On the day of our trek, we were picked up by a car and driven into the hills to visit the long neck tribe. This tribe is infamous for the women who wear gold links around their necks. This results in their necks becoming longer! We spent an hour there learning about their tribe. Traditionally the women would wear these neck braces to protect them from tiger attacks when trekking through the jungle. Apparently the tiger would try to kill by strangulation and these chains would prevent that from happening. Whether or not this was true we don't know, but the women continue wearing these chains even today, although it's obviously showcased to attract tourists.
We then set off in our car to meet the rest of our group who had opted not to visit the long neck tribe. We met up with them and squeezed into an already cramped tuk-tuk to continue the journey into the hills. On our way we passed the elephant park we had stayed at the previous day - I had promised Jenna we would come back again one day, I didn't think it would be the following day! And then we stopped off at another elephant park. The reason for this visit was to allow us to sit on the back of an elephant and to trek a small distance. We weren't overly keen on this at all, having spent the previous two days learning about how elephants are abused until they are submissive enough to allow people to site on their backs. We did it though as we didn't really want to make a scene and spoil the walk for the others by making them feel guilty, but we felt pretty guilty ourselves and kept telling off the mahout when he hit or jabbed the elephant with his hooked stick.
After a quick lunch at the elephant park, we drove further into the hills and eventually left the tuk tuk behind. Our group consisted of 12 tourists and our local guide called Ronnie. We set off on our walk, aided by bamboo walking sticks, and over the next 3 hours walked up some pretty steep and challenging terrain. I think the guide said we walked about 5km uphill, but I'm not certain. It was hard work with the heat anyway! The jungle was beautiful and gave us some amazing views. Jenna struggled a bit towards the end and she vowed she must quit smoking! We all made it to the remote hilltop village at about 5pm. You could see the odd village in the distance and our guide said it would take a good 3 hours to walk there due to the gradient of the hills - we were pretty much as remote as you can get!
After everyone got showered, we spent the evening chatting to our group over a dinner cooked by our guide - although nobody saw him doing any cooking, so he probably got one of the tribe girls to do it! We had a great evening and our group was really good. Our guide Ronnie was hilarious. He disappeared for a couple of hours while everyone got washed up. When he returned he'd obviously been drinking as nobody could understand what he was on about - he was a real character with a crazy laugh that would surface for no apparent reason! We then figured he'd been drinking some locally brewed drink, we all tried some of it and it put hairs on your chest! He spent the next two hours working out which days we were born on and then telling us how that would affect our lives. We were all laughing though as we were pretty sure he was making half of it up as he went along, regardless of whether you were born on a Tuesday or a Sunday, we were all predicted to 'be a boss' in our work life! Then one of the lads who lived in this village turned up and sat around showing us some unbelievable tricks with matchsticks. He was on a different planet though, which was backed up when he told us he was an opium addict and 'it hurts' when he doesn't have it!
It tipped it down during the night and was still raining when we woke at 7am. The previous day had been beautiful, but it was clear from the clouds that the rain would continue for our entire second day! We got absolutely soaked as we made our descent back down the hills. It was really slippery and quite dangerous in places! We stopped off at a waterfall, but I didn't fancy jumping in! It was amazing to see the jungle in the rain though and it contrasted so much to the previous day. We found some lychee trees and ate their fruit, they were amazing. The last part of our trip involved some whitewater rafting which was fun and then some bamboo raFting which was a bit tame in comparison. Just as we were about to board our bamboo raft, one of the guides spotted that there was a 3 foot long snake on it! He managed to wrestle it off with a stick, but the damage was done and none of us felt overly comfortable on the raft!
We then made our way back into town on our tuk tuk. We were all soaked, Ronnie was hungover, but we had all had an amazing trip!
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