From the Land of Smiles...

camping weekend

Hey Everybody…sorry about all these being posted so late…but I’m finally getting caught up…and I warn you now…this is going to be long…

The weekend of the 21st I went camping in the mountains with my neighbours (who are also extended host family) and a lot of their extended family and friends…there were 3 trucks and an SUV packed with people and camping stuff…

We left on Friday, just after lunch, and drove for a few hours to Khao Yai (which translated means big mountain) national park (and world historic site). Apparently there were deer there, tigers, and 300 wild elephants…Unfortunately we didn’t see any tigers or elephants, but we did see some deer and monkey’s which was pretty cool…we also saw giant porcupines…they honestly looked like they could have eaten a cat, lol…I couldn’t believe it! We couldn’t get close enough to get a picture though. I was so surprised at what the campsite looked like. I thought it would be just as rugged as Canadian camping, but it turned out to be just one big field where everyone put their tents right near each other…Some people even put their tents inside the gazebo things…that was just ridiculous…It was fun though…especially when we all piled into the back of the van’s with big spotlights and went animal spotting…I wish we had seen a tiger or an elephant though…oh well….

In the morning we woke up really early, because there were a lot of people up and walking around and packing up. Michael and Nueng and I decided to go for a walk. Unfortunately we didn’t see any animals on our walk, but it was fun anyway. And Nueng showed us this really cool plant (I’ll post a picture of it)…you touch its leaves and they all retract…it’s really amusing…Oh, just so you know who I’m talking about…Nueng is the daughter of the woman who I play tennis with…and Michael is from Pittsburg and he’s friends with the family(s) who we went camping with (he’s been in Thailand teaching English for 7 months). He made the trip a lot more fun…and you have no idea how nice it was to be able to speak real English to someone…

After our walk we all had breakfast, showered, packed up the campsite and headed out…we were going to be staying at a different site every night. That day we drove to Khao Koh, stopping a few times to check out some sites…one place that we stopped, which was the site of a palace (although it didn’t look like a palace to me) and we realized just how much this country could look like home…they even have pine trees up in the mountains…although the pine trees are tall and thin with all the branches at the top (just like most thai trees). They even have pointsettas…I was so surprised to see those. That night we had to try a few different places before finding somewhere to camp for the night, so we ended up having to set up camp and cook dinner at night, which made things a bit more difficult.

On Sunday morning we got up and walked across the road and looked at the old vehicles that were used by the Thai army...mostly the usual stuff, planes, tanks etc…but there was one thing that I really couldn’t wrap my head around…a caterpillar (a little bulldozer) with a wooden box on the top of it. I have no idea how that could have done anything in fighting, but that’s just me…That day we did a lot of driving around, but we got to see some beautiful things…like 2 waterfalls…the first one kind of looked like Balls Falls…and while we were there almost everyone took baths in the river (we didn’t shower that morning…you should be happy you didn’t see the water that we would have had to use…*shudder*)…then we went to the second waterfall… this one was bigger and had a few tiers…We took photos from the top, and then went down to the bottom (having to walk down some extremely unstable stairs…when we got down there many of the group went swimming, once again, so Michael and I decided to climb up to the middle level to take some more pictures. We couldn’t have been more than 10 minutes or so, but when we went back down everyone was gone. We got back up to the top and found everyone waiting for us…apparently some of them had been going up and down looking for us too. We felt so bad! I couldn’t believe it though…they must have gotten out of the water right after we left for them to be able to get ready so fast…Then we headed off to the place where we would stay the night…

When we stopped we saw a bunch of cabin-type things on the edge of a hill, and I assumed that was where we’d be staying. Then we went for a little walk. We walked for a bit and then I saw where we were going. The ground that we were walking on looked like it had bubbles coming up from it…almost like there was air trapped under the surface. And then all over the place there were deep cracks in the rocks. It was really really cool. I had no idea how that could have possibly occurred. Nueng told us the next day that it was from earthquakes and from water. I understand the earthquakes part, but it must have taken forever for the water to create the bumps…I’ll post pictures. The we headed back and found out that only a few people were going to be staying in the cabins. I was a little disappointed at first, but when we went up to take a “bath” (thai people call taking a bath dumping small buckets of water over yourself) I saw that the cabins were dirtier and had more bugs than our tents did (and personally, I didn’t want to sleep with bugs in my bed).

After we went back we all got into the trucks and drove up the road to see a show. It turned out to be little Chinese girls singing and dancing…or little thai girls that were singing some Chinese ( I think that might have been it). We watched a bit of the show, we met a few guys that go to university in Bangkok (they were there on a camping trip). The one guy had done his grade 12 year in a school in Florida, near Miami, so his English was really good. We also talked to his friend, whose English was just as good as his. They told us that every year there’s a show at this time. It’s because about 30 or so years ago there was a war in Thailand. There were a bunch of communists up in one of the mountains and the thai army fought them. So apparently this was to commemorate the war ending. I was surprised because I thought that I had read that Thailand never had a civil war (or anything like that), but apparently they don’t like to talk about this one very much…

Then it started to rain a bit, so someone came on and announced that everyone was going to dance to try and make the rain go away. So many of the people in the audience got up and started dancing (thai dancing). Well, the guys decided to make me come up and dance with them. I could do the hand movements already from when my friend taught me, so I just had to co-ordinate the feet with the hands…and once I got it it was really easy. Nueng took a picture of me, and then came out and joined us. It was so much fun. And it was so funny because all these random thai people kept coming up and taking my picture…and there was a woman with a really big camera videotaping me (I had caught her taping me earlier too). After that we sat back down for a few minutes and then had to go back to our site because the kids were tired.

The next morning we got up and packed up the site. Then we drove for a bit and stopped at another place. This was the mountain where the war had been. We ended up walking about 5 km total that day…We walked up the mountain to the top, where there was another one of those cool rock fields. Apparently it had been used as a makeshift hospital site before people could be taken to a real hospital. I don’t see how that could have worked with all the bumps, but that’s just me… Then we walked back down and we saw some of the gravesites of the communists. It was really weird, there were cigarette buts all over the graves. I was so surprised, because I thought immediately that it was a bad thing (it certainly would be in Canada), but apparently it was paying respect somehow (since, although they were communist, they were still thai). There were also open water bottles placed around them. It had to have been one of the weirdest things I’ve ever seen here. Then we walked down and saw the communist village. It was all made of wood and would have fit perfectly into a horror movie, it was really creepy… Then we had to walk all the way back down.

On our drive back down the mountains we stopped at the coolest place. It was another cliff…but the thing that made it cool was all the fog. There was so much fog that you literally could not see past the edge. When you looked down, straight ahead, up (it was cloudy)…all you saw was white. It felt like we were at the edge of the world or something. Don’t worry…I do realize that the world is round, but that’s what it felt like. Like in the Truman show where he reaches the edge of the dome that he lives in…and its all just white as he looks up… It really was unreal.

After that we headed home, stoping periodically for lunch, coffee, snacks, and dinner…It was a more than 7 hour drive…and boy was I tired when I got back…it took me a few days to really recover…It was a really fun trip…

Sorry...there's lots of pictures coming after this...so it may take a while to load...

-Lauren

posted by Lauren @ 10:35 AM