Karen Village

Karen Village 2

These pictures were so adorable that I couldn't help but take them. The kid in the photos is a small boy from the village we were at. He was so curious, wanting to look at anything and everything. He was definately a little rascal though, he stomped flowers, wandered all over the place, and apparently even kicked one of the pigs.

As I mention below, I had a great group of Trekkers to go with. There were people from all over the world. Dolan and Marian who aren't in the picture below were both from NZ, and were only with us for the one day trek. PJ was from Taiwan, and spent a year studying in Japan so she could speak a little Japanese with me. Hers was much better than mine though, so I just kept yto English. She's looking to maybe come to Canada and work for 6 months, if she can find a job.

Mike just retired from the British Army, and is now travelling with one of his long time friends from back home, Jane, going all over the place. They are super great people, and rib each other about stuff all the time, I'm hoping to actually meet up with them later in Thailand, probably at one of the islands down south, and maybe watch some British Football :) Jeannette is also from England, Bournemouth if I remember correctly, and is teaching English in Thailand for a year. She already had done it in Greece and China, and was thinking about maybe going to Italy after. She was a lot of fun, we ended up going out for drinks when we were back in Chiang Mai (we were supposed to go with PJ too, but we unsuccessfully spent an hour looking for her but couldn't find her and the contact number we had for her for some reason wouldn't work) and then to Karaoke. Man, now I know why I only sing when I'm drunk, I was awful, she was pretty good, but I felt sorry for her for having to listen to me.

Christian and Myriam were a couple travelling from Switzerland (Bern), before they head into the full time workforce (quite similar to what I am doing except they have jobs waiting for them). It was really neat talking to them, they were finishing up their trip, so they could give suggestions on where to go. We also talked a lot about our countries. I would ask them about Switzerland and they would ask me stuff about Canada. They seem quite similar actually. They have a lot of the same stuff we have (except more chocolate which both of them missed dearly), but are much smaller and more compact. For those who are complaining about gas, their's is $1.30 a litre, a coffee at Starbucks runs $8.00 and a Big Mac Meal is about $10.

Our guide's name was P. He was a pretty funny guy. He kept refering to all the locals that we met as cannibals, and telling us some ridiculus stories. I never understood it before, but there are some shirts here that say "Same, Same but different". After this trip I do. Whenever there was anything that was even remotely close to something else, he would say, "same, same but different". We had some these Thai noodles (it was actually more like instant noodles, but in the wilderness you can't really complain) with cabbage and spices. He refered to it as spaghetti, but "Same, Same, but Different".

Anyway, we got a good chance to know each other, as we basically lived together for 3 days. At night and on the hikes we would chat quite a bit. Anyway, on to the villages. I felt actually pretty uncomfortable at the first one we went to (I didn't take any pictures other than the ones above). We walked around all over the place, and it felt a little like a human zoo. The evening was great though. The children sang traditional Thai songs for us, them we had to sing back to them. It was kinda sad, the only song we could find that all of us knew was Jingle Bells. If you are ever looking for songs that stretch across western countries and generations, Christmas carols are it. This part was actually a lot of fun, and we danced a little around the fire with the children too. There were animals all over the place, and we slept on hard boards with a blanket and a sleeping bag. Now I've never lived on a farm, but I do know that roosters start crowing early in the morning. Quarter to three to be exact. No one got a lot of sleep that night, but it was ok...

The next night we slept in a little hut by a water fall. Same style of accomodations, except no animals, and our hut didn't have a door, it was just an open walkway through the middle of a room, with the floor raised about 2 feet off the ground. We did have bug met both nights though. We basically just sat around the fire, sang songs, had a couple beer (they brought beer, water and coke that we could buy, really reasonable for the middle of nowhere). A couple locals came down and hung out with us too. The cracked open these bamboo shoots and took out the worms inside, fried them up with some salt and let us try if we wanted to. Let me tell you, they are ten times more delicious than they sound. Taste kinda like potato chips, the hollow out when they are cooked and are just crunchy. I had no problem going for seconds. One of the guys tried to teach us the elephant song in Karen. I was just a bunch of actions, and we would say trunk, ears, eyes and tail. Pretty much head and shoulders knees and toes, but with an elephant. None of us were particularly good at picking up the song though. They also played this fun game (I haven't seen it, but I imagine it's a bar game in Canada). They place a napkin over the mouth of a glass, use an elastic to hold it in place, and then place a coin in the middle. Everyone takes turns burning holes in the napkin and the person who causes the coin to fall has to buy the next beer. Good times. One piece of advice, if you are staying out in the middle of nowhere, check your sleeping bag for ants before you get in. I ended up have to wipe a who bunch off me cause I didn't look.

That's pretty much it. I'm getting a little ancy sitting at the computer for this long anyway. I'm heading back to Bangkok tonight on the overnight train and then probably going Ko Samet, which is apparently a really nice island for a little beach time.

Cheers,
Drew