Posted under Thailand
One of Chiang Mai’s token tourist activities is a guided trek into the surrounding mountains. I had made almost a full recovery from my trifecta of ailments so we signed on for a three-day, two-night trek which included a tantalizing package of activities: a visit to the “Long-neck” Padaung Village, elephant rides, white water rafting and bamboo rafting.
We were picked up in the morning from our hotel and driven into the “Long-neck” village just above the base of the mountain. Due to our past experiences with the package village tours, we skeptically expected the usual beggars and clichéd awkwardness. Our initial impression aligned with that cynicism as we entered the village restroom at the entrance; it was spotless and perfumed with western toilets, paper, soap and a hand towel…in a tribal mountain village! We exchanged knowing exasperated looks as we exited the restrooms and entered the village. With our guide, a local university student with only basic command of the English language, we walked through a small cluster of bamboo huts on stilts. The huts were beautifully designed with large covered patios and each patio was transformed into an individual handicraft stall, attended by old men and women in beautifully embroidered tribal dress. These were not the “long-necks” but rather members of the Karen tribe, one of the oldest and most prevalent tribes in northern Thailand. As it turned out, this was a village collective of multiple tribes which, according to our unofficial guide, all share crops and income from tourism. We made our way through rice paddy fields, strawberry fields and cabbage fields to the Long-neck village in the back. We first encountered the little girls of the Padaung tribe. They sit on their patios and weave scarves using special looms that stretch from the ceiling to a wooden belt that closes around their small bodies. Since the number of rings around the neck is increased gradually with age, the young girls were still in the preliminary stages of neck stretching with coils of twelve to eighteen rings. The most rings that we saw on any woman’s neck were twenty-five. The rings are removed only once each year for cleaning. The women sleep, swim and perform all of their daily chores with the rings. We saw photos of two of the young women with the rings removed. Their freakishly stretched necks looked bruised but otherwise intact. When I picked up a set of rings that were on display, I immediately understood the bruising – the rings were solid metal and VERY heavy!
The village had a small wood and bamboo schoolhouse and teachers come from Chiang Mai, two days each week, to teach Thai and English as well as basic elementary skills. A large Christian church was also under construction, which was surprising. I wouldn’t have expected the long-necks to be Christians, especially with such a dominant Buddhist following in Thailand. I immediately recalled the Poisonwood Bible and imagined a wily, eccentric Christian evangelist climbing the mountains of north Thailand to convert the “long-necks”. Men were noticeably absent from the “long-neck” village. We were told that they work outside the village and return only one day each week to be with their families. Judging by the village entrance fee, the prices of the handicrafts and the number of woven scarves in every tourist’s clutches (including mine), I suspect that the women are the major breadwinners. The women were meek and sweet-natured, welcoming photographs and patiently answering questions. While the village tours add a commercialistic nature to their daily lives, they don’t seem to be bothered by it. The tourism dollars allow them to live a more comfortable, secure life than they otherwise would. With our small sack of woven scarves in hand, we bade farewell to the “long-necks” and moved on to the next phase of our adventure.
We met the rest of our trekking group in the parking lot of an orchid farm and climbed into the truck with our packs. There were eight of us in total, excluding our guide. In the covered bed of a truck with no shocks, we bumped up a winding road for about forty-five minutes through lush, tropical landscape – banana plants, palm trees, bamboo forest – and finally arrived at the elephant park. The elephants were already fitted with large metal baskets on their backs. Aaron and I climbed onto the pavilion and into the basket while our guide mounted the elephant and climbed onto the back of its neck. I must admit that, after seeing elephants in the wild during our safaris, I hated seeing them as working animals. I tried to convince myself that they had a good life there, in the control of rural Thais who jab them with sickles to make them carry loads of obnoxious tourists around for their own financial gain. Elephants are so much more beautiful in the wild than in captivity. The passive pachyderms clearly had their own agenda as they stopped every ten steps or so to rip an entire tree out of the ground for a snack. Our elephant seemed to be the hungriest and most incorrigible of the group and we gasped in horror on several occasions as we felt almost certain to fall out of the leaning basket and plunge to our deaths down an almost vertical mountainside as the elephant went for another tree. We rode for about an hour in one big circle. The ride was scenic but gut-wrenching and I was happy to dismount in the end. I felt sorry for the working elephants and I never want to ride one again!
With everyone safely back on the ground, we walked across the road for a simple but satisfying lunch of fried rice and fresh watermelon. Our guide encouraged us to have second and third helpings of the rice. “No food, no power!” he said and we all laughed but little did we know that he meant it in the most serious way. Our first day of trekking, while only a few hours long, was painfully intense! What we had envisioned as a leisurely afternoon hike materialized into my worst nightmare – a steep, grueling, unrelenting ascent for nearly three straight hours to the summit of the mountain. In hindsight, two clues should have alerted me to the advanced nature of the trek: first, the first night’s stay was advertised as being in a hill tribe village; second, we had taken a moped into the mountains and should have noticed how intensely steep they were. At the time, however, my mind was solidly focused on proving that I could handle with style not just one but two nights of camping in the woods! Still, even steep mountains usually have zigzagging paths to soften the steep ascent. Not this one. The path seemed to go almost straight up the entire way. It was brutal and I almost cried in response to the physical exertion. Once again, I felt every day of my age, every beer I’d indulged in for the past week, and every extra pound of fat on my body. My inner monologue was plagued with curses and negativity and I think some of that emotional bile even bubbled up and out of my mouth, though I don’t think anyone but Aaron witnessed it…thankfully. He’s been with me through enough rounds of PMS by now to have developed immunity to my snarling. After battling through an almost constant urge to sit down, refuse to continue, and let the wild animals have their way with my exhausted body, the village in the sky finally appeared – a cluster of bamboo huts on stilts at the TOP of the mountain. At first glance, I wondered why anyone would choose such a hard-to-reach location for a village but then I turned around and beheld the most picturesque vision of a lush, green, distant valley dividing stunning grey and green mountains against a perfect, soft blue sky.
We settled into a large bamboo hut with an elevated deck where we would spend the rest of the evening. When we spied the menu of ice cold beverages, we knew that we weren’t too far off the tourist trail. We were appreciative, though, because never does an ice cold beer taste as good as it does after a grueling three-hour hike in the mountains. We sat on the deck, drinking, laughing and taking turns in the cold shower. I was the only one who was too wimpy to brave a cold shower on a cold night and instead opted for the camper’s baby wipe shower. Some of the village women tried to sell us the usual bead crafts and, as usual, no one was interested but then they said the magic word: “Massage?” I didn’t hesitate to accept and, surprisingly, after the day we’d just had, I was the only taker. Their loss. After dinner, while the revelers continued their revelry, two village women took me into our hut and kneaded me like a ball of dough, double-team style, for one blissful hour. By now, I’ve indulged in five massages in Thailand so I can say, from experience, that the women employed no discernible technique but their hands were strong and sure and, at no time, did I have less than four hands on my body. The soothing background noise was a composite of my laughing comrades, the women speaking softly over me in their musical tribal language, and the village animals rustling around under the hut. I emerged in a semi-trance and remained that way until bedtime.
We began the next morning with large kettles of hot coffee and tea, boiled eggs and a mountain of toast. We packed up and started hiking – from the top of the mountain, we had nowhere to go but down – toward a waterfall where we would have our lunch. We all went for a swim in the frigid water pool, even if only for a few minutes. Once again, I was the wimpy one. I can’t help it – I detest being cold! After our dip, we ate huge bowls of Thai noodles around a large picnic table and then lazed in the sun for the next two hours. It was wonderfully relaxing.
Two more hours on the trail took us to our next campsite – a small secluded cluster of huts on the edge of a river. I hopped into the cold shower before I had time to lose my nerve. We laughed some more over a hot dinner and spent the evening playing games around a campfire, including one in which, whenever you lost a round, our guide would paint your face with ash from the bottom of the cooking pots. Having just finished my first real shower, I was against the whole ash-on-the-face idea but everyone else was into it so I went along. We had fun with it and didn’t stop playing until everyone had black faces.
Our final day began with a thirty-minute hike to the site of the white water rafting. After a cursory safety briefing, we were in the rafts, gliding through a series of tame rapids. We enjoyed the sun and lush, forest-covered riverbanks but the rapids were not intense enough to get our adrenaline pumping and certainly no comparison to the mighty Zambezi. We were only in the boats for about forty-five minutes before the guides were shuffling us onto the bamboo rafts. At first, they had our group divided onto two rafts but then, for reasons unknown, they consolidated us onto one raft. With the weight of all eight of us and one guide who maneuvered through the water with a long pole, the raft was barely buoyant and we glided along with water up to our waists. We had some good laughs about the situation but I wouldn’t do it again. Bamboo rafting is decidedly overrated, if it’s rated at all.
Thankfully, a huge pot of Pad Thai and plates of sliced watermelon were awaiting us as we climbed off the bamboo rafts and up a small hill to a little Thai rest stop. Our camping trek was swiftly coming to an end. Despite the grueling inclines on the first day, the cold showers and squat toilets, we really had an amazing time and I attribute it completely to our group dynamic. We laughed – big, rolling belly laughs – for three straight days. The eight of us had so much fun together that we decided to meet for a drink that night at the Chiang Mai Night Bazaar. One drink turned into three gigantic towers of beer and, as we said our goodbyes, we were sufficiently drunk and happy. When we sign up for these group excursions, we realize the risk of getting stuck with a group of people who don’t speak English or simply aren’t fun. While we’ve had a handful of the aforementioned sort, we really have been lucky for the most part. We’ll probably never again run into Tom, Jamie, Ann-Marie, Vicki, Marie-Pierre and Jean but the eight of us will always have the memories of that brutal first day’s hike, ash-painted faces, a freezing waterfall swim and laughing uncontrollably for four days about Tom’s pant-ripping fall that only a few of us saw. We’ve met so many interesting people with the common love of traveling and a refreshing number of people who are in the midst of trips similar to ours. Someday we’ll have to rejoin the real world but, for now, we are enthralled with this free-spirited backpacker world where everyone is happy and the only real worries are deciding where to eat dinner, which beach to go to, and how many pairs of clean underwear we have left. Life is good.
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