Day 3

7:30 AM

Last night we stayed in another village of the Carway people (no idea at all if I am spelling that correctly. I found out that the government gives all the hill tribe people solar panels for free. During the hot season they have electricity all day long. During the rainy season they only have it for an hour or so per day. This makes it easy for the government to control what the people see/hear. They also control much of the television channels.

The houses are normally 2 different buildings with 1 room each. The first building is for the kitchen: where the stove is. The second is for everything else. There is no furniture what so ever. You sit, eat, and sleep on the floor.

My guides told me I was the first tourist to go to the village where we slept last night. If that is true it’s pretty wild!!

I found out today that the leaf roofs on all the houses last only two years. That means that ever two years they need to completely change their roofs… interesting.

The people all seem to be very allusive. I never get a clear answer on anything. Sometimes they tell me things which I later find out were not true at all. It’s like they told me something because they did not want me to be upset even though I would find out the truth eventually.
-I love learning about different cultures. This is one of the reasons I love traveling so much!!!


1:30 PM


Today we went hunting early in the morning. We got 4 birds, two frogs, a chipmunk and a crab. It was a tasty lunch.

For the 1st few days I would always have left over bones, heads, intestines, etc on the side of my bowl when I finished my meal. Everyone else would have clean plates. I thought I was missing seeing them throw them on the ground. I realized at lunch today that was not the case at all. They eat everything. I was a little embarrassed at first because they must have seen me throw away good food.


As if Nook, my guide, could read my mind he puts a bird head, beak and all, onto my plate; “aroy mak” which means ‘very good’. He was right after I got past being stared at by my food. My first time eating bird brain… “I wonder what’s next.”

Growing up my father used to always tease my brother and I about frog legs. If we were miss-behaving he would threaten to feed us frog legs and nothing else. Twenty years later in the jungle of northern Thailand I have eaten frog for the first time. Surprisingly it is pretty tasty. The meat is the consistency of fish and has a similar taste. The brain is similar to a bird’s brain just smaller.

While eating the frog my mind drifted to the hallucinogenic frogs they had in Costa Rica. “I wonder if the poison is killed when it’s cooked?” I guess there is only one way to find out. Normally I would say that if I started seeing elephants something is funny with what I ate. Being where I am I think it would be more appropriate to say that if I start seeing skyscrapers I should stay away from the frogs next time.

As I write this entry I am sitting in the woods and we are hunting birds for dinner. The guns we are using are from a different world. Except for the barrel, trigger, and spring everything comes from the forest. They are bamboo muzzle loaders. Guns more primitive than we had during the American Revolutionary War. The gun powder is ignited by a cap. The same exact type of cap I had in my cap guns as a kid. These guns however are much more powerful than my old cap guns. I have not hit anything yet but Chai and Nook have gotten a hand full of birds each.



I’ve noticed a similar tattoo on many of the men above 40 years old. I thought it was a religious tattoo. Apparently it is much more than that. The Carway people believe these tattoos, given in special ways with bamboo, give them great powers. Some keep you safe from tigers Nook explains to me, “and this one here, if a cobra bites me I will be OK. It cannot hurt me.”

Fifteen years ago bandits from Laos or Cambodia (I’m not sure which one) came into the area we are now trekking through. The Carway people got tattoos to protect them from knives and guns:

“See Zak, I’ll show you” Nook says making the farmer, whose land we are passing over, lift up his shirt.

“This scar is from knife and this is from gun. Because he had tattoo they did not hurt him. Good tattoos better than bad bandit.”

I am getting an amazing view into the life of these people. It is absolutely fascinating. They have shown or taught me how to make many things. Most tools and food comes from the jungle. One interesting thing was the making of rice whisky or ‘special water’ as they like to call it. Whiskey made from rice in a big barrel. They bottle it in left over water bottles. It is the same color as water but the taste is much different. In Spain it would be called agua adiente de arroz. Here in the jungle of Thailand it is called a good time.