A Unique Hilltribe Trek

One of the things we really wanted to do in northern Thailand was a hilltribe trek – a multi-day hike through the countryside staying overnight in minority villages – and one of the reasons we opted not to go to Chiang Mai was because the treks leaving from there don’t have a very good reputation.  Though treks from Chiang Mai are extremely popular, many people seem to come back from them disappointed – saying they only got to see villages set up for tourists to visit (which are apparently quite common in the area) and not places where people actually live, that they were never able to talk to any villagers because the villagers were only interested in selling souvenirs, and that the guides hustled them quickly from one activity to another (hiking, visiting “villages”, souvenir shopping, elephant riding, rafting, swimming – all in one day) without allowing time to really enjoy any of them.  We knew we wanted to do some hiking and see Thai village life, but trekking from Chiang Mai (and, to a lesser extent, I think, the other touristy towns of Chiang Rai and Pai) didn’t seem like it would offer we were hoping for.  So we were really happy to hear about the possibility of trekking from Mae Sariang – and we were fortunate that one of the town’s two trekking organizers was available while we were there.

After a 30-minute or so drive out of town, we headed into the jungle with our guide, who didn’t speak much English but was friendly enough.  The hike on the first day was great, and not too difficult, other than one incredibly steep area in which the ground was completely covered by slippery leaves.  After hiking about thirty minutes, we came to the first village, a cluster of stilted houses made of bamboo in the middle of the jungle.  We stopped there and ate some tiny bananas and mandarin oranges while our guide greeted somebody he knew.  One of the most surprising things to me was the how open most of the houses were – in fact, my mom asked, “Where are the door and the walls?” when I showed her a picture of one!  Many of the houses we saw were effectively lacking a wall around the front “room,” which was usually covered by a tin or thatched roof held up by a few poles but otherwise mostly open to the outside.  None of the houses had any furniture either, save for a couple mats on the floor.

After hiking through the jungle for a few more hours, we stopped in another village.  All the villages we visited during the trek were populated by the Karen, an ethnic minority group living in Thailand and Burma.  Northern Thailand has several ethnic minorities, referred to collectively as hilltribes, with other well-known groups including, Akha, Lisu, and  Hmong.  The people of these tribes are quite separated from mainstream Thai culture; each group has its own language, and they all live primarily in remote areas.  There is a much higher level of poverty, as well as lower living standards, among hilltribes than other Thais.

In the second village we stopped in, our guide took us to visit a family living in the village, and we spent a couple hours in their home.  We ate a lunch there of rice and vegetables – Ryan and I opted against having chicken – with fruit for dessert.  Around the time we finished lunch, it started to rain, so we hung out at the family’s house until it let up enough for us to continue.  Fortunately, they didn’t seem to mind having strange white people sitting on their floor all afternoon – in fact, they hardly noticed us.

As we made our way out of the village, we came to a group of people standing around outside.  Curious as to what was going on, we stopped.  Lying on the ground was a live but sedate pig, clearly about to become someone’s (or maybe the whole village’s) next meal.  We expected the pig’s throat to be slit.  I didn’t watch what happened instead, but they apparently set the pig on fire.  The pig was burned alive.  I don’t know much about hunting or butchering, but I can’t imagine that’s the standard means used to kill a pig.

A few more hours of hiking past rice paddies and we arrived in the village where we’d spend the night.  Our guide took us to a family’s house – whether he knew the family or just decided we’d stay with them because they happened to be at home was never really clear.  In the family was a 36-year-old man who’d just married a 15-year-old girl, apparently a common practice among the Karen.

After another meal of rice and vegetables, we hit the hay, tired from the day of hiking.  This house was, like many others, stilted and comprised of a partially enclosed front room and a back room that was actually indoors and served as both the kitchen and bedroom.  The back room in most houses in that area has a fire pit in the middle of the room where all the cooking is done.  I didn’t really understand how that wasn’t a fire hazard – or maybe it is – and I’m sure exposure to the smoke is damaging to everyone’s lungs.  Imagine building a campfire inside.  Anyhow, Ryan and I spent the night on a mat on the bamboo floor on one side of the fire, and our hosts, the newly married couple, slept on a mat on the other side of it.  It wasn’t horribly uncomfortable, but I wouldn’t want to have to sleep like that every night.

We woke up early the next morning, to the sound of people cooking breakfast over the fire in our room.  Thailand doesn’t seem to have any typical breakfast foods – most Thai people eat the same things for breakfast as for other meals.  Our hosts and some neighbors, as well as our guide, had rice for breakfast, but our guide grilled bread over the fire to make toast for us.

After breakfast, we headed out for our second day of trekking.  The second day was quite a bit hotter, and the hike ended up being much harder than day one.  Part of the difficulty came from hiking straight through the middle of several rice paddies, which were wet and extremely slippery and had no real path to walk on.  Plus I felt like we may be trampling someone’s crops.  The views looking out over the bright green paddies and to the hills beyond them was great, though.  Eventually, we made it to the beginning of the end of our trek – a series of six waterfalls, each providing a much appreciated mist, perfect for cooling us off a bit.  The end of the trek took us back to the main road where we ate a lunch of noodle soup in a small restaurant that seemed like it probably didn’t get many foreign patrons.

The next day, we left Mae Sariang for Chiang Mai to catch our flight the following morning.  We really only spent a few hours in Chiang Mai, and I’m sure we could have easily filled a couple days there.  But, while the city seems to offer a lot to do, I’m really glad we opted to spend our time in the north in Mae Sariang instead.  Though nice, Chiang Mai was a typical tourist town – everything in English, every other business a tour agency, more foreigners than locals on the street.  Coming from Mae Sariang, it practically felt like another country.  We were also skeptical of many of the tour agency’s promises of visits to “undiscovered” hill tribes and “unknown” villages.  Given that agencies in Chiang Mai take tourists on those trips everyday, and that there were hardly any foreigners at all in Mae Sariang, much less trekking out there – our guide and the people in the village we visited said there hadn’t been any trekkers in two months – I felt like we got the real deal.

Off the Beaten Path in Northern Thailand

Koh Kong was the last destination for Anna and me, and when she and I split up, I met Ryan in Bangkok for another month of travel!  After a day of exploring the extremely modern Thai capital, we boarded an overnight train headed north.

Hoping to get off northern Thailand’s very beaten tourist track, we opted to skip Chiang Mai, the hub of tourist activity in the north, and headed to the much smaller and less-known town of Mae Sariang.  While I’m sure Chiang Mai has a lot to offer, we loved our time in the Mae Sarieng, and it felt like we got to see a bit of the ‘real’ Thailand.  Plus, the lack of crowds, English speakers, tourist kitsch, and drunken chaos was very refreshing.

About a 4.5-hour bus ride from Chiang Mai, Mae Sariang, located on the Yuam River, is closer to Thailand’s border with Burma.  The Mae Sariang sub-district includes 10,000 people spread over nine villages, and the town itself basically consists of just two main streets connected by a handful of alleyways.  Far removed from the Westernization taking place across much of northern Thailand, the only real inkling of Western influence in Mae Sariang is the lone 7-11 (Thailand has around 6,000 7-11s, I’m not kidding).  Not surprisingly, it’s a pretty quiet place and attracts very few tourists, though we saw a handful of other Westerners (all European, as far as I could tell) during our time there.

We ended up staying at two different hotels in Mae Sariang, both small places with no websites and no English-speaking staff.  All the food in town is Thai, so we had lots of noodles and lots of curries during our time there.

We lucked out, and, on our first night in Mae Sariang, the twice-weekly night market was taking place.  A small side street closes to traffic and vendors line both sides with stalls of clothes and food, including unidentifiable meat, noodle dishes, and ice cream.  At the end of the street, one stall had something rolled up in little pieces of paper, which the vendor told us cost 5 baht (about $0.17) each.  Thinking they might be spring rolls, we bought a couple.  When we opened them up, we found that they weren’t spring rolls, but rather pieces of fry bread drizzled with honey.  They were amazing!

On our first full day in Mae Sariang, we rented a motorcycle so we could explore the surrounding countryside on our own.  After doing a bit of research about the area, we decided to head towards the border, specifically to a tiny village called Mae Sam Laep, about 60 miles from town.  The ride took us through mountains and past several villages, and offered some beautiful scenery.  The road was pretty bad in some places – muddy, steep, and full of potholes – so I’m lucky Ryan’s an experienced rider!  After an hour and a half or so, having not seen any signs (at least none we could read) indicating we were anywhere near Mae Sam Laep, we started to wonder if we were going the right way.  At that point, we had passed the most recent village a ways back, and there really weren’t any people around.  Finally, after about another half hour, we came up a path that split off the main road, and a guy we happened to pass just then pointed us down it.  The path was in even worse condition and seemed more like it might be leading to nowhere – until a cluster of stilted houses appeared.  We had arrived!  Mae Sam Laep is tiny, and we didn’t see any other foreigners in the time we were there.  There’s not much in the town, and it’s really only accessible by motorcycle, so I can’t imagine too many travelers make the journey.  But, again, it felt like we were getting a peak of ‘real’ Thailand, and we loved it.

We parked the bike and strolled through town, taking pictures of the houses, the scenery, and the view of Burma across the river.  Towards the edge of the village, we passed a small shop selling what appeared to be samosas.  As the woman selling them didn’t speak any English, we smiled and handed her 10 baht (about $0.33), thinking that might buy us two samosas.  We watched, shocked, as she filled a little plastic bag with three, four, then five of them.  Apparently they were only 2 baht (about $0.07) apiece.  Since we had no idea what might inside the samosas – liver? brain? some type of critter from the not-very-clean river? – we got a little worried we were going to be stuck with a whole bunch of something we didn’t want at all.  Turned out, they were vegetable samosas – just potato, carrots, and peas – and they were delicious.

After venturing back into the village center of, we stopped at another little shop for a soda, which, though the shop had electricity, were kept in a cooler out front.  As we sat, enjoying our cold drinks, the shop’s owner sat in front of a small laptop, playing Thai karaoke and singing very loudly into a microphone, which broadcasted his singing out into the street.  We couldn’t really tell if other people in town appreciated the singing or were ignoring it.

As Mae Sam Laep wasn’t right on the border as we had expected, we left to go further down the main road, to see what we could see.  Unfortunately, as it was the rainy season, an impassable puddle prevented us from getting much further down the road.  So, we headed back into Mae Sariang – we need to rest for our trek the next day anyway, but more on that next time.

On the Coast in Koh Kong

Our final stop in Cambodia was the small coastal town of Koh Kong, located on the edge of the Cardamom Mountains.  It was peaceful and quiet, felt pretty rural, and made a good last stop.

The Oasis Resort, run by a British guy who’s been in Cambodia for seven years, is probably my favorite hotel we’ve stayed at thus far.  It was $30/night for a triple room, which had really cool poster beds with curtains, air-conditioning, a patio, a TV that got BBC, a refrigerator, and a hot shower – and the shower was even in a sectioned-off area of the bathroom, meaning taking a shower didn’t inevitably soak everything in the entire bathroom, as is the norm in this part of the world, where shower curtains are pretty rare.  On top of that, the hotel had swings, hammocks, and a beautiful pool that looked out onto continuous fields and hills in the distance, with not another building in sight.

The food in Koh Kong, both at our hotel and in town, was wonderful, and included a lot of curry – chicken eggplant curry, vegetarian green curry, red chicken curry – and vegetable cashew stir-fry, as well as toast, yogurt, and chocolate mousse!

The hotel’s owner invites children from a nearby orphanage to use the pool, and there were about twenty kids swimming there the day we arrived.  We swam while the children were there, and, unbelievably (unlike Rwandan children), they didn’t stare at us, laugh at us, point at us, or poke us.  And, when we passed one of the hotel’s inner tubes to a kid when he got back in the pool after a snack break, he even said, “Thank you.”  Amazing.

One of the main attractions in that part of the country is Koh Kong Island, Cambodia’s largest, which is considered to have one of Southeast Asia’s most beautiful beaches.  But, as it’s about a two-hour boat ride from the coast, getting there is only possible when the weather is clear, and the water was unfortunately too rough to make the trip during the time we were there.

We had a successful outing to Tatai waterfall, though, about thirty minutes from town, which was lovely.  It was gorgeous, and the water was clear and great for swimming.  The waterfall was also surprising secluded, and we saw only one other small group of people the whole time we were there.  It was really wonderful to be out in the middle of nowhere and able to enjoy nature.

Throughout the entire trip, Anna and I had been planning what we dubbed “our scooter adventure,” and had been waiting to visit a place with little enough traffic that riding a scooter would actually be feasible for us.  Fortunately, since it was our last stop together, Koh Kong fit the bill – with little traffic in town and several empty country roads near our hotel, it was the best we could hope for.  I should preface this by saying that, with some regularity, Westerners who don’t have the first clue how to ride a motorcycle rent and try to drive them in southeast Asia, and end up in accidents, sometimes serious ones.  Since I have a lot of experience riding as a passenger on motorcycles and a tiny bit of experience learning to drive one, and since we rented a small scooter that was an automatic, I figured it would be pretty easy.  Well, it was definitely more difficult – and less like riding a bike – than I was expecting, and I did sort of crash once, but overall it was great.  It gave us a chance to get out in the countryside on our own, which was beautiful.  Plus, riding was just a lot of fun, and I’m really looking forward to the chance to do it again – maybe in Thailand next week!

In & Around Phnom Penh

After Battambang, we headed for the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, a city of over two million people situated on the Mekong River.  Our first impression of the city was one of surprise – at how big it was, how fancy, how developed.  Given what we’d heard about how much poorer Cambodia is than neighboring countries, we were expecting Phnom Penh to be something along the lines of Kigali or maybe Kampala; we were definitely wrong.  While the city certainly has poor areas, it also has tall buildings, bright lights, nice restaurants, car dealerships, movie theaters, and shopping malls, as well as many beautiful temples.

The Fancy Guesthouse (yes, that’s its actual name), located near the city’s popular Riverside neighborhood, was everything we were hoping it would be after our shoestring-cheap hostel in Battambang – spotless, air-conditioned, and with comfortable beds, hot water, and a refrigerator, at $25/night for a triple room.

Phnom Penh’s culinary scene was also excellent – I realize I’ve said that about every place we’ve been, but this whole region seems to have amazing food everywhere (or maybe I’m just easily impressed)!  It was also cheap – we ate at one street café where every rice- or noodle-based dish on the menu was $1.50.  I also tried the Cambodian Kingdom Pilsner, which, like the other beers I’ve had here, was good.

We also ate at Phnom Penh’s night market one night, where the dining area is comprised of a ring of food stalls with mats on the ground in the middle, allowing customers to eat sitting on the ground, as many Cambodians typically do.  While my friends sampled all sorts of deep-fried unidentifiable meats, I stuck with a vegetarian noodle dish and some vegetable wantons.  Even that was pretty greasy, but dining at the night market was a great experience.

While in Phnom Penh, we visited two of Cambodia’s best-known Khmer Rouge sites, which have been turned into museums detailing the history of the genocide that occurred in Cambodia during the 1970s.  We first went to Tuol Sleng, the site of the infamous S-21 prison, where the Khmer Rouge imprisoned an estimated 20,000 people between 1975 and 1979.  All but seven of the prisoners held in Tuol Sleng died there or were taken to the nearby killing fields and executed.  The survivors, six men and one woman, were spared because they had skills, such as making art and repairing machines, that the prison commander considered useful.

After visiting Tuol Sleng, we went to Cheong Ek, one of the Khmer Rouge’s 343 killing fields and the spot where most of the S-21 prisoners were executed.  Around 20,000 people are believed to have been killed at Cheong Ek, most of them bludgeoned to death, and thousands of people are buried in mass graves there.  At the center of the memorial is a large Buddhist shrine filled with human skulls and bones, very reminiscent of the genocide memorials in Rwanda.  Today, Cheong Ek feels almost like a big peaceful park outside the city, and it’s nearly impossible to imagine the things that happened there twenty-five years ago.

We couldn’t help but notice that these museums have clearly not had nearly the money poured into them that Kigali’s genocide memorial museum has had, likely because the West doesn’t feel nearly as ashamed of or guilty about what happened there as about the Rwandan genocide.

We also saw some of Phnom Penh’s other major sites, though they weren’t nearly as significant.  The National Museum, Royal Palace, and Silver Pagoda were interesting, but not that amazing.  Mostly, lots and lots of Buddha statues.

One morning, we went on a bike tour through Grasshopper Adventures, a company the conducts bicycle tours all over Southeast Asia.  Like the other bike rides I’ve done during the trip, it was great.  We started in Phnom Penh and took ferries around several islands in the Mekong River.  Though the islands face the city, they were quiet and peaceful, had beautiful scenery, and they felt like they were worlds away from Phnom Penh.  It was about 100 degrees that day, but surprisingly the heat didn’t bother us too much.  During the ride, we stopped at a small silk factory and saw Cambodian women weaving silk on traditional looms.  It takes quite a long time to weave a single scarf or piece of cloth, and requires a lot of coordination (as I realized when I tried it!).  Later, we happened to stop for a short water break near a house where a Cambodian woman was drying mango.  In typical Cambodian fashion, she generously offered some of what she had to the group of strangers.  It was delicious.

Something else I have to mention is the workout fervor among Cambodians in Phnom Penh.  All along the riverfront is public exercise equipment – elliptical machines, stationary bikes, benches, and more.  Not only do people use the equipment, from about 5:00-7:00 in the morning, the entire area is full of people running, walking, playing badminton and hackeysack, and, in groups of probably up to a hundred people, taking tai chi and aerobics classes.  They set up huge loudspeakers for the aerobics classes and blare music through them all morning, and I’m told the classes are taught by the stars of Cambodia’s popular music videos.

Overall, Phnom Penh seems like it would be a great city to live in – it has many modern amenities but still feels a bit like a developing country, and is definitely more manageable than Bangkok.

Another Cambodian Town - Battambang

Since I liked Siem Reap so much, it set the standard pretty high for Cambodia.  Though maybe Battambang, our subsequent destination, wasn’t as cute, it also wasn’t nearly as touristy, and I really enjoyed the chance to see a more typical Cambodian town.

Though Battambang is accessible by public bus, we chose to get there by boat: 9.5 hours across the Tonlé Sap Lake and down the Sangkae River.  Expecting the boat to be a tourist trap, we were surprised to find that it was basically a motorized canoe with a roof, and to realize it was actually a form of local transportation for Cambodians.  In fact, we dubbed it a “floating matutu,” as it stopped quite frequently to let people on and off.  On the boat, we passed through a number of “floating” villages, where many people live on small houseboats or in shacks right on the river’s edge.  About halfway through the trip, we made a pit stop in one of the villages.  The small shop/restaurant we stopped at had one of the most rustic, and least hygienic, toilets I’ve ever used – a building on stilts with a hole in the floor opening straight over the river.  A few hours after the stop, we finally pulled up to the pier in Battambang.

Our hotel there, Hotel Chhaya, was remarkable in that it was $1.50/bed.  That’s right, $1.50.  The three of us shared a four-person dorm with a British guy, and the shared bathroom was just across the hall.  The bathroom was not the cleanest, and the room was pretty hot, despite having a fan.  We also had a couple issues with the staff there giving us bad information about activities and things going on around town.  For $1.50, though, I really can’t complain.

While in Battambang, we had more delicious Cambodian meals, along with a couple of excellent Western things.  We discovered the adorable Gecko Café on our first night in town, and ended up eating there a couple times.  Mediterranean salad, “Cambodian” wantons filled with cream cheese, Oreo milkshakes – it was wonderful!  I also tried Chang beer, a Thai import, which, though some people find it a bit bland, I liked.

Battambang’s claim to fame is its bamboo train, which was originally, like the boat, a form of local transportation that became popular with travelers.  Unlike the boat, though, it’s no longer used by Cambodians and is now just a tourist attraction.  The train’s cars are comprised of two sets of wheels covered by a flat platform made from bamboo.  There’s only one train track, so when two trains going opposite directions meet each other, one train’s passengers get off while the conductors disassemble the train and then reassemble it on the track behind the other car.  Since the train cars are so simple, it only takes a couple minutes.  The train went much faster than expected and felt a little more like a roller coaster than an actual train.  It was fun, though, and the countryside we got to see from it was really pretty.

While in Battambang, we also took a Cambodian cooking class.  Like in the Balinese cooking class we took in Ubud, the food was delicious and, for the most part, not too terribly difficult to make.  We made chicken amok (coconut curry), beef lok lak, and pork spring rolls.  We got a cookbook with these and other recipes, so it looks like I’ll be making vegetarian versions of these dishes for a Balinese-Cambodian feast when I get home!