Something Different

Note on zee pictures

This blog is best not viewed on a mobile. You're going to lose all the hi-resolution glory of it. When you have done the sensible thing and are viewing it on a PC you can also click on the pictures to make them larger. I have put just a small amount of the photos we took on here. To see all of them, click here.

Prologue

Through the excellent and highly recommended Something Different Tours in Chiang Mai, Bob and I booked a 4 day 3 night jungle trek around the Mae Chaem district, Doi Inthanon National Park. We didn't know exactly what to expect, we only knew that the tour promise is "if you see any other foreigners during the tour, we will refund your money".  They also came highly recommended on TripAdvisor (not always a good thing!). We went to visit the guys at their "office", and after a short conversation we decided this was the tour for us. This is that story..

Day 1

We were picked up by Ken and Ware (pronounced Way) in front of our hotel at sensible o'clock in their big silver 4x4. Ken was chatty and started talking about all sorts, like how we shouldnt piss in the river at the waterfall, coz the water goes straight to the villages. Ware was driving, and we found out Ware was to be our guide for the tour, along with two others. Ken had previous engagements.
We stopped off outside of Chiang Mai at a local market. There was things here you dont see in the city market, like deep fried chicken heads. Deep-fried Mars Bars are for girls. We decided to buy some local baccy and the necessary accessories (more on this later), and bought a couple of half bottles of the Thai rum Sangsom. Ware stocked up on food for the journey, he came back with bags and bags of stuff. We sat around yapping and eating mangosteen and smokin for a bit, then we were on our way again. The view was great, rolling hills of paddy field and jungle.

Just before the road ceased being a road

The road quality deteriorated gradually until it was a steep, red, muddy, deeply scarred surface. Ware had to kick in the 4x4 a few times, a two wheel drive would never have made it. A moped however, would have. We saw plenty of moped drivers later on crazy roads zigzagging between potholes and rocks and making it up seemingly impossible slopes.
We stopped at a view point along the way because Ken wanted us to do a couple of publicity shots with him. The shots didnt turn out so well, the camera was set up all wrong, doh.

Clean and unaware..

Pff this jungle trekking is eeeaaaasy

Eventually Ken said "here" and stopped the car, pretty much in the middle of nowhere. I thought "what's here?". Two men appeared and they were introduced as our guides. They came from the Karen tribe, and we would be staying at their village in two nights time. They were Mr Pao and Mr Tubl. Mr Tubl was the older of a two and was a medicine man. Mr Pao was a hunter. Unusually, there was no hanging about or smoking involved here, we were on our way straight away. I didnt even change into my wellies as the road seemed ok. It didnt take long until we were off the road however and I was quickly decked out in red, knee high, lace-up rubber :) How them jungle ladies managed to control themselves I will never know.
Mr Pao took the lead and set off at a cracking pace. The landscape was beautiful, paddy fields and corn fields, all open. It was easy going for the first half hour. That was pretty much the first and last time the going would be easy :)

We came upon a little shelter and a bunch of people sitting sorting through branches. They were Karen people, and they were strippin a black and white powdery fungus off of branches to be made in glue production. 100 baht for a kilo was the going rate we were told (£2).

There must have been 8 people involved at least, not sure how long it takes them to get that kilo, but split between 8?...Ware told us the Karen basics; "Omanchapur" for hello and "Tubel" for thankyou. These would remain the only Karen words i would remember, although I did learn some more along the way. Oh, "Pa" means lets go (its "Pai" in Thai). The fungus collectors wanted to talk but we had no direct means. They were all smiles, I forgot to ask if they had met foreigners before but i think not or very few. Few foreigners come out this way.




We went on our way in our wellies a short walk in the open to an outpost hut, where Ware and the guides prepared a lunch of sesame chicken from the market, mangosteen and sticky rice. Lunch was prepared on a banana leaf as would turn out to be the norm throughout the trip - jungle kitchen.

In the meantime we watched Mr Tubl prepare a cheroot - jungle smoking. Cheroot is tobacco mixed with dried tamarind skins rolled in dried or semi dried banana leaf. Tamarind skin flakes take the edge off the baccy and makes for a perfect smooth smoke. We never managed to match the rolling skills of the guides, they rolled without spit. Actually at the time of writing Bobs are getting better, mine still suck.

We also tried the local crystal clear moonshine whisky for the first time - jungle drinking. Wares village was famous in the region for the best whisky, with good reason, it was looovely. We had 3 or 4 shots; they say for "power"..

The walk resumed through the paddy fields and deep into cornfields. The terrain straight away became harder, basically our whole walk was neverending valleys, up steep, down steep, occasional flat bits.

 The walk was at a very fast pace because we were behind schedule. This part of the trek was open, so the blazing sun, the steep terrain and the humidity meant we stopped every 20 mins to catch our breath and mop our brows.

The canopy started to close in and it really started to feel like we were in the jungle.Bob had his first of many cobweb moments, went for a leak, walked through a web and the spider was still hanging from his arm. We noticed in time that certain cobwebs the guides would miss because of their height, so whoever was first in line from me and bob would get the bugger in the face. Jungle law!

About an hour and a half later of hard walking we stopped and Ware said they were going to start to prepare the cooking utensils for tonight. Ware and the guides started hacking down two or three large pieces of bamboo, and Ware made us shot glasses out of smaller pieces, which we promptly honoured by filling them.We sat for a bit and smoked and drank a little whiskey while they worked the bamboo.

Wae told us about the custom that the oldest gets the whisky first and the cup gets passed around in order of age. The Thai (and Karen) are very respectful of their elders. When clinking glasses the younger man clinks his glass to the bottom of the glass the older man. We had no glasses here, but with bamboo cups the point is the same..

Ware also cut a vine and we drank the water from it; it was lovely with a woody taste. It works the same as a straw - a piece of vine has to be chopped off completely or the water does not flow from it, this means the remaining living vine retains its water.

The terrain was now reasonably thick jungle, as it would remain for the whole trip apart from the villages.We walked for about another 45 mins until we got to quite a dark dank spot by the river, where Ware said we were going to set up camp. Bob n me plonked ourselves down and smoked and drank a bit more..before and after everything we did there was always a shot of whisky or two involved..but we werent drunk. That came later ;)

Ware and the guides started clearing the undergrowth to make a nice spot and put banana leaves down for our dining/sitting room. We saw the biggest fattest spider of the trip on one of the banana leaves. The guides then started building a rain shelter out of tarp and branches and bamboo (of course). It was up in no time. The guides then set about fashioning cooking utensils out of bamboo; a long cooking pot, rice cooker, spoons, coffee cups, chopping board.



Ware set up the jungle kitchen on banana leaves with the plethora of ingredients he had bought at the market. They also put up our tent. Dinner was a long time in the making, so once the food was cooking we all sat about and set about the whisky. This was our first chance to "talk" to the guides; some sign language, some translation from Ware when he wasnt cooking and otherwise just muddling through.

Mr Tubl was happy enough by this point to adopt me and bob as his honorary brothers, which he kept repeating throughout the night. It was dark by this point and Mr Pao the hunter disappeared into the river next to camp and came back with a frog. As with almost eveything breathing we found in the jungle, this was promptly killed my smacking its head off a post and stuck on the barbie..

first proper jungle food coming up. We learned more about the guides at this point, that Mr Tubl specialised in collecting herbs form the jungle to treat just about every ailment including anti-cancer. Most of his herbs or recipes seemed to be for virility, and this was proven by the fact he had 6 kids, and we were assured by Ware, he was still very capable of the boom boom. He's 59 :) He picked a plant earlier that day which he assured us made nice "viagra tea". Kinda useless in our situation but hey. The frog was the first food ready, Bob and I had a leg, and Mr Tubl offered bob the head and body, which bob promptly gobbled up. Frog tastes like fishy chicken, its pretty good. Mr Tubl asked us if we had families (as lots of tribespeople did) and if we had rice in Scotland. He was a rice farmer too, and we later walked along the irrigation canal that he had dug to his village from a makeshift dam in the stream/river. The canal was about 3 foot wide and deep and about a mile long. He didnt use no JCB either. 

By the time dinner was served we were well into the darkness, headtorches and candlelight. We had green curry cooked in bamboo tubes, rice and leftover chicken. Ware proved again and again to be an excellent cook. The Thai and Karen eat alot and almost constantly, they are perpetual grazers. It was sometimes a fine balance for me and Bob between impoliteness and bursting stomachs. Luckily most of the time the food is put out to share so you can get away with picking at it. This dinner however, was welcome and needed and we tucked in after a sweaty sweaty day trekking. Ware caught a cricket and roasted it by hand on the candle and me n bob shared it. 

Cant remember exactly what it tasted like but it was nice and earthy. After a bit more gabbing, laughing, smoking and whisky (by this point we were all fairly well on) Mr Pao disappeared and this time came back with a handful of frogs, all almost as long as his hand, and one almost as fat because she was heavily pregnant. They put them in a plastic bag..alive. 

Ware then said it was frog hunting time for us. Mr Tubl was pished by this time and curled up beside the fire. The rest of us headed to the nearby stream by headtorch light and i got lucky at the the riverside before we had started proper and a frog jumped past me, i bent down, picked him up and my frog hunting was an instant surprise success! 

i was grinning like a drunken frog hunter. We then waded into the stream which was steep, moved up in small steps like mini waterfalls. It was dark, slippery, sometimes unexpectedly deep and we were drunk. Bob almost got his paws on one but it escaped his grasp. We fumbled our way up the river and gave up 20 mins later, maybe the big splashing falangs was too much of a giveaway for the frogs.

Back to camp for a bit more of the same, and then Ware and Mr Pao boiled up the root of the aforementioned viagra plant to make tea. It was one of the nicest things I have ever drank, I thought it tasted of honey and Bob of biscuits, so yum yum. Sure enough I awoke later at 3am feeling the, ahem, effects!Mr Tubl was drunk so Ware set up a tent for him too and we all slowly clambered off to bed. Ware and Mr Pao sat up a bit longer, catching up on old times. The sleep wasn't bad, the river was loud but probably helped to drown out other noises, and as with every camping trip a midsleep pee was required which meant getting fully dressed against the bugs, wellies n all. Overall there wasnt as many bugs as i thought, although you could always see a bug close by of one type or another.

Day 2

Ware woke us for breakfast at 9 and we had chopped pineapple, toast from the fire, jam, firecooked eggs and coffee. Delicious! We had to move fast because the ants were closing in on the jam. We dismantled camp and started off over the river and up the other steep side. Pace was a little slower today thankfully.We stopped in a relative clearing where Mr Pao had spotted where a wild pig had rolled about in the undergrowth. He went off in search of it and we sat down and had a break after a sweaty climb.

Mr Pao came back and we headed off to the nearby waterfall where we washed our faces and the guides drank. We were advised not to, but this policy didnt last. Before long we were drinking river water too. We washed using leaves as a washbowl and I shaved Bob with a machete, Crocodile Dundee style. Ok, it was just a pose for a photo.

 We headed off to another much bigger waterfall and on the way Mr Pao (and the rest of us) spotted big wild boar tracks running right down our trail. We sped up with Mr Pao hoping to glimpse the beast. Was a little tense at this point, as they are dangerous bloody animals! On the way we found a burrow about 50cm across and Mr Pao confirmed there was something in it but too deep to get to. They warned us not to get too close as it was also a dangerous animal, unfortunately we never found out what it was in English. We found another slightly smaller burrow a bit further on, from the same type of animal. The wild pig trails disappeared off to the side and Mr Pao gave up the chase (he phoned his buddy later that night to tell him the location, in case he wanted a crack at it). After another steep hour we reached the a bigger waterfall where we took a long break. Waterfall in Thai is "Nam Tok", which is also one of Bob and my favourite dishes. Yummy. The guides headed down to the bottom of it to prepare lunch. Due to the wood being wet this took a long time. Bob and me waded about and took pictures, smoked, looked at butterflies and the full-on jungle view and tried to dry our clothes out a bit.

 Everything was damp or wet by this point and it had been getting cooler,  but the sun was out now and a nice spray and wind off the waterfall made for a chilled out hour.
Eventually lunch was ready; rice, instant noodles and pork cooked in bamboo, eggs and mangosteen, eaten with freshly fashioned bamboo chopsticks. Mangosteen is lovely. Lunch was good, lots of bugs kicking aboot this time. Also the raw dead gutted pregnant frogs shared our dinner table which gave me the boke a bit.

Rained for a bit then we dismantled lunch, throwing everything to the jungle, as always :)

Mr Pao left us to go to the village and buy pork for dinner before the "shop" shut. We set off and reached another clearing at the old ranger station where Mr Tubl had worked previously. He showed us the 4 trees he planted 20 years ago. The ranger station is long gone due to a lack of money. The whole time we were trekking we were in Doi Ithanon National Park (maybe apart from the first day), which is protected and no hunting is allowed. Thailand is rife with poachers. This is a bit of a kick in the stones for the Karen people who live in and off the park. So they do it anyway, sleeping in trees at night to avoid the rangers. If they get a big kill they transport it and eat it as discreetly as possible. I think this is fair enough, poaching is about killing and selling, these guys are living off the land. The penalties for being caught are harsh.
In the clearing it started to pish down so the camera got packed up and Mr Tubl stayed in the clearing, him and our bags covered by plastic sheets. Bob, Ware and I set up a narrow, slippery, steep drop to one side, ground crumbling beneath our feet, kinda trail. There was a blue pipe running up the side that transported water down to the village where we would be staying that night. It was pishin doon and it was a hairy climb, and when we got to the top we had to cross the top of the waterfall. It was a one foot wrong certain death kinda scenario, as we were crossing a small underwater dam in fast moving water, if the water had caught one of us, it wouldnt have been pretty. We clambered across as a team, hands and feet n all. We admired the view for a bit. Ware said it was a good spot to bring the ladies :) bloody long way I say! Whats wrong with a couple of vodkas and a bag of chips? Anyway, we headed back down to find Mr Tubl asleep under his sheet. The rain had stopped by now, and we headed off towards the Karen village.

The scenery started to open up into paddy fields again. Outposts started appearing, and the heavens opened like we had never seen before.

Drenched like we had been swimming, we followed Mr Tubl's irrigation canal to the village. I had a shot with the machete chopping away undergrowth that had grown across the trail. Felt like Indiana Jones. From the clearing to the village took us two hours, this used to be Mr Tubls way to work every day, and he claimed he could do it in half an hour. However in our experience, estimated times about anything from the guides could safely be doubled! Jungle time. Coming into the village me and Bob had been pondering what our digs for tonight would be like. When we saw the first outpost we thought, is that a Karen house? Then coming into the village we saw a brick building with a modern roof. Whoah, I thought, thats way more than I expected. It was however, the last such building we saw. We arrived at Mr Tubls house (hut) to find Mr Paos girlfriend, their son Mateo and Mrs Tubl waiting for us. Mrs Tubl couldnt speak Thai, only Karen, so politics and philosophy was off the conversational menu. This was my favourite part of the trip (adrenaline moments excluded) because of the pure simplicity of where we were. They had nooothing. Not even four walls (about 2.5). Mr Pao had a gun for hunting,

 there was a firepit in the side of the hut for cooking and running water in the kitchen. There was a solar cell on the roof to power the one electric light.

There was one running tap outside for washing and showering, and the toilet was the jungle. A poo would involve digging a hole at the side of the road. Bob and me both got through the night and morning without having to do it. We had both had jungle poos by this point, but more hassle-free. There was no radio reception here, a phone signal could be had by standing high in one corner of the house.

We all sat in the half darkness..me n Bob adjusting to this slightly surreal but amazing situation.  We sat with the men, drank whisky and smoked while the women sat with Mateo in the opposite corner. We communicated as usual with smiles and gestures, laughed with Mr Tubl who was always making funny faces. Ware cooked again. We had an appetiser which was a full meal. I played peekaboo with Mateo and showed him the pictures of the bugs I had taken on the camera, learning the Karen words for them with him that his mum said. Ive forgotten them all now, although I remember the word for butterfly was particularly nice, as it should be. Mateo ended up sharing his crisps with us,he was a cool happy kid, 2 years old. Kids are always a great icebreaker. We read somewhere to not bring money in these scenarios, bring toys for the kids. If we had known...The pictures from the camera and pulling faces was the best we could do! After the appetiser we were full but the cooking continued, luckily the next meal was shared so we could just pick at it. I convinced Mr Tubl to try to show us how to properly roll a cheroot..he got the message and tried to teach us..

 For a while after the jungle we both preferred smoking cheroots to cigarettes, and for some reason despite having no filter they feel much better on the chest. They are also good against mozzies because of the smoke and the smell of your sweat. Our first two nights in the jungle were reasonably mozzie free, nowhere near as bad as i expected. Mr Tubl went to bed after dinner, and we sat about for a bit. Mr Pao told us a story about how he had been shot in the face by another hunter, who had mistaken him for a wild pig, because he had been on his hands and knees on a wild pig trail, hunting wild pig! It was only about ten feet away, one piece of shot grazed his cheek giving him a scar and he got shot up both nostrils...luckily the shot wedged itself in his nose and didnt reach his brain...or maybe it wasnt luck. Mr Pao showed us his chest and back tattoos and explained they were for protection. the one on his back was done by nine separate people with sharp bamboo and ink.

Hes also got a "swastika" on both ankles, as you probably know an ancient buddhist symbol for something that I can't remember, before the Nazis adopted it.

Mr Pao was in no doubt that he survived because of his protective tattoos. And you don't argue about witchcraft with a hunter with a gun sitting in his house in the middle of the jungle..
Ware and Mr Pao found an infestation of ants near to where we would sleeping and decided to put up the tent in the hut for us. The hut was split in to two parts (no dividing wall), one lower floor section and one about a foot higher where we would be sleeping. Mr Pao said he was a fan of tents although he didnt own one. He wanted one for taking his family to camp in the jungle, and maybe for hunting too. Bedtime. They stuffed the tent full of mattresses and pillows that although smelling faintly of pish (or damp?) gave us a five star camping sleep.

Day 3

Ware woke us with calls to breakfast again. we got up, ate, took some pictures of our hosts with promises to send them (fulfilled) on after.

We gave them some money to say thanks. We cleared up and headed on down the village, meeting various smiling village locals along the way.

The first dude unbelieveably had a Rangers Tshirt on. There were electricity poles erected along the way, no wires, heralding the promise of electricity in the not too distant future.

 We saw the village school which was actually quite nice, with a pond for catching fresh fish for the kids lunches.

There was also a place for the kids from the other villages who came to school here to stay overnight. There was a church in the village as the Karen people are Christian, I guess as the result of their Burmese roots and Burma being an ex-British colony. We prayed before dinner with Mr Tubl on the first two nights, him doing the prayer in Karen me n bob only knowing when he was done when we heard Amen :) We also prayed the first night when we camped in the jungle, as he insisted he wanted to pray for our protection in the jungle. I havent prayed in years, it was very surreal, praying in the dark in the jungles of North Thailand! On the edge of the village was their new rice-threshing machine which we could hear churning away. Slowly, slowly, the 20th century is finding its way here. The local councillors house was quite a grand affair with decorative architecture and nice wood. The air smelt suddenly of corruption.We left the village following the road to Wares grandpas village. Ware said the walk was only about 1 hour. So i figured with at least two hours. Ware showed Bob how to blow bubbles using the stalk of a plant.

 We bumped into a woman on the outskirts of the village we had just stayed in. She said something to Ware and he was instantly excited. She produced a plastic bag of 6 live Hercules beetles.

Ware and her talked for a bit and he bought the lot for 30 Baht. One in the city would cost 50 Baht, he told us. What did he buy them for, I hear you cry? Two reasons: The Karen and Thai use them for fighting. They select the best ones, feed them up on sugar cane to get them strong, and then use them at village fetes, sometimes gambling on them, sometimes just for fun. The second reason: eating of course. Ware promised he would make some beetle stew with chilli later on...mmmmm, can't wait.
He stowed the lot in his pocket, and we carried on, trying wild fruits along the way, as always.
Ware called the truck due to pick us up and asked it to meet us on the road to save time. We had walked for just less than an hour when the pickup truck turned up with our rubber tubes in the back, all set for our afternoon of tubing. Our jungle hiking was officially over! We made ourselves comfy on the tubes and drove about twenty minutes to the village, so as predicted, the time estimations were a little out.
We arrived in the village at Ware grandpas house who was sittin outside with Wares two mates. He was weaving bamboo baskets. In the garden was a indian looking cow, chickens and dogs. His Grandpa made us load up on bananas and then we took our leave  with Wares two mates in tow.
Lunch was at a roadside restaurant (the only kind in Thailand?!) where we had pomello fruit, pork glass noodle soup, spicy Thai salad and Bob had some pork scratchings the tubtub. We were with Wae and his mates. There may have been a little whisky in there too.. Waes shy mate decided at this point he was coming tubing, so there was now going to be 5 of us for tubing.

We drove just round the corner after lunch and got ready. I had ready rolled cheroots and their phones in me dry bag. Whisky first before setting off, a cheroot and some pomello fruit. Subai subai! Into the tubes and we were off, for a planned 5 hours floating down the river. I say floating, there was quite a bit of frantic paddling involved to avoid various obstacles here n there! Floating down a river on a tube smokin a cheroot and drinkin whisky that was gettin thrown from tube to tube is a nice way to round off two days of hiking!

 It was a nice change from the sweaty trekking, we saw some locals fishing and a couple of kingfishers flying about. Bob ate more pork scratchings the fatty. After a chilled float we stopped off at a little bank with an impressive cliff. There used to be a cave but the high water sealed it off. We spotted a bamboo cane wedged between two outcrops thirty meters up the cliff and Ware cracked out his slingshot and we all tried to hit it, we started off betting but by the time anybody hit it the stakes were so high no money exchanged hands.

Both Ware and his mate hit it, not bad at 20 metres away, and 30 metres up! We set off down the river for  only another 5 mins and Ware said we had arrived. We climbed the bank onto a beautiful clearing that had a ranger station in it.

There were a few guys kicking about tending to a peanut seedling farm they had going on, dogs and goats. As soon as we arrived we were given hot sweetcorn off the fire. We were soaked to the bone so we changed into dry gear and made ourselves comfy by the fire. There was a grizzled old fella of 75 there who I thought was a woman because of the towel on his head.

He had one of those unforgettable faces, and gave me my National Geogrpahic contender photo of the trip.

We sat around eating (including raw pork intestine)

and drying and admiring the scenery and then somebody noticed the rainclouds coming up fast behind us.

 Within 2 minutes we were packed up and back in the pickup..The rain started coming down thick and fast and the steep road out of the clearing had already turned to sludge. Unfortunately the van was two-wheel drive so we didnt get far up the hill before the wheels were spinning and we weren't going anywhere. We all piled out the van and started to push. No success. Then one of the guys from the ranger station appeared out of the jungle with a big bag of sawdust which he poured on the tyre ruts in front of the van. With renewed hope we braced for another push..if we didnt make it this time it was looking like spending the night in the ranger station. We pushed like hell, egging each other on...success! Laughing, soaking and victorious we waved goodbye to our ranger helper, jumped into our bed of rubber tubes in the back of the pickup and were on our way.

It felt great, having been close to not making it and now in our comfy tube-seat to dry out and watch the jungle go by.

 We drove to Mr. Nats mums village and stopped off at roadside restaurant for dinner. This was the most civilzation we had seen in three days, there was electricity and shops! It was beginning to feel a bit less like jungle. They also had cold beer! We cracked out the beers and drank thai and dark chinese herbal whisky, a bit like Appenzeller. In other words, minging. We were all getting quite merry, there was the usual culinary surprise this time it was fried, er, chicks..  Bob had one and said the body tasted like corn, so I just did the sensible thing and ate the head off one.
Pff vegetables.
After a couple hours of drinking and eating we headed off to Nats mums house. Ware was excited about us meeting his dad there too. We were much later than Ware had planned and unfortunately Wares dad had had too much too drink and was beyond conversation..he headed off pretty soon on his moped..Ware watched him leave to make sure he could still drive. Nats mum and dad however were fully compus mentus and Nats mum cooked for us. The house was more modern than the Karen village on the previous night, although still very basic. They had electricity and a TV.

 Ken turned up too, was the first time we saw him since he had dropped us off in the jungle on day one with a couple of pals.
I was already full of food and drink myself and before long trotted off to bed in the little hut at the bottom of the garden.

Day 4

Ware woke us for breakfast as per usual. During our toast and jam, Wares dad turned up and invited us to his pond where he kept catfish. 7000 of them. We hopped on to the mopeds and drove a short distance to the side of a cornfield. I couldnt see a path going anywhere or any sign of a pond but I had foolishy forgotten about Jungle Law, and we went right into the cornfield.

When we came out the other side there was a series of small ponds full of catfish. It was Ware, Ken, Wares dad, Bob and me.

Bob n me fed the fish and then settled down in the shade of a tree to be fed again, about an hour after breakfast.

The whisky came out (11am), and Wares dad made sure the rounds were regular. I could tell today may become hazy.. We drank and ate and this meal was to prove to be the most challenging food we had eaten the whole trip. Ware chopped up some water buffalo and water buffalo intestines and started seasoning it with onion, lemongrass and all manner of spices. There was one small bag of brown liquid he was adding to the concoction and I asked Ware what it was. He said it was the undigested contents of a buffalos stomach. Buffalo shit, basically. Glad I asked. And then to top it all off, it became apparent Ware had no intention of cooking the dish..we were going to chomp this one raw. Which we did after a deep breath, and it was pretty good :)

I didnt eat too much though, just in case. Bbq-d catfish afterwards was a comfortably familiar dish!

We stayed for a a while 2 or 3 hours drinking and eating and listening to english speaking music on Kens mobile. Our integration back into civilization was almost complete. Wares dad was a very smily dude and talked with a voice that reminded me of David Attenborough, very gentle. He was also one of the few people who would talk to me and Bob apparently oblivious that we didnt understand a word, and would launch into short monologues. Ware translated bits but most if it sounded like a Thai natural history documentary to me!
We headed back through the cornfield to the bikes and to Nats mums house. The tobacco lady was there, so Bob n me stocked up (1kg!) and gave some of it to Nats family and Ware and Ken. We sat around talking, smoking and drinking. There was also a lady there who collected crickets and then sold them, we found out later. Nats mum was also a very smily happy person and genuinely pleased to have us there.

 Soon it was time to make tracks. We said our goodbyes and thankyous to Nats mum, cricket lady and tobacco lady and took some photos with our new found friends.

We piled into Kens 4x4, we still had a waterfall and a temple to visit today.

This was however Something Different Tours, and as always the itinerary was not cast in stone, the inpromptu visit to the pond being todays first example. Our first stop was Kens mums house for a quick hello (check out the Tshirt).

After that we visited Wares mum and weren't there for long either.

 After that we visited the whisky lady. The moonshine we had been drinkin for the last three days had found a place in our hearts so we stocked up with 2.5 litres or so. The lady scooped it from a plastic bin into our emptied water bottles. I still sniff any bottle I take from my fridge now before taking a swig. We got back in the car and started to Doi Inthanon.

By this time me and Bob were pretty drunk and we both passed out in the car. When we got to the temple about an hour later, it was like something out of a movie. Two large temples sitting atop a hill shrouded in mist, it was quite a surreal moment.

We went inside the biggest one, the kings temple, and it was different to most temples we have seen so far (admittedly not many) in that it was quite sparse, it was round and domed inside, and the walls had stone relief carvings of the Buddhas life. It was my favourite temple so far. We didnt hang about for too long because me and bob were still knackered. We got back into the car and drove to the biggest waterfall in the region, 180m high. The spray was like nothing else I've experienced, we were 50m from the waterfall and we were soaked through.

Our adventure was almost officially over, all that remained was to get to Chiang Mai.

Which we did, singing pop songs from overseas in the airconditioned 4x4 on the electrically lit, tarmaced highway.

Epilogue

Impressed by and grateful to all the people we met, Bob and I decided to help a couple of those we had met. Mr Pao talked about his dream of having a tent so he could take his family camping in the jungle. the next day we met Ware and went and bought Mr. Pao a tent and a long-sleeved tshirt for his wee boy as winter is rolling in. Ware had also talked about his dream to do a diving course in South Thailand. He has only been to South Thailand once. So Bob and I instead of offering him a monetary tip offered to take him to Kho Tao to do his PADI licence. We hope we will find the right moment for it. For good measure, we went out that night with Ware and his friend and got royally drunk to celebrate, well, everything :)