I was excited to go to the mountains to see different villages and see how tribal people live day-to-day. I was even more excited, however, to ride some elephants and go bamboo rafting! We left on Thursday and came back on Friday. I must say, I have never done, seen, or experienced that much in just two days before – it was AMAZING. Probably the best two days of my life :]
We all separated into vans and off we went. There were 9 of us in our van and our Thai van driver was pretty cool. He busted out some old school music, such as BSB (Backstreet Boys), Brittney Spears, and Westlife. After we figured out we had a TV in the car, we asked if he had any movies, but he said no. HOWEVER, he did pop in a karaoke cd (IN English) and also had a microphone (soo cool), so we all sang and danced along (even our driver sang and danced…yes, while driving, so safe). It was EPIC. Best 3 hours I’ve spent in a car.
Our van!
After three hours of driving and stopping for lunch, we made our way to the Mong village. We were introduced to the leader of the Tribe and then he spoke to us (our guide was our translator – the leader dude only spoke Mong). He then had one of the village people do a welcome dance while playing an instrument. He did these crazy moves and all this stuff on the floor while playing his music…it looked hard.
We then walked through the village, which was pretty quiet. It was kind of a bummer that no one was there (everyone was out working in the fields at that time) so I couldn’t really see how that village functions, but oh well. There were a few things I noticed about the village while walking through:
Dirt roads = very dusty
Tons of chickens & roosters
Clothes hanging everywhere
Not a very big village…at least it didn’t seem like that
Everything was super close together (housing)
Houses were made out of wood – seemed really flimsy
There were a lot of satellite dishes (maybe only for the rich Mong? I didn’t see any TVs…)
After our walk through the village, we endured on an epic hike to the Karen village. Each group was lead by a Karen villager. Our guy was full of facts…for example, he’d stop at certain plants and trees and explain what their leaves did or gave us fruit from them…he even climbed a tree and shook these weird berry things out for us (the things were round & hard, and they hurt my head when they all fell!).
It was a nice hike. We asked our Karen dude if the villagers used the same trail we were walking to get to their village when they leave, but he said not anymore. He said they used to, but now it’s for tourists. There were all these crazy man-made steps (ranging from rocks to bamboo sticks) and all these obstacles in the way. There was also a mote of water that we saw later on…it just seemed random since it felt like we were in the middle of the jungle.
About halfway through our hike, we finally hit this huge, beautiful waterfall. We hiked to the bottom for the best part: to jump in. I got in right away as did many others. I have never swum under such a huge waterfall before…actually, I have never swum under any waterfall before. I can’t even describe the feeling I felt that moment I looked up at the waterfall. That thing was gigantic...and wonderful. Ahh just thinking about it is amazing! Everyone went in the water except for like 2 or 3 people…which I don’t get, it’s not that everyday you can say you swam under a waterfall in Thailand, but I guess that’s just me. One girl, Jana, had a water proof camera and when she busted that thing out, wow everyone went CRAZY. Anytime you heard someone say “let’s take a picture!” people would start screaming insanely and swim towards the camera…I mean come on, how can you miss an opportune moment to get a picture under a waterfall while you are in the water. It was a lot of fun though, and it felt good and refreshing on my over-heated hot body.
After our waterfall extravaganza we began our hike again. We got to a part where there were just tons and tons of rice-paddies and a bunch of cows in them. I have never seen rice-paddies nor ran around in them before. It was fun :] We hit the Karen village where they gave us coffee (did I ever mention how Thailand has the best coffee EVER?). We explored a little bit and of course, that is when I found the cutest baby on earth:
OBSESSION. The cutest…she kept sticking her tongue out and licking her bottom lip and ah I fell in love with her.
The village was cool, all the houses were made out of bamboo and sticks, and they all had a lot of pigs and little kids. I saw this one little girl run out of her house, look around, pull down her pants, squat down, take a little dump, shake a bit, pull her pants up, and skip away. No joke. I was stunned and was trying so hard not to laugh. I know you may think I am perverted to keep staring at a little girl poppin’ a squat, but that’s not something you see everyday and I was just amazed someone would just shit in front of their house. But that’s just me…
So we began walking again and we made it to where we were finally staying for the night. I was a bit upset about that too – we were staying in huts and we were in the wilderness surrounded by rice paddies, but we were completely away from the village. I thought we were actually going to stay in a village where people live day-to-day, but it was actually a touristy-like place to say that’s a little by the village. It was still a lot of fun though. They gave us dinner (and breakfast the next day) and they had a snack bar, full of goodies such as cookies and crackers and beer, whiskey, and rum…YUM.
There were 12 girls in my hut, and we had the nicest one. We had a tile bathroom while everyone else had poo-poo looking bathrooms. After exploring a bit my friend Dana and I bought some beers and went up into the ride paddies and drank our Chang beers and sang Disney songs (Lion King and Pocahontas in particular)…I must say it was quite hilarious and quite fine (who can say they sang disney songs and drank beer in rice paddies in Thailand? I doubt you can).
That night we had a campfire where Karen villagers sang, played music, and danced for us. Then it was our turn to show them what we got. Two boys, Matt & Randy, played guitar, Danielle played drums while a villager sang, this guy Mike did this random weird karate stuff (Mike, I doubt you read this but I am sorry if I offend you) but of course, everyone knows I dance so they started chanting my name to get up there and dance. Kathleen and I (both dancers) went up there and did part of our finale dance from our last Orchesis show while we had Dana have everyone hum the tune of the song…it was funny. It was a good night. Afterwards everyone danced, drank, and sang with the tribal while Dana, Kathleen, and I snuck off on our own with one of the professor’s kids, Anna (age 8) and played charades. That was a crack up (you had to be there). We came back and joined the group and hung out a bit more before going off to sleep in our huts…Anna slept between Dana and I and while us two slept so well, poor Dana was half on/half off the mattress…haha.
That was our night and day at the Hill Tribes, there were more activities and I will write more about that in my next blog.
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