“Never Try Never Know”, our guide’s favorite phrase was one that could easily sum up our experience in the mountains west of Chiang Mai.
Lar picked us up Monday morning with the truck that would carry us up into the hills to start our adventure.
Traveling with day packs, anticipation and expectation for new experiences, we were joined by Alex and Connor, two hilarious blokes from the UK; Pamela and Marjolian from Quebec; and Andrea from Switzerland.
We couldn’t have asked for a greater cast of characters to share our time with.
We had a couple of hours of bouncing along progressively worse roads to get to know each other as Lar drove us to our first adventure, “Elephant riding”.
Alex is an artist and Conner a writer.
Both are hoping to continue their studies at the University level.
Pamela and Marjolyn are both taking hiatuses from their respective jobs to travel for a few months.
Andrea is in the hiatus camp as well and is traveling solo for a few months before returning to her job outside of Zurich.
Impressively, she managed to teach herself English in roughly 4 weeks during her travels.
Elephant riding was certainly unique, though mostly anticlimactic. The highlight for me was the incredible and dense thud sounds that our elephant’s turds made as he dropped some weight before heading up a short but steep hill. We fed him bananas and dodged his sneezes for about 30 minutes before moving along to begin trekking on our own feet.
It wasn’t more than 15 minutes into hiking that Lar stopped to teach us about something “from the nature”.
Over the course of the three days we would have the opportunities to eat leaves that prevent malaria, tree sap that treats canker sores and looks like blood, red ants with a citrus tang and spicy baby wasps.
We would also be offered opportunities to allow giant spiders crawl on us (read on for a HUGE shout out to Johanna), climb waterfalls, and have a staring contest with a tarantula.
“Never try never know”…indeed.
It wasn’t long before hearing these words or seeing Lar stop to look at something would fill me with a curious blend of anticipation and dread.
So, it was stop number one in which were offered the citrusy red ants.
After watching the Brits and Johanna bravely chow down and not choke, I gave it a go and have to say it wasn’t all that bad.
I’d still prefer Pad Thai or Mango Sticky Rice any day, but if I was lost in the woods and on the verge of starvation, I certainly would not hesitate to try to survive on ants.
Our next stop of discovery found us at the web of a banana spider, which happens to be a similar variety of arachnid to the one that chased Jo from the bathroom in Koh Tao.
“Are they poisonous?” we asked Lar.
“You not die” was his response.
He went on to say that they can be a bit “jumpy”, but basically if you handle them calmly they won’t bite you.
He then removed the spider from its web and allowed it to crawl all over him.
A few others, Connor and Andrea if I remember correctly, followed suit.
Now, here is where the world’s biggest shout out to Jo comes in.
I have mentioned previously that only two things scare Jo, and one of them is big spiders (the other is in fact Carneys in case you’re wondering
J).
One of the beautiful things about my wife is her determination to face head on the things in life that frighten her.
So, with legs shaking and lip quivering, she allowed Lar to place this giant spider on her arm.
Once again, I couldn’t tell if she was on the verge of laughter or tears, but she survived without a scratch.
Her brave and chivalrous husband was more content to take pictures and couldn’t be reached for comment as to why he declined to let the behemoth spider blow in his ear.
After a few hours of trekking we arrived at “Jungle Camp” where we would spend the night.
Constructed mostly of bamboo and leaves, the camp is beautifully situated at the side of a large stream.
Against our protests, Lar and his nephew knocked down a huge red ant nest to fry up and accompany our dinner.
We came to learn that even more delicious than the ants themselves are their eggs.
We were treated to a fabulous dinner and afterwards, a good ole’ fashioned campfire sing along.
Alex serenaded us with some staples from the Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix while the Thais entertained with traditional Thai folk songs.
It was quite enjoyable to see the passions with which our new Thai friends sang and clapped their way through songs that celebrate stories of Thailand’s Hill Tribes.
We enjoyed a cool but comfortable night’s sleep under mosquito nets as our bodies rested up for day two.
This day would have us trekking for about 6 hours and gaining almost 2000 feet en route to Karen Village where we would spend our second night.
A couple of hours in, Lar once again stopped to dig around in the dirt at the side of the trail.
“What’s he doing?” I asked as I caught up with the group.
They reported that apparently he had uncovered some type of poisonous spider.
We watched in horror as Lar used his bare hands to un-nest a spider that made the one from the previous day look like a puppy.
With two sticks, he pulled the female spider, ripe with hundreds of eggs, out of her hole so that we could have a look and take pictures.
Turns out this beast is one of the most poisonous of any you could encounter in the Thai jungle.
Its bite could take a human down (and I mean DOWN) in less than two hours.
According to Lar, even the cobras would turn tail and run from one of these guys.
After learning this, I was absolutely awestruck and touched at the loving manner in which Lar returned the spider to its lair, and then proceeded to rebuild the nest, all the while referring to her as “my friend”.
Lar is probably the closest thing to a “medicine man” that I have ever encountered.
Early on he said that in the city, he “not that smart”.
But out “in the nature” is a whole different story.
He would frequently profess that everything comes from “the nature”.
The Hill Tribes are interdependent with the surrounding jungle, and like other indigenous people, they celebrate in their relationship to the circle of life that surrounds and enfolds them.
Lar is the type of supreme nature bad-ass that Bear Grylls would like to be in his wildest fantasies.
If his knowledge of plant and animal are insufficient as proof of this claim, then his skills with a machete would surely silence any argument to the contrary.
After using the machete to clear some tenacious bamboo from the trail, Lar proceeded to deftly employ its use in order to carve 7 pairs of chopsticks from a piece of the bamboo (he did this while walking).
Perhaps “Medicinal Renaissance Man” would be a more appropriate title for our guide.
The man can cook!
On day two, we lunched on delicious noodles wrapped in giant leaves, which we happily tore into with our new chopsticks.
For dinner that night, Lar prepared the best yellow curry and stir fried bok choy that my taste buds have encountered.
He did so in a giant wok suspended over an open flame in the kitchen of the home in which we stayed in Karen Village.
The home belongs to Lar’s uncle and the hospitality extended to us by Lar and his family was incredibly warm and generous.
That night we retired to bed with bellies full and feeling like the luckiest people in Thailand.
On day three, after a relaxing breakfast overlooking the rice fields surrounding Karen Village, we set off again.
On this day we only had to walk for about an hour before a truck picked us up and carried us the rest of the way down the mountain.
After swimming in a waterfall and dining on another delicious meal of Pad Thai, we commenced with our final activity, “bamboo rafting”.
The rafts are constructed of huge bamboo shoots, roughly 20 feet in length and lashed together with old bike tires.
The “pilot” uses another long bamboo pole to steer the craft around bends and through small sections of mostly tame rapids.
We spent about an hour floating down the river and getting splashed by our pilots as well as every other person we passed on the river.
It really was quite a relaxing and enjoyable way to finish up a spectacular three days in the jungle.
