two from Yorkshire and one from London. We had the conventional backpacker conversation we had had many times before (eg. where are you from? Where have you been? Where are you going?) but these girls were halarious with their accents and we got a chance to talk with some people besides the ones in our group. Later in the day when we went white water rafting for an hour we happened to be put in a raft with the Brits while the girls in our group took a raft together. We didn't really have a chance to talk over the rapids but when we were through with the white water we got a chance to take a nice leisurly ride down the river on bamboo rafts where I got a chance to talk with one of the girls more. She told me about this program in Northwest India where she taught preteens theatre for 8 weeks. She talked about the independence she was granted, the learning experience she recieved and how much she gave to the children there. It sounded so appealing I really want to do it now at some point but Dad didn't seem so hot on the idea. We'll see.
After a delicious Pad Thai lunch we hopped in the Song Thoew and went to our final stop of the trip, the long neck Karen villiage. We were not terribly excited to go to the villiage, a small set of bamboo stores managed by a small offshoot of one of the hill tribes famous for their extremely long necks. The area was supposed to be a bit too much like a human zoo and the circumstances around their long necks weren't exactly cheery. The men in the villiage wanted to protect their beautiful women from being stolen away, so in an effort to make them ugly the men place golden brass rings around their necks every year starting from around 5 years old and continue to increase the amount year by year, only cleaning the neck on the New Years. The long necks look painful and standing around all day while people take pictures of you does not seem very appealing at all. After talking withe Bo however we realized that the women made their money through the tourism and sitting around was a much better job then whatever they would be doing otherwise, farming or weaving all day. They were pretty facinating too, they had loads of jewlery strung about them and the golden rings on their long necks glistened in the sun. I felt very mixed but I'm helping to pay for their food and shelter by visiting so I guess I don't feel horrible.
This was our last stop and after a long ride back to the hotel we said goodbye to the girls, got their email addresses and left back to the Secret Garden in Bo Sang, the famous umbrella villigae. We stayed in that night but packed as we were leaving the next morning to a full day of adventure and we were going to be moving to the more central Holiday Inn much closer to the center of town than remote Bo Sang.

I'll update what we did yesterday later. Until then I have to go work on my SAT study, finish my book and savor the last bit of Thailand before we leave to Hong Kong tomorrow for 3 days before coming back home.

Sneak peek of the next entry: Elephants painting, ATVs, A giant temple on a hill and one of the world's biggest night markets.