We loaded into the back of a pickup truck we'd booked to take us on a trek of some of the hill tribe villages surrounding Chiang Mai. Inside, we met Liz, an English girl, and Ingo, a German guy (more on him later). We were soon joined by three chain-smoking French, a Thai, and two more Germans. It was a cozy ride.Our first stop was a long-neck tribe village, which was pretty obviously set up as more of a trinket-hawking market and human zoo than an actual, traditionally functioning village. Lucky for our wallets, we were given a strict 15 minute time limit, as not everyone in the truck had paid for this portion of the “trek”, and could therefore not take part. After a brief visit to a butterfly and orchid farm, and some lunch eaten on a bamboo structure that had recently collapsed under the weight of too many travellers, the real trekking began.
We spent four hours footing it through the forest, spotting wild orchids, giant mushrooms, and exploring an insect-infested cave. Despite his fear of all things eight-legged, Ingo braved the cave, but his visit was cut short after a hand-sized spider was discovered hunting crickets in the dark. Our hike finished in a village by a stream, where tiny chickens ran free, and two brothers kicked a ball back and forth through the dust. It was a pretty idyllic setting, and one that almost made me wish we had arranged to spend the night, especially since I was fairly certain the French guys had weed. They'd disappeared earlier, around the half way mark, while we were resting in another village, only to return 20 minutes late and giggly, with some less-than-believable excuse. I had hoped to smoke it once in each country, a record I had managed to maintain—par pur hasard—through Korea, Japan, China and Vietnam. But my luck began to run out in Cambodia, where the opportunity arose, but under circumstances that were much too sketchy for my liking, and it looked like I wouldn't be reenacting any scenes from The Beach while in Thailand either.
It was just us and Ingo, the German arachnophobe, riding out to see another waterfall before returning to our respective hostels. The truck jumped up and over the first bump in the road with such force that I bounced up and hit my head square on a steel crossbeam; it was at this moment that Ingo chose to tell me that he loves heavy metal music. I told him I only really knew of/liked two heavy metal groups: Metallica and Tool, which he didn't much care for, but he went on to explain that heavy metal encompassed a wide range of music, and even included guys like Bon Jovi. Somehow, I couldn't reconcile the difference between Tool's “Hooker With A Penis” and Jon Bon Jovi's “Bed Of Roses” (I still can't), but I took his word for it. Ingo went on to explain how he had left a new girlfriend back in Germany, for who “his heart was burning”, how they had met at a heavy metal concert and “made love their first night together.” He'd never met anyone like her, had only dated “stupid girls” before her, and, he told me, was seriously considering cutting his trip short so he could return to Germany and be with her. I got to know quite a bit about Ingo by the time we reached the waterfall, and we all sunk our feet into the cool muddy pools that the rushing water filled up and spilled out of down the dripping clay embankment.
On a locals recommendation, we ate at a stunningly good Italian restaurant, before enduring a hair-raising ride back from a drunken tuk-tuk driver, who insisted on shouting incoherant assertations that he knew where he was going the entire way back to our hostel. Thailand, it seemed, was full of bumpy rides.
