Laura's Year in Asia = Fun Stories

You know it was a good weekend when come Sunday night its painful to take your shoes off...

After a mediocre week at Sriwiangsa teaching, Basically all the teachers in Nan met up in Nan city for a weekend of adventure. 7am we piled into a 4WD and drove up north to one of the National parks to begin our Jungle Trek. For the next 6 hours we wove up, down, in, out, through, over the jungle-draped hills of northern Nan. It was incredible being surrounded by huge bamboo trees, Palm trees, banana plants, and insects the size of small rodents. A lot of the teek trees had orange-monk robes tied around them, as the locals use this tactic to prevent deforestation. By making the tree a Monk, it is impossible for anyone to kill it without serious rammifications. The trekking was nice when we were under the jungle canopy as it remains quite moist and cool, but once we got into the clearings it was 45* + humidity and it was just sweat-city. We drank over 3L of water and I was still dehydrated afterwards. We ended up at a hilltribe village which is basically in the middle of nowhere and consists of one street built vertically along one of the hills (not like there is any flat land around here) Cooled off with some pineapple and orange fantas before we headed back to Nan. As soon as I got to our hotel I showered and then passed out. I was so dehydrated I couldn't even stomach any water. It didn't lead to a fun night, with pain radiating from every part of my poor heat-stunned body.

But at 6am the next day I felt ok enough to go white-water rafting! After a breakfast of chocolate, chips, redbull and tylenol, 9 of us piled into one pickup truck and drove an hour to Mae Charim park where we did a 2 hour raft through the same mountains we trekked over yesterday! Lots of rapids where it seemed that I was always the only one to get soaked or be in danger of falling out (I was warned about sitting in the front....so I did it!) We drove back to Nan in the same pickup truck - and Miranda and I took the bus back to Wiang Sa (after a few lemon djroy drinks in a bag of course) where we literally steped in the door and a huge thunderstorm errupted. Let me tell you the last thing I wanted to do after such a activity-filled weekend was mop up my bedroom after it flooded. After that we settled in to watch some of our favourite english VCD's and after only one huge dinosaur/lizard scare we went to bed early..... As much fun as this weekend was, there was one downer to it all: My streak of not wearing socks came to an end. From May 4th to June 24 I did not let anything enclose my precious Thai toes....oh well here's to a new streak ;)