Phu Soi Dao National Park

After the last blog post, we left Bangkok for Pitsanulok, a city about halfway between Bangkok and the northernmost border. We've spent the last few days without seeing any other farang.

What happened this week started on the train from Bangkok, but there was an incident at the train station that deserves mentioning.

We saw a woman carrying a large snake, and when she spotted us she ordered the creature to fondle me. As it slithered through my armpit, Mike and I noticed that a small crowd had formed around us. The woman then handed me a smaller snake, coiled into a disk, and I accepted it. It appeared to be very sick if not dead. Five hundred baht, she said. I tried to give it back, but the crowd started yelling at me. I made out, "hai cuhn," "give to you." An old man tried to explain to me -- "No money," he shouted. At that, another man snatched the snake from my hands and ran across the street. The crowd started to disperse. After a few moments, the snake woman ran after the man who had taken her snake. I watched from a distance as she retrieved the snake, kissed it, and lifted it up in the air. Meanwhile, a man had approached Mike and given him an arm massage, by force, and then demanded payment for it. Mike gave him five baht so he would go away.

A few hours later we got on the train, where we met Chet, a Thai college senior who was headed to Phu Soi Dao National Park for some mountaintop camping. We wound up invited, although due to the language barrier I'm not sure whether he invited us or we invited ourselves.

The train arrived several hours late, and no one seemed to care about the "broken engine" that delayed us in the dark country. We got off in Pitsanulok with Chet and took a bus to another city. The bus riders were mostly cleaner and more professional-looking than the sad rabble on the train.

At our destination, Chet helped us buy hammocks and rations in the market. Then we got on a Song Thaew, sort of a protected flatbed truck, and rode through the mountains and rice fields. Mike remarked that it was nice to finally see green. To say the very least. The other colors peeked through in flecks, but otherwise our view was overwhelmed by the brightest and greenest hue of green.

We arrived at the Phu Soi Dao visitors center about 20 hours after we'd boarded the train. Chet and the park staff tried to convince us to pay someone to haul our bags up the mountain. As we refused repeatedly, they exchanged "stupid farang" smirks. The hike was 6.5 km, Chet said, and very steep. Little did he know that for us, 6.5 kilometers was only 4 miles.

We set off on the trail, which alternated stretches of uphill hiking with six steep climbs that Chet translated as "steps." It was quicker but more difficult than an American trail, which usually winds up the mountain.

Step one, the second toughest, broke us in. Then the trail declined again, taking us through crowds of thick bamboo. Chet named things for us along the way. He was sort of a poetic soul, and no flower was too meek to halt his path. Each sighting would elicit a sort of bewildered moan, as though he had just been run through with a katana. At camp, we would hear this same cry whenever a cold wind blew, or when the rice was cooked just right.

By step two we were deep in the jungle, and Chet was starting to pant. Great insects screamed at us from all sides. We felt no past and no future, only the deep green heat, the screeching of the insects, and the slow advance of the red clay at our feet.

Step six has earned a Thai nickname meaning "death." We completed it on all fours, long empty of water, long past the point when we could make speech sounds. Chet, the packless one, had given in and sent us ahead to set up camp, as the light was waning.

We reached the top and looked around. The moon glowed in a mauve sky above us, and below the land plummeted into the valley between ours and the opposing mountain. A green abyss, green-furred, with lone birds swooping back and forth across its depth. We paused a little while and admired the rounded striations in the hillsides, all rough love for the one who would latch on and lurch up, step by step astride the uncertain slope, to roll around euphoric on the once-lonesome peak.

We walked a few hundred meters more to a campground and ate Thai-style camping food -- rice with chili paste, spicy sardines, and tiny canned clams. We would continue to eat well at the campsite. A man who lived in a cabin was always cooking something with fresh vegetables, meat, and plenty of spice.

Having arrived too late to set up camp without frustration, we were invited to sleep on the cabin floor on the first night. Mike was a little indignant that night when Chet joked with another Thai about Mike declining a shower. We've gotten used to being mocked, but we wondered how they could laugh about the shower thing when their drinking water came from a river dammed with garbage.

The next day, one of the Thais at camp took us walking around the mountaintop. We reached the small obelisk that marked the Thai-Lao border. The ruins of bunkers were obscured by high grass. Thai and Lao mountains loomed on either side of us, staring each other down, themselves not parties in the peace the two countries made in 2002.

We got back and set up our hammocks, about 20 yards away from the main campground and across the river. As day turned to night, the air at our campsite went from bright red to icy blue. We got in our hammocks and tried to sleep. I'm convinced that the windchill was below freezing, and we hadn't packed for this, to say the least. Chet, who was terrified of cold weather, was missing from his hammock. I went to the cabin, thinking I'd steal his idea, but our friend had locked the doors behind him. Mike and I put on every item of the warm-weather clothing we'd packed. I had t-shirts and shorts stuffed into the hood of a rain jacket, covering my ears, and I buried my double-socked feet into my backpack. Mike wore a towel around his knees, and he wrapped a T-shirt and sheet around his head. We dreamt, but didn't sleep.

In the morning, Chet greeted us sheepishly. We told him we hadn't slept so well in days.

At 9 o' clock, we said our goodbyes and skidded down the mountain. We returned to Pitsanulok, where the food is charmed so that we cannot stop eating it.

Mike remarked recently that the trip has exceeded all his expectations. I feel the same way, except in the area of toilets. I expected them to be somewhat toilet-like, with some reasonable method for cleaning oneself. There are sometimes spray-hoses, which we enjoy, but these are few. What there usually is is a bucket beside the toilet-hole, and some kind of bowl floating in the bucket. Mike and I always talk about it conspiratorially. Have you found out what to do with the bucket yet? No, and this time there were two huge tanks of water beside it. We disagree on whether the grooves in the floor seat are for your feet or your buttocks. Nonetheless, I've come up with a working method, which may or may not be culturally acceptable.

When we were camping, Mike was too afraid to use the toilet facilities on the mountaintop. So far it seems like going to the bathroom outside is not kosher in Thailand, so Mike crossed the border and pooped in Laos, keeping his eyes peeled for armed border guards.

Thai words of the day

bon cow -- mountaintop

an-ta-lai -- dangerous

cow (rising) -- mountain

cow (falling) -- rice

cow (high) -- he/him

cow (normal) -- into

ban -- home

Note: I've bought a Thai phrasebook, but the words of the day will continue to be words that we learn by experience.