It’s time to go back to basic. Three days trekking in the jungle. Everyone has charged their phones, camera’s and most importantly their powerbanks as we were to be staying in two small villages in the middle of the jungle without any electricity or signal.

We had to trek in the jungle for 3 hours which gave us gorgeous views and wobbly legs…

At night time we sat around the fire place and played a few rounds of maffia/wolf van wakkerdam or whatever you’d like to call it. One of the guys was an amazing narrator and we were all in stiches from laughing.

When it was time for bed we all had one massive sleepover by sleeping all together in one big room. The mattresses on the floor were so thin that we might as well have just slept bare on the floor without it and our pillows were as ahard as rocks but even though I managed a couple of hours sleep. Embraced the cold and hard floor. When I woke up I felt like Bear Grills.

On our second day we got to choose if we wanted an easy trek or difficult one. You can all guess which one we chose 😉 

Trekking through the rice fields we at one point had to cross a few little streams and of course who falls half in? Yeah you got on, little league George….

It was amusing for everyone else and I got to walk for another hour in a squelching muddy shoe. Great fun…. I will admit, it was hilarious and got a good laugh out of it myself. Forever clumsy 🥴.

Just as we were arriving at our new stay, a small village again in the middle of the bush, we spotted an elephant.

I wanted it to be a wild one and will secretly say it is but it’s actually the elephant from the village which is sad but then again it does get washed, walked and fed… could be worse right?

We went for a swim in the river which to be fair, for me wasn’t a swim, more of a dip the toes in and get the f**k out again cos it was freezing.

And then out of the blue the elephant crossed the river right next to us so all you saw was a group of people just staring and slowly backing away in fear and shock and pure happiness all at the same time. 

When showered and slightly warmed up after “swimming” we made our own loempia’s (springrolls). We put a chilli in one of them to have a good laugh at the person who would eat it later at dinner with a flaming mouth.*

After loempia making and basket making (yes we got a lesson in this too) we visited the village school which was cool and then had a traditional Thai massage. 

Now let me paint this picture for ya’s. Ten of us all at the same time in the same room (big sleepover again) having the same massage. One was snoring, the others were quiet and I was just having a fit of giggles. 

My muscle ache didn’t stop afterwards unfortunately and was still waddling like a penguin but it was a weird sensation of relief and extreme pain. 

When everyone woke up from the massage we had dinner and then played games again.

*Remember when I said we had put a chilli in one of the loempia’s? Well… we actually didn’t figure out who actually ate it cos no-one noticed it so i’m now seiously doubting if it actually was a chilli or not haha.

This time we played games such as: ping pong peng and pointing fingers. Now imagine the primary school games we used to play, these were like that but more fun thanks to the beer and charcoal we had to smear on eachothers faces anytime we lost. It was disgusting but an absolute laugh at the same time!

We all looked like chimney sweepers from Mary Poppins and all we did was end in fits of giggles so not only do my legs now hurt but my stomach muscles do too.

The charcoal was really hard to wipe off so took us a while but when finally managed off to bed we went.

Our third and last day in the jungle was us trekking for another hour to finally reach a point at the river to go bamboo rafting. It was brilliant, daunting, hilarious and just an absolute blissful way to end our jungle trip.

We survived rapids (mini) and even though our raft wasn’t considered the sensible one with sensible people, it wasn’t our raft that crashed into the tree but the ”sensible” raft did!

Which made me feel good haha. Not so clumsy now I guess… 🤷‍♀️😅

We arrived at another village and stopped for lunch. Again we had Pad Thai (they know how to make a girl happy!) and then it was back in the jeep driving off to our hotel.

Even though it has not even been two full weeks travelling, I can already and whole heartedly say that one I’m so extremely grateful to being able to do this and in addition to that I am extremely grateful for having an absolute beaut of a group!

Off now to have a proper warm shower after three days of cold water and massive spiders (I’m not exaggerating this time dad, they were as big as my hand) and tonight we shall be having drinks as the group will unfortunately be split up soon as some of us are doing different things from each other…. 😩

Shall write soon!

Lots of love

G.