It all began by Kyle and I sleeping in and thinking we'd missed the goose. We were supposed to be at Pooh's place by 6 am, and I stumbled out of bed looking for the time a half-past seven. Poor Sergev'd been waiting the whole time! But luckily Tee wasn't mad. We ate some fruit and coffee, hopped in the truck and began the 2+ hour drive away from civilization, stopping at a market on the way for cooking groceries and beautiful hiking loafers for Sergev.
We started hiking sometime in the afternoon, set off down a pleasant dirt trail, the sun on our backs, plenty of water in our packs. Almost immdiately Tee began rattling off his wealth of interesting knowledge, from everything edible and how to find out to how many kilos an elephant can lift with its tusks. We were passing a lot of poo from the cows that roamed from the nearby village, and Tee told us about the Buffalo Dung Beetles, which we've all seen and heard of, rolling their little poo balls and laying their eggs inside. But then we saw something new! How to locate the mothers, the big ones, in their dens, and dig them up. Tee started plowing in with his giant knife, a foot down til we could hear the hissing wail and see the ebony glint. He fished her out, the size of a pool-ball, and showed her to us. The babies grow up in the poo balls and come out fully grown as big as her he said.
The next part was funny, because the slogan of Pooh's trekking is Take nothing but pictures, leave nothing but footprints and kill nothing but time. Tee explained that the dung beetles were excellent to eat and tossed the noisy glossy little beast into his purse bag "for later." Along the way Tee and the other two guidemen with us located and ousted a few other little snacks from their places of residence. We were shown a rotted looking bamboo, and Tee told us it was because of maggots. So, his associate went and hacked it down, and brought it to us to see. We were all expecting those little nasty white writhing worms that eat dead stuff, but this was only one maggot, doing it all by himself. He was as big as two thumbs, undulating and blobbing in Tee's fingertips, helpless and fat. These were even better eats, Tee explained, because they were all meat and no skeleton. Oh yes. Like scrambled eggs he said.
Soon we came upon a Bamboo Elephant Beetle, milking a fat stalk of bamboo with its yes, very trunklike, probiscus. One guide walked to the bottom and said, ready? Tee nodded and lightning fast the guy broke the bamboo and the top came smacking against the path. Tee grabbed the dazed beetle before it reorient, and he proceeded to explain the these beetles were given as gifts, like toys, by parents to their children. He tied a string to one of its long tusk-like projections, then told us how tried to fly away, and the child can hold the string and carry it around like a little balloon. Then when it gets tired and stops flying, the child cooks it over the fire and eats it!
But this one wouldn't fly, so Tee and Long started shaking it around, then breaking off its legs, to make it fly. But it wouldn't, so they broke off all its legs, then its tusks, and finally its wing covers. Game over, little friend. Long popped its butt in his mouth and bit off everything but the head, and crunched it down his throat. "Tasty!" he grinned, with a heavy accent.
We worked our way down through the various levels of forest until we arrive at a cave entrance, The Bat Cave. Hiking up our shorts we plodded on in. We'd be walking through and in the river that flowed through and had created the cave, with only three burning torches to guide us. I was worried at first about getting soggy feet, knowing we had so far left to go, but it turned out we'd be in and out of the river, crossing again and again to reach better trails, for the rest of the day, so there was no hope of staving off the wet. The Bat Cave was certainly a bat cave, and we could hear and see them all above and among us, in droves, angry at our intrusion, but all talk.
We met another trekking group, of 7, at a bamboo hut by the river where they'd be staying. (We were doing the same thing they were doing, except backwards and in two days instead of three.) They had a fire going for supper so Tee brought out the maggot and beetle and proceeded to roast them up for all to share! We passed around the beetle first, each taking a bite of its stringy meat. Jacob was the only one to pass, a true blue vegetarian. The texture was alright, the flavor smoky, meaty, but hard to describe. Like Tee said, you can't describe it, you've just got to try it. Soon the maggot had stopped hissing steam and Tee brought out his knife to slice it up. We each got a little maggot disk, creaming inside, almost like runny eggs yes!, and tougher on the skin, almost like the skin of a sausage. The flavor was meaty again, but closer to eggs, plus smoky from the fire. Sergev was really into it, and Kyle liked it pretty well too. Sergev fantasized about the maggots, fried with a very crispy outside and the inside even softer and creamier. Oh yes.
We continued on down the river, Tee showing us a leaf that can be snapped open and its sap blown into bubbles, and then up, up, up, endlessly up the huge green mountain-hills to the village's rice paddies, up more, up to the village itself. Just outside of it, Tee produced from his underwear strap a tiny baggie of mah-ree-wanna, which he said we could roll ourselves and smoke secretly in the outhouse later if we were intersted. It all happened so quickly, one by one, asking us, do you want it? do you want it? Everyone shook their head a sober no thanks. So he unwrapped it from its plastic and tossed it into the bush. Cheers!
As it later turned out, there would be no shortage of intoxicants in the village itself!
We arrived at Yao, the village Holy Man's, bamboo house, met his wife and two youngest sons, and unloaded our gear and took a rest. Almost immediately, the rice whisky was produced and shots were being passed around. The stuff is unbelievable smooth for home hooch, and tasts a lot like sake. Cheers!
It got dark quick, because it gets dark so early here, and more and more other villagers came and joined us for whiskey and laughs on the little porch area. We all started cutting and snipping and preparing food for the meal. Tee drank the most of all I think, because he officially postponed all questions for the morning. He didn't want to tell us something wrong because he was drunk, and because he had to focus on cooking the meal, which was incredible and vast. While we watched and waited and helped where we could, we sampled some day-old roasted mouse that was staring blackly from about the small far, rigid on its bamboo spit. It was mostly smoky and tough, a lot like the beetle actually. Weird!
It's so nice to not be in the minority as a vegetarian! (If I can call myself anything like that still.) Sergev got his own little bowl of chicken stuff, but the mail courses were all veges, to share we had a green curry soup with potatoes, mixed vegetable stir-fry, and another tofu fry with chili paste. And bottomless rice the mother kept frantically shoving onto our barely cleared plates, literally by the fistful.
After our enormous dinner, more rice whisky was brought out and dispersed, and the arm and leg-wrestling began. And playing with the cameras! All the villagers, especially the little boys, were thrilled by our tiny TVs, and wanted to take and look at themselves in a million photos. I had the strangest warm feeling, watching the mother look at herself in a picture, almost forty years old and and seemingly genuinely surprised and intrigued by what she saw. It struck me, how possibly little their faces and bodies were attached to any concept of ego. Do they see themselves, their bodies, as a function, as a tool to use and hope it doesn't wear out? Once they're married do they ever think about their appearance again?
The mother had no sense of looking at herself in a mirror every day and making judgments and assigning value by what she finds there. She probably knows herself better by her hands than her face, let alone by when she sees her whole body in a photo. The old people too, with their black teeth from the stuff they chew, seem completely oblivious to the fact that they are, if not toothless, black toothed, and with black lips, black juice running out the edges of their mouth. It doesn't matter because it's not all wrapped up into that idea of an ego, of a self, a self that very much includes appearance, but also the books you've read, the movies you've seen, the people you know. I wanted to know, I wanted so badly to sit down and talk with that mother, to ask her, who do you think you are? To find how she regards herself, her self? As a tool for completing tasks, as a collection of experiences, as eyes that see and exist only in the present moment and perform what is presently necessary?
I wondered how much any of the villagers live in the present moment, how far do they think to the future and what kind of plans do they make? They're subsistence farmers. Are they just worried about this year's harvest? Next year's? It seems like so much of their lives are laid out before they can ever make any decisions. Do they ever learn how? I don't want to oversimplify their lives, their minds. They are completely and fully human beings, but their dailiness is filled with so little stimulation and such a limited range of experiences, I know their view of life must be so totally different from mine, and I'm curious! But I'd have to learn the Karin language to ask. Woe.
When we ran out of rice whisky, Tee had Kyle and I go to the mother's parents house 20 meters away and request more! It was a very awkward encounter, because Tee was drunk and hadn't really told us what to do or say, anything exept making us memorize the man's name! So we go trucking up their miniature steps and into their little hut, and there they are, ancient and wrinkled, lying down for bed on their little mats! Kyle and I looked at each other, terrified, confused. How do you just barge into a situation like this, and then give no explanation other than to say the man's name?! But the old woman understood without our help, reapplied her head turban and went to the shelf in the corner, bringing down two gleaming bottles of rice whisky, which looked to be capped by little clear condoms! (Tee later explained that a custardy street food comes in those plastic things, and they save them for caps, but still, very condom-like in appearance.) The whisky was even smoother than the last, and topped our night off swimmingly.
Just as we were growing tired, and mother was yawning suggesting the party come to a close, Yao produces his little white bottle of Chinese remedy powder, with its U-shaped metal tube nose applicator. He loaded me up a hit, and I put one end of the U in my mouth, but before I could load the other end into my eager nostril, I coughed and blew the sweet load into my eyeball. Stinging at first, I quickly recovered and realized, say! that's not so bad. Load me up another! Which he did, twice, one for each nostril, properly blown all the way deep into my sinuses, and then later one more, for my left nostril, which felt like it needed a little bit more. Sergev and Kyle did it too, and of course Tee, and in the end we still weren't sure what it was or what purpose it was supposed to serve. To clear the sinuses maybe? It sort of had the partly sweet and bitter taste of a pill, if you let it sit on your tongue too long before swallowing, but dribbling down the back of your throat instead. So good.
We pretended we were all gonna get addicted, and be begging for more in the morning. I manically asked the guys if they felt like dancing, I feel like dancing! I said.
But instead we set up the mosquito nets and sleeping bags right where we'd been having jollies a minute before, and went off to bed. By 4 am, a few short hours later, every family's roosters were violently being throttled, or else cockadoodling, and so it made for a short night of restlessness, but absolutely worthwhile.
For breakfast, we were treated to "European barbecue" according to Tee, or toast and jam, eggs with tomato and peppers. And hot tea!
Oh! I'll have to finish telling the tale another time. Thought I could make it but I've gotta get back to the bus. We're leaving in a few minutes for Bangkok. I can't believe Thailand is almmost over, the deed is almost done! School starts in three days, with or without me...
But it's not over yet! Let's see what else I can put in my mouth before this thing's over!
And let's see about getting rid of this pesky manhood before it's too late!
Sawatdee khrap!
Kan
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