No more rain tonight. So no Bangkok Jackass for Simon. I've appeased myself with two large bottles of beer, some crisps (I am not calling them potato chips, I don't care how many Americans I meet) and some local Thai cuisine - a Toblerone. Come to Thailand, live like one of the Thais, eat like one of the Thais. No. Plus 'one of the Thais' sounds too much like 'one of the guys' and where I'm from 'one of the guys' doesn't just turn up one day in a dress and a wig calling himself Leona... Though there is one Australian I know who it wouldn't altogether suprise me if he added the suffix 'tina' to his name...
So there we were. 8am sat in our guesthouse waiting for our taxi to pick us up to take us to what I was sure would be our, or at least my, impending doom.
"You look tired Simon'
"Piss off, you look German"
I felt that a day and a half of knowing these people was long enough to start edging some anti-German war jokes into conversation. Plus my hangover meant I was in no mood to beat around the bush at 8am.
We sat there under the watchful eye of the guesthouse owner, who was trying to work out what we were waiting for and why we hadn't booked any trips with his company yet. Then our taxi arrived, bearing the logo of the rival cheaper company we had booked with. As we loaded up into the van we could hear shouting of what I'm going to assume were expletives from the guesthouse staff directed towards us. And then I heard something stranger. The sound of laughter. But it wasn't my laughter. It was the Germans'... I was, until now, under the impression that Germans had not developed this basic human function or had at least had it drilled out of them at a young age when their parents caught them trying to have this alien concept called fun. But not only that, they were laughing at the same thing I was. The English and the Germans laughing along together? I know somebody who'll be turning in his testicle-shy grave.
----Turns out Germans don't understand why we reference and joke about Sir Adolf so much. Was it because you lost so you've decided to pretend it never happened? And when you mention Auschwitz? Jeeze it was like I'd gone out in public and make a joke about Auschwitz.. ..Oh wait...----
Off we drove then to pick up the rest of our group. This was the part I was looking forward to. The only part. I'd noticed when we signed up for the trip that the two names above ours were-
Nationality: Swedish. Gender: F.
Result.
First pick up: Canadian guy. Canadians = Americans. Don't let them fool you. They're just as loud and brash. But apparently that's not a funny thing to say either. However
"Hi, I'm Sebastian. I'm Canadian and I am NOT an alcoholic"
supposedly is. I had to be reminded of what he said because all I heard was:
"Hi, I'm Sebastian. I'm a big fat Yank and I'm a dick"
Next pick up: Belgian Chick. -- Possible lesbian, definite hippy. Called Sarah. Easy enough to remember then.
Last pick up, here come my sexy Swedish babes...: A German couple. What? A middle-aged German couple. Not two twenty-something Swedes. A middle-aged f'in German couple.
"No sorry we already have enough Germans thankyou"
"Aha ha ha ha"
I wasn't laughing. No Swedes for Simon. Just some Krauts, A Yank and a dyke. My enthusiasm was soaring.
Riding in the back of a truck. This was my kind of trekking.
"Can we not just drive up the mountain instead?"
"Oh Simon, you English joke all the time, you're never serious!"
Yes... joke...
First stop - Elephant riding. Me, Vinz and Andy sat on an elephants back whilst it gets hit with a stick to walk a certain route and stabbed with some form of pick-axe when it tries to venture off course. Wow this is fun. And please Mr Elephant, stop trying to eat my face with your trunk.I understand you're hungry but I'd rather you didn't spray me with the residue of all thhe shit you've eaten toady. Are we done yet? Good.
Right, back in the truck. Looks positive. This trekking ain't so bad after all. Oh no wait we're getting out again. Time to start walking.
"Pretty hot today, huh"
"35degrees"
Oh goody. Jade f'in Goody. And then it got steep. Up and almost verticle slope in broad sunlight. We hadn't even walked for 10 minutes and we had to stop for a rest. Everybody was out of breath, nobody spoke. My face was already dripping, my shirt already adhering to my back. Another 10 minutes up and we stopped again.
"You said this was gonna be easy Sarah'
I knew i should never have trusted a lesbian.
Three hours we walked for in 35 degree heat in the middle of the day. I've never sweated so much in my life. I was like Fernando Torres at a Gerry & The Pacemakers reunion concert, praying that they don't play that one song. I genuinely thought I was going to die. Only my trusty apples from the market that morning saw me through. But we got there. A few stone lighter due to the sweat but we got there.
There, as it was, was a tribal village on the mountain top that our tour guides belonged to. A hut looking down the side of the mountain was our domain. So we sat. We rested. We showered - or poured cold water over ourselves anyway. The tribes people made our dinner and as the sun went down, they made us a fire to sit around. Suddenly it was worth it. All that effort. Worth every drip of sweat. Then the children from the tribe came to sing us a song as we sat round the fire and swilled the beer that just happened to be in a cooler in the middle of a tribe with no other source of electricity. I like their priorities.
--You can only have one piece of electrical equipment for your tribe. What would you like?
Erm I'll take a beer cooler please----
I can relate to these people.
In return for the children's song the protocol as it turned out was to sing a song back to them. Great. What do we all know? Shit. Notice how the Yank has piped down all of a sudden. Ok it'll have to be Old Macdonald had a farm. Everyone knows that one right? Yeah ok. Right we'll go pig, cow, finish, ok? Right, on 3...
Useless. Nothing from the Yank (not necessarily a bad thing), some clapping and murmering from the Germans and some effort but not much else from the rug-muncher. And so it was. Simon singing Old Macdonald to a group of half-clad kids by a fire on a mountain top in Thailand. That's a new one for my resume. But had I known that i was going to be the only one with a the balls to actually sing then maybe Delilah would have been rembling through the jungle that night, rather than Old Macdonald had a bastard farm. Useless. The bloody lot of them.
So I sat drinking with Sarah until the fire died out and decided to hit the sack. More walking tomorrow. But downhill, sounds much better. Still, wasn't having a repeat of that days hangover though so my restrained 3 beers was a bit disappointing for the setting. But probably for the best.
"Goodnight Jungle"
"Goodnight Simon"
"Wait.. what?"
** Note : Sarah is not really a lesbian. She is a very nice, good person. And as everybody knows, lesbians are bad people.
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