Chiang mai, Thailand
Friday, July 7, 2006
Ok I left off with the bugs, thank you all for the sympathy and concern, oh wait I didn't get any. The next morning we woke up and started our daily trekk through the jungle, it has been raining pretty steadiley for the last couple of days but you are drenched with sweat so the rain is kinda nice. However because off the rain the water levels have risen quite a bit, I mention this only becaus to was our rafting day. Picture this a gentley moving blue river making its way through a lush forest with a white water raft traversing down stream, nice eh. Now I will tell you what I did. The guide stops beside this raging river that is 2- 3 meters above the level it is normally at because they had to open the flood gates so as not to overflow the dam. The water is the colour of chocolate milk and it it looks like it is being pushed from a fire hose. There is debrie and logs the size of telephone poles screamming by. We were a little concerned at this point because there was no nice boat with life jackets and helmets waiting for us. Our faithful guide laughs at us and proceeds to cut down half a dozen bamboo pole about 10 feet long and lashes them together with vines. He makes two of these boats(i use that term in the loosest sense of the word) he tells me and raj to get on the first one and hands me a pole about 8 feet long and pushes us off the bank. Now I am on a raft made of bamboo in the middle of the thai jungle trying to steer with a pole that only sometimes is hitting the bottom of the river. Raj who is at the front of the raft(i have since given up calling it a boat) turns around to see if his mate and the guide are coming, as he does this we head straight into a tree that is hanging over the river, knocking him off into the water. We are moving to fast to try and stop so he is floating down stream trying to make it back to the boat, luckily I was able with all my skill and ablity manage to hit another large clump of trees that conviently happened to be in the middle of the river, this and slowing the raft down enough for raj to get back on. Now as calm and collected as it may seem I was that was all shattered when after getting pummuled by branches and trees I happened to look down at my now bruised and battered body to see the biggest yellowest hairiest meanest spide I have evercome across calmly making a beeline for my feet. Now as many of you know I am not fond of the spider, so seeing this boheimeth coming towards me I naturally screamed and backed away from it. Remember now that I am already at the back of the raft with only the raging river behind me, logically I chose to fall into the river away from the spider, the problem now arises that I was the one who was attempting to steer the raft with my inadaquete pole(no jokes please). Raj turning to see why we were heading into the trees yet again realized that I had vacated my position for the safer water was knocked off again by the branches. Now we are both in the water, our guide and owen were no where to be found and our raft was floating away, killing the spider might have been the better option in hindsight. Fortunatly with nobody steering the raft it headed for the large clump of trees in the middle again. We managed to pull ourselves back on and set out down the river again. The river began to move through rice paddies and the banks were not as overgrown with trees, safety at last, wrong. We entered the bridge section, there were foot bridges connecting the paddies to one another, some were so low that you had to lie flat on your stomach to make it underneath. Some were even to low for that and you had to jump on the bridge run across the bridge and then back on the raft, this was not always a sucessful endeavor and resulted in jumping and missing the raft altogther. This little trip lasted 3 hours and when we finally made it to the village I was physically and emotionally spent, at this point in time I would have gladly eaten the bugs.
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