2 posts tagged “camping”
Seven Christmases ago, I was living in Hong Kong while my parents were splitting up back in Canada, ecstatic that for once I didn't have to be in the centre of the maelstrom.
I had three roommates: Chau, a lovely Chinese-Canadian girl who was always looking out for me, Joanne, a spunky Brit who had a lot of drama, and Hanna, the quiet, reserved Korean-American from North Carolina. Han was one of my best friends, and we used to teach Sunday School together at a Korean Church, and took Mandarin lessons in Korean from the Korean Consular General to Hong Kong. (Note: If traditional foreign language learning is too easy for you, you might want to consider studying it in another language you don't speak.) Here's a horrible picture where only I could figure out how to fit my face into the cat's face in time.... yeah. This is Chau, Hanna, Joanne and I.
Since Hanna and I faced a long school holiday for Christmas, we decided to take an unconventional trip together, and we settled on Thailand as our destination. We bought a phrasebook, each packed a knapsack to the brim, agreed that we wouldn't tell our parents most of what we were going to do, and jumped on the plane. We landed in Bangkok on Christmas Day, and decided to jump on the first bus we saw outside the airport. Inside the bus, we met four Thai professors (one of whom could speak English) who told us that they were going to Kaeng Krachan National Park, Thailand's largest National Park along the border with Burma, to go camping. They had hired a guide and a driver, and had plans to hike through the interior of the park beginning that evening. They invited us to come along, and we immediately accepted. We took a bus with them to the park in Phetchaburi which must have taken at least 3 hours, rented a tent and two sleeping bags, and ate a delicious fish from the restaurant on a serene lake at Park Headquarters. We bought a bunch of packs of Thai instant noodles, and napped to prepare for our midnight drive deep into the jungle. At the stroke of twelve, we packed everything into a typical Thai-style bus - a pickup truck with a little canopy and some bars around the bed, and jumped in. Our guide was a small, wiry man of about 40 dressed entirely in camouflage, with very kind eyes. His name was Deer. The driver was named Boy, a handsome guy of around twenty with a perfect smile and a Star Wars tee-shirt. He couldn't speak any English at all, and I couldn't speak any Thai, but we "communicated" through my phrasebook. It was love at first sight, and after witnessing my parents' breakup, I suppose that I was enamoured with the idea of being in a relationship where communication was so limited, fighting would be theoretically impossible. (Ah, to be eighteen and so idealistic!) This was my ideal husband and our guide one day after embarking on our hike:
Well, it was completely black outside, without the glow of city lights. You know the type of darkness that falls heavily around your body? It was like that. The Thai professors had wrapped their heads and faces with scarves and pieces of fabric, which Hanna and I misunderstood to be a measure to protect themselves from the cold. We, being brave North Americans, scoffed at the idea and enjoyed the blustering breeze on our faces. Boy and Deer were inside the cab of the truck, and the rest of us sat in the open air, driving along a dirt path that grew increasingly narrow and overgrown with foliage. The drive took more than five hours, and twice Boy had to drive through deep puddles the size of small ponds. I worried that we were going to get stuck, but we made it through. While everyone else in the back slept, I reflected on my life and the surreal experience of being in the bed of a pickup truck on Christmas, driving through the Thai jungle rendered completely blind by the darkness. At one point, I had my arm dangled over the side of the truckbed, making a wave motion and feeling the breeze on my skin. All of a sudden, the truck slowed down to a snail's pace and all of the hairs on my body stood on end, and I was filled with complete terror. The truck stopped, and moved forward hesitantly. It seemed to be the longest 45 seconds of my life, and I knew that something was there. I tried to convince myself that it was nothing, but I was really shaken and said a prayer to calm myself. Boy honked the horn and sped up, and the sun began to rise as we approached base camp.
In the grey of early dawn, I could finally make out the thick foliage that surrounded us, and could also discover the reason for the professors having covered their heads with fabric - Hanna and I were completely covered in fine grey dust from the road. Hanna's shiny black hair was completely grey and she looked like she'd aged 70 years. I can only imagine how I looked! After having a good laugh, the truck stopped and we disembarked. We had arrived at Panoen Thung peak, from which you could see the thick morning fog covering the forest below. It was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen in my life. Boy got out of the truck and began to speak rapidly in Thai, gesticulating wildly. He appeared shaken, and I was anxious to figure out what had happened. He told us that at the moment where he had slowed the truck, a huge black panther had emerged from the forest and stood in the road. As Boy stopped the truck, the panther had cautiously approached the back of the truck on the side I was sitting, at which point Boy was unable to see what was happening. Apparently, Boy was holding his breath, as a panther attack had occurred only a few weeks prior. I shuddered at the realization that I could have been dragged into the jungle and eaten, as it had been a hard season and the panthers were hungry and rather desperate. There was nothing between the panther and us passengers, and I was the only one silly enough to dangle one of my limbs outside of the vehicle, like a chicken thigh dangled over a pond of alligators. I was pretty shaken, most of all that I could actually feel its presence without external clues. (I think I'm some sort of panther psychic, though I have not since been able to make use of this gift.)
I tried to take a picture of Hanna's white hair, but she felt shy.
Next, I'll talk about our other adventures on this trip.
My adventurous husband, Dog, once took off from his happy and peaceful life at a Japanese university to live in Alaska for a few months, at which time he ventured into the extreme north (above the Arctic Circle, so I hear) to camp with a crazy man in a tent in January. The story goes something like this:
1. They didn't bring any meat, expecting to kill something and eat it. 2. All of the animals were hibernating. 3. Husband, in a lack-of-meat-fueled fit of ingenuity, built a slingshot and killed some squirrels, which they ate with soy sauce over rice.
Anyway, Dog didn't speak much English at the time, and barely understood when the crazy man told him that bears were in the area, and to beware.
Fast forward a few years. He told me this story, and I asked him what type of bears were there, and what was his response? POODLE BEARS. Adorably, this is what he calls polar bears, and I also can't bear to correct him since I think it's just about the cutest thing I've ever heard.
Now this is what I see when I picture a polar bear. Are you afraid? (This is Maruko, the dog of my parents-in-law. He's my ally when we're in Japan because he doesn't speak Japanese that well either, and he never asks me any questions that I don't know how to respond to.)
To anticipate the questions that may arise in your head; yes, most of my stories will be this random, and no, not all of my posts will be about my husband's endearing malapropisms. But there will probably be a few more.
