She was not needed.
It was hard to sleep on the bamboo floor. I had shifted sleeping positions multiple times in the night to try and move the lumps on the bamboo to parts of my body that hadn't been depressed by them yet. By the time Adele woke up, I was sat outside watching the morning rise serenely.
Breakfast consisted of a black coffee, an omlette and a soup that contained rice and egg, after which it was time to get going back to civilisation. I put my medium rare trainers on and we squelched single file up through the field until we joined the dirt track which we would then follow for the majority of the trip down the hill.
We had only walked for a couple of minutes when our guide stopped and starting prodding the overgrowth on the bank with a stick, which he carried on doing for a couple of minutes. Either he was getting a weird sense of gratification from doing this or that bank had said something bad about his mother that no one else had heard. It turns out it was neither (well, not the mother part anyway).
When he finally he lifted the stick out the undergrowth there was a turantula clinging onto the end. this was then placed on the floor by our feet and pissed off no end as the guide tapped his stick next to it, finally it raised 4 of it's legs in an attack stance, I stepped back. Very Nice said "very nice" and proceeded to take some pictures before our guide picked it up and started to put it into his mouth before a collective "naooo" from the four of us saved the little bugger. Sarah was persuaded to then stroke the spider where as Clara and I were having none of it. To great relief, mine and it's, the spider was then placed safely back into to foliage from whence it came.
We carried on down the trail slipping and sliding as we went, sometimes over and sometimes into ankle deep mud which ensured that by the time that we arrived at the bridge where we departed the 4 wheel drive the day before, our trainers were indeed ready to be laid to rest. Later I would try to save mine, but alas all my attempts were in vain. After a beautiful and legstanding relationship, my trainers and I have now gone our seperate ways. Tongues may wag.
Butt I digress....
As we crossed the bridge 2 elephants were waiting for us to continue our journey, 2 of us were to travel upon each platform.
Very Nice carried on clicking away on his camera, I was too busy holding onto the wooden frame as it sloped from side to side in keeping with the slow definitive strides of our mount. The elephant carrying the girls was soon not in sight due to it wanting to stop and eat all the time. When it eventually caught up we carried on through the luscious countryside along the mudded trail and through rivers for the next half hour, admiring the amazing views and lumbering power of these magnificent animals.
We disembarked onto a raised wooden platform, akin to disembarking a ferry or a plane but without 10 members of staff saying their goodbyes and cluttering the exits. We were then afforded the time to have a photo or 2 taken with the elephants before we moved onto our final leg of our journey, navigating a short way down stream on bamboo rafts with me stood at the helm of ours, steering the craft by pushing a pole into the river bed to alter direction. We made our destination with soaking wet feet, but incident free. Shortly after the girls arrived too, for some reason Sarah was surprised that I hadn't fallen into the river en-route.
She wasn't half as surprised as I was.
Around the dinner table we ate vegetarian chicken and all agreed that today had been a more enjoyable adventure than that of the day before. "Yes, very nice" said Very Nice.
Perhaps "yes" was his middle name?
The rest of the day involved us being picked up and carted around to different spots in our dirty clothes, riding a train over the last remaining wooden section of the railway that runs over the Kwai before finally departing in our van back to the hostel in Bangkok. It took over an hour and a half to get back and we all arrived tired after what had been a long couple of days.
I'm glad I experienced it, although I have no desire to ever repeat it again.
Tomorrow I have to buy new trainers......
Breakfast consisted of a black coffee, an omlette and a soup that contained rice and egg, after which it was time to get going back to civilisation. I put my medium rare trainers on and we squelched single file up through the field until we joined the dirt track which we would then follow for the majority of the trip down the hill.
We had only walked for a couple of minutes when our guide stopped and starting prodding the overgrowth on the bank with a stick, which he carried on doing for a couple of minutes. Either he was getting a weird sense of gratification from doing this or that bank had said something bad about his mother that no one else had heard. It turns out it was neither (well, not the mother part anyway).
When he finally he lifted the stick out the undergrowth there was a turantula clinging onto the end. this was then placed on the floor by our feet and pissed off no end as the guide tapped his stick next to it, finally it raised 4 of it's legs in an attack stance, I stepped back. Very Nice said "very nice" and proceeded to take some pictures before our guide picked it up and started to put it into his mouth before a collective "naooo" from the four of us saved the little bugger. Sarah was persuaded to then stroke the spider where as Clara and I were having none of it. To great relief, mine and it's, the spider was then placed safely back into to foliage from whence it came.
We carried on down the trail slipping and sliding as we went, sometimes over and sometimes into ankle deep mud which ensured that by the time that we arrived at the bridge where we departed the 4 wheel drive the day before, our trainers were indeed ready to be laid to rest. Later I would try to save mine, but alas all my attempts were in vain. After a beautiful and legstanding relationship, my trainers and I have now gone our seperate ways. Tongues may wag.
Butt I digress....
As we crossed the bridge 2 elephants were waiting for us to continue our journey, 2 of us were to travel upon each platform.
Very Nice carried on clicking away on his camera, I was too busy holding onto the wooden frame as it sloped from side to side in keeping with the slow definitive strides of our mount. The elephant carrying the girls was soon not in sight due to it wanting to stop and eat all the time. When it eventually caught up we carried on through the luscious countryside along the mudded trail and through rivers for the next half hour, admiring the amazing views and lumbering power of these magnificent animals.
We disembarked onto a raised wooden platform, akin to disembarking a ferry or a plane but without 10 members of staff saying their goodbyes and cluttering the exits. We were then afforded the time to have a photo or 2 taken with the elephants before we moved onto our final leg of our journey, navigating a short way down stream on bamboo rafts with me stood at the helm of ours, steering the craft by pushing a pole into the river bed to alter direction. We made our destination with soaking wet feet, but incident free. Shortly after the girls arrived too, for some reason Sarah was surprised that I hadn't fallen into the river en-route.
She wasn't half as surprised as I was.
Around the dinner table we ate vegetarian chicken and all agreed that today had been a more enjoyable adventure than that of the day before. "Yes, very nice" said Very Nice.
Perhaps "yes" was his middle name?
The rest of the day involved us being picked up and carted around to different spots in our dirty clothes, riding a train over the last remaining wooden section of the railway that runs over the Kwai before finally departing in our van back to the hostel in Bangkok. It took over an hour and a half to get back and we all arrived tired after what had been a long couple of days.
I'm glad I experienced it, although I have no desire to ever repeat it again.
Tomorrow I have to buy new trainers......
Haha... Sarah sounds like she had you pegged lol!
ReplyDeleteSounds like an amazing & exhausting adventure but after reading this I'm not sure that its something I would actually WANT to do!