To The Hills

One of the famous attractions - accordng to my guidebook - of Chiang Mai is the ability to go trekking in the jungle hills, really get a feel of the lay of the land, and experience unspoiled Northern Thai culture, the remote and pure Hill Tribes.

Sure I was doubtful, maybe even a little cynical. I should've been more so.

To book my trek, I switched hostels from Same Same (the place where they laughed at me for going to the Elephant Rehab camp) to Eagle House. Rather than photos of ring-necked women, Eagle House advertised with shots of pristine rainforest. Here, I decided, was where I'd do my trek.

Every trek comes with a colourful cast of characters, and this one was no different. Joris, the curly-haired stoner from Holland. Rob, a med student from Belgium, and his quiet girlfriend. Mattias, a muscled Austrian ex-army bloke who loved to show off, and his girlfriend who always had her hands or lips on some part of his body on any given moment. Chris, an oil contractor taking a well-deserved vacation from Iraq (better Chiang Mai than Ko Chang, I'm sure he's sick of sand and really doesn't need to work on that cancertan), and his English teacher/fitness instructor wife Jan who'd been living in the south of the country for nine months. Leading the trip was Monty, a deceptively small Thai man who climbs trees like a monkey, wields a knife like a practiced serial killer, and can kick your ass in Muay Thai boxing.

But enough about them, lets talk about the trek. Or, more specifically, the drive. Leaving the hostel, our pickup truck drove too close to the fence, and one of the bags ripped down the hostel sign. An auspicious start to the day. It was followed by four hours on the stiff benches lining the bed of the truck, bouncing through hilly unforgiving terrain. Some people managed to sleep, hooking their arms like gibbons over the roll bars and slumping into unconsciousness. I tried.

Our first stop was an elephant camp. I'd learned all about these at Rehab, and wasn't happy to be taking part. But take part I did, pretending to smile when the shutterhappy mahout trainer pointed my camera at me over and over. Metal benches strapped onto the elephant's back were not comfortable for man nor beast. They would robotically reach over their head for bananas or sugar cane, but usually there was none; the exception was when we stopped at elephant-height bodegas on stilts, bananas and beer for sale. Milking the tourists for even more money at the creature's expense. I could see scars on their backs from cruel training as youngers, the scars stretched with age.

Another two hours on the road, and I managed an ounce of shuteye. Unexpectedly, we came to a stop on the side of the road, apparently nowhere, and our bags were retrieved off the top of the truck. Here's where we start. It was 3 in the afternoon already, but still broiling. We marched.

At first I was optimistic. We passed a few farmer's fields (with nobody in sight) before diving into the rainforest. It was dense, moist, glorious, and lasted all of 30 minutes. We emerged abruptly into cleared land. Some of it was terraced in an almost Inca-style, but most of it was just flat dry rice paddies. Paddies that stretched on for miles. The ground was brown, the rice was brown, and the omnipresent cow shit was brown sandwiches, ripe to be trodden on.

In short, the first day was udder (err, utter) bullshit.

What we didn't see was exploited tribes pretending to be unspoiled to harvest the tourist buck. No ringnecked women here; in fact, the ringneck tribes are actually indiginous to Burma, and what few exist in Thailand are desperate refugees exploited like circus elephants.

No, what we did see was pickup trucks and motorbikes and ragged clothing from the 1980's. Most houses were built from wood and corrugated tin (truly international), with the rare absurdly nice house thrown in for surrealist's sake. But what really caught me off-guard was a child's window shutter, plastered with Dragonball Z cards. An aging Japanese anime I grew up with in America was now popular with rural Thai children.

Shortly before I could hit my rage breaking point from walking in empty rice fields and wading across creeks because the bridges went unrepaired, we stopped for the night in a village. Naturally, we were shunted to the outskirts in a 'guesthouse' (mats on the floor of a large open hut). The food was plentiful and delicious, but this was the closest we got to culture. After dinner, Monty lead a few (minus Chris and Jan) to go into town and talk with a villager. I suspect he was the town drunk, as he was sitting beside the fire throwing back bottles of Chiang beer, answering inquisitive questions with a nod, grunt, or chuckle. I opted to wander around and photograph the insect life (and a few puppies) that come buzzing out in the night.

In hindsight, I should'nt have shown my scorpion photo with pride to the hut owners. They immediately grabbed their knives and wanted me to show them where this 'murderous creature' (with a sting I'd estimate only slightly worse than a wasp) was so they could kill it. I took them to the outhouse toilet instead, and let them hunt around fruitlessly for a few minutes in the fragrent poo saunas.

Sleep came with difficulty on the hard mats, and morning came far too soon. I awoke to the sounds of harmonica being played, badly. Wandering out, I found everybody already up and eating breakfast, bundled up against the 'cold'. I put on a long-sleeve shirt, that was my only concession. A more euphonous harmonica song came from Chris, demonstrating to the young daughter (perhaps 8 years old) of the guesthouse to whom he gave his second-hand battered harmonica. She was shy and reluctant, completely quiet, but with some warm encouraging from her grandmother (or extremely ugly mother), some half-baked but earnest notes came from her new old instrument.

The second day had a much-reduced share of ricepaddies, and most of the cows had been replaced with mildly more interesting Water Buffalo. Thankfully, most of the day was spent in legit rainforest. Rob asked me what defines a rainforest, and I'll tell you. It isn't the amount of rain it gets, but the vegetation structure. A complex understory, plenty of vines and lianas, trees with buttress roots, large broad leaves, and epyphites (hanging plants whose roots never touch the ground). Buttress roots and epiphytes were in short supply, but the jungle's beauty rivaled what I'd seen in Australia easily.

What I didn't like was the route planning. Sure, at first I enjoyed the steep uphill ascents. I saw them as a challenge. After a few hours, I began to resent them. The trails were narrow, plowing right through fields and across creeks and under fallen trees, and I suspect Monty was frequently bullshitting his way as he went. At one point we bivouaced at a fragmented bridge over a river too deep to cross; we killed time for nearly an hour before blundering back up the mountain another way. Things got stupider. Our destination that night was a river camp, but we kept going up and down the mountain, the trail absurdly thin and steep and rocky right on the cliff edge. Designed by a nimble retard. Somehow we survived, crossed an intact bridge on the other side, and made it to another boring guesthouse hut.

This time, I kept my insect finds to myself, but the crop was impressive. My pursuits were occasionally hampered by a small child of about 9 years age who pestered me for entertainment. I humoured him for awhile with Chris's frisbee, but after dark I had better things to do. In response, he stole my camera and began taking pointless photos. I showed him the Galapagos and Margaret River and all the amazing things around the world stored on my memory card, he much prefered taking photos of the frisbee. Hard to understand what captivates the mind of a child.

In the morning, I got dressed, packed my bag, stretched, and walked onto the porch just in time to watch our pickup truck crash through the corner of the porch I was standing on. Not my corner, of course. One of the supports was dented, and a huge chunk was ripped off the roof. We left camp.

The day consisted largely of whitewater rafting down the river. Which is a complete misnomer on multiple levels. 'Whitewater' is a generous overstatement for the laboriously slow flowing river punctuated with the occasional rocky rapid we'd get caught on, and have to get off and push. Even calling it a river is a bit of a stretch. And our rafts were simple bamboo shafts lashed together, slowly falling apart as we drifted and needing to be re-lashed after every 'whitewater' encounter. And yet, I had fun.

After lunch, we were left with a four hour drive back. After three, we pulled over and parked. A sign pointed to a waterfall only 500 meters in. Why they made us carry our packs I'll never know, but it was a long, steep, trecherous 500 meters and the heavy weight didn't help. But we all made it intact, and were rewarded with a truly beautiful waterfall. Three levels of clear glass water, with chilled basins at the bottom of each (and potentially fatal rock chutes between them).

The boys of the group quickly jumped in, while the girls toed in slowly. I opted to watch from the sidelines. It didn't take long for Monty to climb up the side of what looked a sheer cliff face, up to a tree jutting out at an unnatural angle 10 or 15 meters above the water. "Look at me!" he yelled before jumping in with a big splash. He came up laughing. It didn't take long for showoff Mattias and macho Chris to want to try, but surprisingly it was stoner Joris first. He got up about 2 meters before losing his grip, sliding back into the water with nasty friction. He slammed his foot on a rock underwater, but he didn't tell anyone until the next day.

Next up was Chris, and he actually made decent progress, making it halfway as far up as Monty did before jumping in. Mattias fared even worse. Both resolved to make it higher next time. Chris went up, with Monty behind him point out all the handholds he used. Chris certainly had the upper-body strength, but he was much bulkier than Monty. Two-thirds of the way up, with Chris in the lead, Monty below, and Mattias off to the side, the rocks gave way. A large shelf of rock pulled off the wall, and Chris immediately jumped back, dropping straight into the water. The rock slice clunked Monty in the side of the face, and he fell back down, grinding between the rock face and rock missile, before crashing together into the water and throwing up a massive wave. A moment later, Mattias jumped in too, since Monty didn't seem to be coming up so fast.

Fishing Monty out of the water, Chris and Mattias made it to dry land with only a minor scrape on Chris's elbow. Monty had a deep bloody gash on his temple, shoulder rubbed raw to the clavical bone, and a massively swollen forearm. Rob the med student immediately got to work, checking him for breaks and concussions, cleaning out his wounds. We decided we needed to bring him to a hospital for stitches at least. As we walked down the path from the waterfall, I noticed the "Wading Prohibited" sign we all ignored.

To his credit, the pickup truck driver who took out a sign and a porch really knew how to weave through traffic. Some would say stupidly, but that's how everyone drives in a land with virtually no traffic lights. We made it to the hospital in only an hour. Chris looked ashen and guilty the whole way. Upon arrival, everyone got out of the truck, marching lockstep behind the wheelchair matron wheeling Monty in. We sat in the waiting room for an hour (while Rob lied and pretended to be a real doctor to get inside). I didn't mind waiting outside; my hero complex had been exhausted lately and I'd seen enough hospital waiting rooms as of late. But to claim my fair share, my seemingly paranoid overstuffed first aid kit got a real workout in Rob's hands. I was grateful he was there, if only to spare me.

Monty escaped without a concussion, somehow. He got some stitches and a nasty scar to remember us. He also got a broken arm and a couple bone screws in surgery. He wont be doing more treks for 2 or 3 months, but I saw him only last day in Chiang Mai working the reception desk at Eagle House. He looked bandaged and beaten up, but not beaten down. High spirits, even. He was glad to see me, happy to be back at work, and looking forward to being out in the field.

Funny enough, I felt the same way, looking forward to a great vacation and a satisfied return to work in Sydney. Minus the bone screws.