lost in the jungle and other fun travel tales

Now that I’ve got your attention (well hopefully, I can’t think of too many more exciting subject lines than the one I just fed you), here is the scoop. So where to start? I suppose at the beginning. Or rather, where I left you dangling in suspense (or not) a few days ago. It is pretty long (as per usual!) All of it is about the trek, except the last paragraph which takes a rather sober turn, talking about Tuol Sleng, the genocide museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I think I will send a specific email on Tuol Sleng shortly for those who care to read it.

So sadly, the three musketeers have dwindled down to two, as Jayani left us after our sojourn in Koh Samui, so it’s just Arpun and I. We first ventured up to Mae Sot, which I won’t blame you if you’re not sure where it is because half the Thai people I meet have never even heard of it. It is a small town in central/northern Thailand very near the Burmese border. We came here for two reasons: first of all, trekking, and secondly, because I have a Karen friend in Canada (Karen are an ethnic minority in Burma and Thailand) who has friends/relatives in Thailand and who were able to set up a visit to a refugee camp where he used to attend school.
It was very kind of his friend to arrange for us to visit the refugee camp, especially since (I did not realize this until we were there) that we were being not-entirely-legal visitors (ie. quite illegal). This made me a little bit edgy, not only for my own skin, but also for the girl who was taking us in, because she does important work in the refugee camp, coordinating a bunch of youth activities, and so she was taking a big risk by letting us in. Actually it was surprisingly easy to get in and out; although there were half-hearted attempts at barbed wire barricades, most of the gates were wide open, with many refugees strolling along the highway. However, while this appeared to be freedom, it wasn’t, as there were checkpoints on either side of the highway traversing sprawling camp. The camp itself was a sprawling array of bamboo houses on stilts, traversed by narrow dirt roads, with the occasional random concrete one. We drove in partway, then walked when the roads got too narrow, avoiding the main streets so as to avoid being seen by any authorities. I have never felt so white and blonde in my life; it felt as if I were a bright flashing neon sign screaming: “foreigner! Does not belong here!”although no one really made me feel that way, I was actually surprised that no one seemed at all fazed by mine and Arpun’s appearance there; my discomfort was more a function of my paranoia of getting caught.
Next was our trek in Umphang, about a 3.5 hour drive from Mae Sot. Getting there was an adventure in itself; I am not normally one prone to motion sickness, although the incredibly tortuous road had me giving my seat a bruise from my white knuckle grip, longing for Gravol more than I’ve longed for anything in a long time. I wanted to ask to stop, but was afraid to open my mouth for fear that something more than words would come out. We arrived with my stomach contents intact, somehow.
The first day of our trek was not actually trekking, however, but instead a raft ride through some of the most beautiful scenery I have ever seen, anywhere. We went past a series of limestone overhangs, with water dripping from them in light curtains, the moss of the cliffs and overhanging roots and trees making an otherworldly scene that I have never seen anywhere in my life. Those few hours rafting alone made the trek worth the price we paid.

But little did we know how much more we had in store! On our second day after about an hour of rafting, we had about a 3-4 hour climb through the wet jungle. Wet mostly meaning the trail (but also the weather), which in parts was fine, but in parts meant trying to climb through thick, oh so thick and sticky (yet also incredibly slippery) goo. by now my pants were brown from the knees down. Every day, except the last, we arrived at our desination before lunch; the 2nd day we stayed near Bor Tor Lo Sue waterfall, Asia’s biggest and #6 in the world. However, it could not have been more different than Niagara; we were lucky we came in the rainy season because apparently during the dry season it’s quite small; but now it spilled all over the cliffside, down through trees and bushes, looking almost fake, or like someone had left the hose running a bit too long and there was some massive overflow. Our guide, Bao, took Arpun and I (we were the only 2 trekkers; and we had 2 guides, pretty good ratio!) up partway to see the falls; it was a bit sketch going knee-deep through a swift current right at the edge of a cliff bank where one of the waterfall tiers was, but worth it when we got to an amazing viewpoint. We spent the afternoon bathing among the different tiers of waterfall, enjoying that strange little yellow orb if my foggy memory serves me some people call “sun” that poked its head out for that afternoon; the rest of the trip, it seemed very shy to show itself.

The next afternoon we swam across a swift and strong river to enjoy some more waterfalls and crawl through some caves hidden behind the falls filled with beautiful white stalactites and stalagmites. We stayed at a Karen village, in a bamboo hut on stilts. And I had the rare fortune to not only see, but utilize something that people rarely have the chance to experience; an actual s*%t hole! (Sorry for the profanity). Yes, there was a (doorless) shed that you had to wade through knee-deep grass to use, with a squat toilet, which I don’t mind at all, but the fact that there was no water anywhere to flush it, plus the fact that it was stained an ugly, ugly brown (my optimistic side told me it was nothing but mud) made things unsavoury to say the least. Now don’t get a wrong impression of the villagers-they had their own toilets which once I tried I discovered were actually in amazing condition (amazing being a very relative term. It’s amazing when you think that a tiny wet squat hole in a hut too small to stand straight in would seem like a great quality toilet, but I assure you, it’s all a matter of perspective!)

Day 4 was the most adventuresome of all. It started off pretty interesting, with declarations of love from two guides (one Bao, one a guide with another party doing the same route), and all before 8 in the morning! But the real adventure started with about 30 min. of trekking through paddy fields on teeny tiny narrow paths on dikes about 1-2 feet wide that were so muddy and slippery that I nearly held my breath the whole way because I was concentrating so hard not to fall into the wet paddy below. But it was mostly an adventure because we got lost. Not once, but many times! We found out after the trek ended that we were supposed to have a different guide (which now it makes sense why none of them could speak a word of English, so I was very glad I spoke Thai; actually it made it more fun, since I got the chance to practice, because there was not really a choice.) So one of our guides, the 16-year old Ngeun (means “money”; ironically he is the more responsible of the two) had never been this route, and the 23-year old Bao had only done it barely a handful of times, and three years ago at that! And within the forest was a maze of various paths made by Karen people who live in the area. They don’t need road signs, but we certainly did! AFter trekking all the way up a mountain and down into a valley, we realized that the trail we’d been following just led to the hut. . Hmmm…..Then it started to pour rain. Ngeun took refuge in the hut, looking decidedly pissed as he puffed away on his cigarette, while for the first time in the entire trip Bao actually started breaking a sweat as he called out to see if anyone was around. Nada.

We decided to hike up another even muddier hill to see if we could pick up the trail from there, but no luck, so backtracking it was. I thought of tobogganing down the mudhill in my poncho, until I saw all the tree stumps sticking out from the slash ‘n burn. Maybe not. I did, however, still get a great slide in later in the day. I was trying to be all clever, avoiding an especially deep and watery mud pit by hiking up on the side. Ngeun came up with me, holding my hand to steady me on the slippery slope. Things were going splendidly. That is, until I fell. Down and down and down the mud slope, facedown, right on my stomach, pulling Ngeun with me, until we landed, splash! shin-deep in a lovely combo of water, cow poo and mud. mmmm….tasty!
It was another wrong turn that ended up costing us about an hour, and a few times Bao asking us which way we felt like going when we reached a fork (this is how sure he was of the path) before we amazingly made it to our digs for the night, a shelter for local cowherds on tall stilts. And we even had an entire welcoming committee of ants to greet us!

And lastly, I can’t forget to mention our extreme elephant ride. No seatbelts or safety bars as is the norm (there was a seat frame, though). And no boring flat path, either. Instead we forded a swift, deep river, up past the elephant’s belly, which was not even the scary part. The scary part was getting down to and up out of the river on the steep banks so muddy I could not get out of them without using my hands and feet (I’d gone down earlier to bathe but it was a bit futile because by the time I crawled back up the river bank I was nearly as muddy as before…) We were especially nervous because on its way over to pick us up, we’d seen the poor creature slip and slide down another slope. But miraculously, the elephant didn’t slip, and Arpun and I, thanks to our white-knuckle death-grips, managed to stay on top of the elephant rather than ending up underneath it as I’d feared.

On our last night, we played Crazy 8s with the guides (again! We played every night!) I think if I never play another game ever again, it will still be too much. It’s just that that was the easiest game I could think of to teach, and then they couldn’t get enough.

And our last day, of course, nothing can go smoothly. We’d had another (slightly more tame) elephant ride, although I’d had to wear my poncho so that all the bugs falling out of the trees didn’t land in my hair, but when we arrived, our pickup car was across a river too fast and deep for the elephant to get across. Bao and Ngeun had somehow arrived at the other side, and decided to try to bamboo raft across the river. It was quite entertaining, because every time they even started across, they got ridiculously swept downstream, so they had to abort, hop off, and try to pull the raft even further upriver. Why they had not appeared to have planned for the situation they knew they would encounter, I’m not entirely sure. But somehow they managed to pull it off.

On a more sober note, Arpun and I went to Tuol Sleng today, the infamous S-21 prison, where over 17 000 people were incarcerated, interrogated, and tortured for months before being sent to the killing fields for execution; only 7 people survived their stay in prison, mostly by making themselves useful (ex. photograph other prisoners). It was a very difficult experience and I cried a lot at the end. The most haunting were the photographs. I could barely look at the photos of the people who had been tortured to death, with their blank eyes and faces contorted in an eternal grimace of pain and supplication. Only slightly less disturbing were the prisoner’s identification photos of their faces when they first arrived at Tuol Sleng; mostly young people, between ages 14-25 I would say. All serious, sad, frightened, some defiant. One woman, a tiny baby cradled in her arms, had a single tear rolling down her cheek. She knew her fate. Others looked imploringly out, as if begging me here 30 years in the future, “please, help me!” The fact that all these young, innocent people died was horrible enough in itself, but the fact that they had to endure months of torture, fear, and pain, never knowing peace, was more than I could bear.

Well, I hope I have not depressed you too much, if I have, just go back and read the first part of my email again. And take care.

Heather