So my favorite part of the adventure begins!!

A summary from Eil before I venture into my own little experiences,

"We stopped off at a market to get final things for our trek - like toilet paper. The Thai's wash their bottoms with a hose instead of wiping and use squat toilets. I prefer western, but you do get used to it. Off again in the back of a pick up truck, and this time we stop for lunch. Rice with chicken and veg, followed by a Thai delicacy - fried bamboo worms. They actually taste like ready salted crisps, but have a slight aftertaste.

We passed a few dodgy bridges getting to our starting point, and there were a lot of landslides on the way due to the previous weeks rain. We started walking and it took 2.5 hours to get to our first hut for the night, which was just outside a hill tribe village. We cooled ourselves down with banana leaves on the way, using them as a fan. If you wanted a shower you had to use a bucket of water - not that warm. It got dark pretty early and we had dinner by candle and torch light before bed at 9.30."

The car ride up to the hills was gorgeous. It was a sunny day and we traversed the countryside in one of the open-but-closed pickup truck beds. We wound our way up the hillsides, beeping as we went around corners and gathering phenomenal views of the jagged hills at each bend. I didn't expect them to be so jagged, but I'm also not complaining about it!

All the boys (Adam, Greg, Josh, and Danilo) and myself and Renata were in one truck when the other veered off the road in a different direction. Entertaining the idea that we could be in Survivor: Thailand, we speculated on where they hid the camera, and whether we would be the winning team. This eased all of our excitement as the car ride stretched on and on-- we almost expected to be greeted with tiki torches and a speech from Tommy explaining the mission!

At one check point, we saw a monkey!! Yes, it was the only monkey we saw on the entire trek, but it was very cool. I even fed it a bit of banana. It clung to a dog's back, which was ever so cute. Think there's a picture of it somewhere.

The trek finally started in the early afternoon, and like Eil said, we walked for about 2 and a half hours in a humid heat before arriving at the village. Not long enough, some of us said. But, the village stay was quite cool -- first time sleeping in a cabin with Canadians and British under mosquito nets! Played cards to entertain ourselves and drank Thai beer.

At one point, our host (a very wealthy villager who had numerous wives, all of whom arrived in the morning to sell us their wares) decided to try to figure out the game we were playing. At that point, it was BS, probably the most difficult game to understand from watching. As the hill tribe languages are completely different from even the minute Thai that we'd learned, we had no way of including him in the game, but that didn't stop him. He found himself a giant grasshopper to show us, ripped its legs off, and decided to play show and tell with Preeda of all people. Unfortunately, i was sitting next to the shrieking woman, and she all but climbed to the top of my head when he held out the harmless insect. His eyes sparkling and a very unkempt smile beaming from his face, he carried the insect to the table and let it scuttle around, admiring the initial shock he'd caused. Oi.

The rest of the night, I bothered Preeda by looking into a rather large hole in the ground, suggesting it could be a tarantula hole and that she'd better watch out, it was going to get her in the darkness. that prompted the woman to completely cover the hole with dirt. I got the last laugh, though, because whatever was in the hole had dug itself out before bedtime, and I happily pointed that out to Preeda who immediately sought sanction in the hut, under the mosquito net.