Spiders and Tigers and Snakes- Oh My!

Alright, folks, get ready for a long one. (Also, I am really having trouble with the formatting in Blogger right now... so I apologize for that and hopefully will fix it soon...)

Well, my brother Johnny has paid us a visit from the cold, northern steppe of Mongolia to the hot, humid tropical jungle of Thailand. *Insert culture shock here*. And to really give him the full jungle experience, we headed up to Mae Hong Son for a trek through that very jungle.

Mae Hong Son is nestled in the heart of the mountains- a fact we were made well aware of by the nausea-inducing-six-hour van ride through the windiest roads I’ve seen- and it was worth every twist and turn. We stayed at a guest house near the big lake in the center of town and found a great tour-guide operation which drew us in originally because the woman behind the desk had a pet lemur. While we fed the lemur fruit and it licked our fingers, we decided on a two day trek up a mountain and through the jungle.

Our buddy, the lemur

The next morning after breakfast we were picked up and taken to our guide Paw Di’s house in a village on the edge of the jungle where we outfitted for our trip. As John pointed out, it was the first camping trip we’ve been on where we packed solely fresh vegetables and raw meat to eat for the next two days. After safely stowing the bananas and cauliflower and pork, we shouldered our bags and set out from the house, through the village farm, right into the woods.

Packing the supplies

While we hiked through the dense forest full of mud and slippery rocks, Paw Di (who was wearing rubber slip-on shoes) would whip out his machete and make us little souvenirs- like a leaf cap, or a bamboo pipe and spoon. Eventually our path along a stream bed took a sharp turn up a hill and that hill turned into a small mountain and we reached one of the most beautiful lunch spots in history. We had emerged from the humid, wet, muddy jungle onto a small dry ridge where we could see the rest of the surrounding hills and then off in the distance where the mountains of Thailand ended and the mountains of Burma began. It was breathtaking. And the breeze that we could feel on the top didn’t hurt our opinion about the location either.

View from the top

While this was all happening Paw Di was telling us (through Phil's translation) that in the jungle there are a lot of wild boars. And we were like hmmmm, wild boars, I heard those could be a little dangerous. And then Paw Di mentioned that there were also tigers. And we were like tigers? And he was like yes, big tigers with the yellow and black stripes. And then went on to tell us that some of the cows and buffalo owned by the local people had been getting eaten. We hadn't realized that we were in a current-day tiger range, but following Paw Di and his machete, we trekked onwards and upwards. This onwards and upwards trekking took us to more spectacular views and better breezes.

But, as it turns out, tigers weren’t our biggest concern. When we reached the top of the mountain and Paw Di told us a story about a cobra he had seen that was three meters long and as thick as his calf (cobras are the ones with the hoods and the fangs and the poison). We decided that we might have more success against a tiger with our strong bamboo walking sticks than we would against a spitting, striking cobra. Starting our decent to the village where we would stay that night, we didn’t –thank goodness- run into any cobras, but we did find some jungle millipedes, which are pretty benign but very large...

And then, finally, after hiking all day, we ran into a member of the village we were heading to showing us we were very close, which was reassuring, but he was holding a rifle almost as tall as himself, which was not so reassuring, remembering we were in tiger territory. But, they told us it was for wild boars and not for tigers and we went on our merry way with the jungle finally opening up into the village of six huts, one of which was for us. After showering and looking at the pigs and playing with some of the stray dogs, we went in to help prepare all the fresh vegetables and raw meat that we had brought. All the cooking is done over an open fire in the middle of the house and it makes for a very mesmerizing sight.

The village

Cooking dinner

The dinner was exceptionally delicious: lemongrass soup, sautéed veggies, and peas with pork. Our hungry selves gobbled it up while looking over the mountains (yes, we were on the other side of the ridge by now) and after dinner we joined back around the fire drinking tea and watching the men of the village smoke banana leaves. Being pretty tired from the day of hiking, we went to bed on the floor under the mosquito nets quite quickly reassured, as John pointed out, that there was a family of juicy pigs living under our front porch which would surely be more appealing to a tiger, should one come prowling. We slept well until about 4:30 in the morning when the roosters roosting under our heads woke up and were cock-a-doodle-doo-ing until we got up, ate breakfast, and prepared for day two.

Our "guard pigs" under the porch...

Before we set off, we had to protect ourselves against the leaches, which really just meant putting bug spray on our socks and boots and hoping for the best. Leaches were the main concern of the day because we were hiking down the muddy path to a river, which we would follow back to Mae Hong Son. Paw Di packed his rubber slip-ons with a certain kind of leaf which appeared to be more successful against the blood-suckers than the bug spray because he only came out with a couple while I had the record of twenty on my socks and boots, Johnny in second with nine, and Phil reeling in eight, but two had latched on making him bleed so he was the real winner.

Day two was beautiful and I will spare you more reading by inserting pictures below. I do want to talk about one more thing before this novel of a blog comes to a close, though, and that is about our lunch on the second day. While we were hiking Paw Di stopped to cut down a huge stalk of bamboo and whittled it while we were walking down to the river. He pointed out a nice swimming hole where we promptly jumped in and swam around. Coming back to the lunch spot (and it can’t have been more than fifteen minutes later) Paw Di had a fire going, a tea pot made of bamboo on the fire, cups and spoons carved for each of us out of bamboo as well as a serving tray filled with a pork-vegetable-dish. He then handed us little banana leaf bundles which we unwrapped to find rice. He made tea leaves out of a fern he found in the woods, and it was probably the best trail lunch I’ve ever had in my life.

Paw Di making tea out of jungle leaves in a bamboo pot

Phil enjoying the bamboo creations
From there, more walking down the river, more beautiful stands of bamboo forest, more Paw Di whittling things and pointing out tarantulas and telling about huge cobras, and then before we knew it we were down the mountain, and dropped off in Mae Hong Son. We quickly followed our showers with a Thai massage, a big dinner (where we toasted Paw Di for getting us off the mountain without so much as a cobra, tarantula, or tiger bite), and a great nights sleep.

I sincerely hope I haven't bored you too much... more on the adventures with John soon!

Mountains of Burma in the distance

"You eat ants?"

"You better believe it..."Another of Paw Di's (flattering...) creations

Phil and Paw Di

Adventuring down the River

Tarantula!
Another fearsome jungle spider

Ah, the Sabai Life...