Day 41 - Trek Day 2

I woke up extremely well rested to the sound of roosters around 7 am. I was very well rested and couldn't believe how well I had slept. Breakfast consisted of tea, toast, eggs and tomatoes. We met the children today and the cookies were a hit. The kids all lined up and waited patiently for the goodies. I was handing them out for what seemed like hours until the box was empty. Some of these kids are incredibly cute.

After this we packed up and started trekking again. The trek today wasn't as excruciating as the day before. We stopped and our guide made us hats out of leaves and chopsticks out of bamboo to eat lunch with. We hiked for about 3 hours to a bamboo raft. The hike went through a lot of wet land areas and leeches were omnipresent. Here they are tiny, about 1 cm long and 3 mm wide and get everywhere. I was doing leech checks every hour.

The raft was about 25ft long, 5ft wide and made completely of bamboo and leaf ties. There was a place to hang the backpacks on the bamboo in the middle so they wouldn't get wet. It rained while we were on the raft and the river was an opaque brown. I was soaking wet again for the 2nd day in a row. We rafted down stream for about 2 hours and arrived at a Lisu village around 5pm. The Lisu people originated in Tibet and their village was much larger than the one yesterday. It was also quite obvious that this village had more money then the Lahu village as they had larger livestock and electricity (one light bulb).

The children here are very friendly and love to have their photos taken and love to take photos too. I was grabbed by a little girl probably about 6 years old and shown all over the village. She even gave me an eggplant as a gift.

Dinner consisted of curries and stir frys with lots of eggplant. The spring rolls they made here were amazing. Quite simple with the wrapper and filled with noodles. My stomach started to feel really raw from all the food and the physical exertion of the last 2 days.

Again we stayed in a bamboo hut with mosquito netting. The outhouse was infested with spiders the size of my hand in the middle of the night. Quite a surprise when you need to go to the washroom with a flashlight in your mouth and all there is to see are spiders everywhere.