Meet
Mr. Chart, the Northern Thailand equivalent to television's 'Man vs Wild' survivalist Bear Grylls. Having read great things about Mr. Chart online, we arranged for a two-day overnight trek through the jungle to a remote
Lisu village where we'd overnight and get a closer look at village life. What we really got was our butts kicked.
Around 8am, we arrived at Mr Chart's office (and home) where we were quickly offered breakfast. But Chart (apparently his first, last, and nick name) doesn't serve the standard fare, and quickly pulled out jungle ferns (yes, ferns) and a whole chicken, head, claws, and all. We embrace the strangeness of eating ferns, staring at a chicken head, and sitting on a plastic floor as we dig in. It was actually pretty good, but aside from the ferns, we begin to pick up on some odd things: 1) he named his son bamboo because he liked bamboo, and 2) he has a bag of raw boar meat (which he hunted in the jungle) and which he plans to carry all day for food. We look at each other happy we'd brought clif bars and snickers.
After a quick ride in the back of a pick-up, we start our journey at 9am and head into the woods at an aggressive pace. Chart leads the way, wearing what are basically slippers, and we quickly learn that he has been a Muay Thai boxer since the age of 7, hinting it's going to be a tough day. An hour into the hike, we arrive at the edge of the jungle and Chart offers whiskey to god(s?) to protect us at a makeshift shrine.
The next portion of the hike crossed back and forth across a stream and required a lot of footwork on slippery rocks to stay dry, which needless to say, we didn't. A few hours into the hike, Lindsey took a bad fall on one of the rocks and slammed her fist into another rock badly hurting a finger. Not sure if it was broken or just badly bruised, we stopped to treat it.
Unfortunately, Steve had knocked out the power in our bungalow the night before (which wasn't fixed!) and had forgotten the medical pack with normal things like ibuprofen and tape that could have really helped at this point. But we were confident that Mr. Chart had some supplies to help. Confidence couldn't have been more misplaced as he pulled out tigerbalm which he guaranteed can treat anything. Lindsey was not happy and in a lot of pain, but she continued on.
Another 2 hours of trekking (4 total so far) we stopped for lunch, having already taken in a quick break at a remote waterfall. Chart offered us some pickled (raw) boar, which we both declined and we stuffed ourselves with sticky-rice and clif bars. Steve made some safe drinking water with his
steripen gadget, while Chart, on the other hand, just about shoved his face in the river and started drinking, assuring us it was safe. We opted for the steripen.
As lunch ended, Chart told us: "now hard part, morning trail for villagers and animals, next trail only Chart use." Given that we already felt it was a pretty difficult hike, we were a bit concerned and we quickly discovered that by "hard part" he meant we'd be following a 4 inch path up near-cliffs, down slippery stretches of gravel, and through thick jungle. It was an incredibly difficult hike and even more so for Lindsey who was unable to grip with her right hand. Yet despite how hard it was we thought that lots of people do this with Chart so we were just being a bit whimpy.
By about 3pm we reached a high elevation corn field and figured we must be getting close to the village. As we sat down for a break, Chart said "New York" and simply laughed. The 43 year-old was kicking our butts. Chart showed us some pottery fragments in the fields from a 1000-year old people and let us rest for 5 minutes. Here we found out that we were an hour and a half out from the village.
We continued uphill, climbing to 1800m and passed our first villager, 'Sam' who was out hunting for squirrel. Another hour later we stopped for our final break and found out the big secret. Instead of changing Chart's usual 3-day, 2-night trek to accomodate our 1-night requets, he just combined two days of hiking into one day. He was very excited about the time that we had made covering 30km and climbing to 1800m. We were utterly exhausted.
At 4:15, we arrive at the Lisu village and were welcomed by mean barking dogs that Chart shot at with a slingshot he had crafted in the jungle. He tells us that we have hiked all the way to the Burmese border and that the Thai army was just over the hill protecting the border. We snapped a few pictures and quickly made our way to a bench where we'd rest for the majority of the evening.
Village life was not what we had imagined. We both envisioned a rather romantic concept where the community would work together and take a lot more pride in their community than a modern society does. But this wasn't the case and it really just seemed like seperate households trying to survive: doors were locked, there was garbage throughout the area, and each family cooked for their own. The floors were dirt, livestock wandered freely (including inside the houses) and we wondered what kept people living in this manner.
As we sat and rested, Steve was invited into a house with four men squatting around a small fire eating and drinking. He had a bite of black-chicken (a gross looking animal, but tastes like regular chicken) and some shots of gasoline-powered whiskey (Samsong brand). Here he learned that no one knows how old they are in the village and they typically just say 'I was born in the rainy season' or the dry season, which occur annually. He also met a man who claimed to only shower during the wet season. He quickly left and returned to the bench for more rest.
In the evening, we slept in a house with bamboo walls, dirt floors, chickens, bags of corn/rice, and a chicken-feet door ornament. Yet despite how filfthy it all seemed, the people were kind and lit us a fire to stay warm, which typically isn't done. For dinner, Chart made some more pork dishes (we declined again) and a nice chicken soup which we devoured.
Before dinner we also made more water with the Steripen and a few villagers gathered around in awe of modern technology as Mr. Chart explained it to them in their tribal language.
We went to sleep, hoping that Lindsey's finger would feel a bit better by morning and praying there weren't any fleas in the bed. We managed to get some sleep until about 5am when we were woken up by roosters.
We always thought that roosters did their noise once when the sun came up, but in reality they do it continually for about 5 hours. And when the village has about 100 roosters, this means you just don't sleep after sunrise. It was the most annoying alarm clock the world has ever known.
In the morning Lindsey's finger was still quiet swollen and painful and we decided to hike out to a road and take a truck back instead of risking her falling on it again. Even though this day's hike was supposedly easier, the tigerbalm just hadn't done much to help surprisingly enough! We hiked uphill (even more!) to a road where we caught a 1.5hr ride back to Pai in search of some ibuprofen and some serious recovery. Hiking on the road Lindsey got a great picture of Steve and Chart:
One day of Chart had proven to be enough, and the village stay was a bit more than we were prepared for! For anyone considering Chart here's our advice: bring your own food and medical supplies, and opt for three days of trekking.
Relaxation time!
