Our jungle trek was led by Jackie Chan.
His real name was very long and equally unpronouncable. We were gathered around a candle, eight trekkers and two guides, and "Jackie" had just cooked us dinner (Thai green curry - yum) in the bamboo hut. We asked him how he had become a guide.
Turns out he was born in one of the hill tribes, the "Karen", that we were visiting and had later moved to the city. As he was not a Thai national (he is now) he could not join the army and had had to bribe his way in when he was sixteen. He was put into the special forces and spent his time in the jungle on the Burmese border where we were eating dinner. Burma is actually seven different countries one of which is in power at any time. The others are then subjugated and the fighting spills over the Thai border. It is still ongoing and the hill tribes we were visiting on the trek are made up of refugees from these conflicts. The village we were staying in had only four people in about a dozen huts, one farmer and three old women, all about four feet tall. The others were in the process of being resettled and these people were the remnants.
After leaving the army Jackie became a Buddhist monk. One of the Buddist proverbs is that if you do a good thing a good thing will come to you. Jackie's own experience had shown him that this was not the case and after struggling with this for seven years he became a kick boxer until a motorcycle accident put him in a coma for three days. When he woke up he had no knowledge of the accident and the driver had bribed the police. The driver's monk did not let him off so lightly and told him to make amends. Jackie refused the offer of money. He wanted to leave the driver to wrestle with his Karma.
Reebok factory work followed until he became a certified guide. All of this had to be teased out of him as he is incredibly polite. We had marched for over four hours to get to the hut where we now sat. Aviva had found it really hard. The first section was uphill all the way and Aviva had a cold, it was hot and we hadn't fully aclimatised. After twenty minutes she wanted to turn back. I said it would not be so bad later. Pretty soon we were a half hour behind the lead guide and Jackie stayed back with us. When Aviva had to stop he would look away to save her embarrasement and would remind us that we were on holiday. As I was walking at Aviva's pace I had more time to look around. As you look at the person's feet in front of you the ground is unremarkable. The grasses, mosses and density of cover are the same as at home. I was expecting snakes and alligators in the jungle. Instead we got bumble bees, flies, ants and crickets. It is when you look up that the variety is staggering. It ranges from tropical jungle cover (mercifully cool) to swiss mountain forrest to Surrey or Sussex woodland. When you get a long view you can see green covered mountains with some crops, huts and animals in the distance. The sound is dominated by crickets, squark sounds and the occasional gunshot of hunters. The first section ended in a waterfall to cool off in. The second leg was down as well as up of which Aviva was glad. It was the Elephant riding and rafting that would come later that she was looking forward to, certainly not the hiking. Jackie did not like the start stop nature of our progress. He was nursing an injury that was painful unless he maintained a steady pace.
He told us this later. He had a huge infection in the back of his ankle. The rest of his legs were marked with scars from previous events, the current injury was self inflicted. He had been suffering a series of boils (Aviva suspects a blood infection) and the silly sod had decided to cut one out with his bowie knife. At the end of the three days he would be limping. We would be exhausted and have our own little stories of nearly falling off of elephants and actually falling off of bamboo rafts. He would have a doctor's appointment. For the moment we had no stories that could follow his so there was complete silence.
We asked about the other guide. He was a Burmese sherpa for the army. This is not a wise career move as the sherpas only go one way. It is not worth feeding them on the return journey. They end up tied to trees by the ankles (straight through). He had done a runner, Jackie explained. "It is a shame none of you can speek Cantonese", he said, "he has some real stories to tell".
yours, Marcus and Aviva.