Tuesday, July 12, 2005
My trip to Thailand involved travelling and staying with the whole of my department from school. Most of my colleagues are from a very big city and have little experience of the outdoors. Most amazingly they agreed to go on a jungle hike in the hills of Thailand.
It was terrific!
Some parts of the walk were horribly frustrating. Sometimes I wanted to scream at people for their total lack of co ordination. Occasionally I felt like striding off into the distance and leaving my group of designer clad mall walkers to fend for themselves.
It was terrific because of the story I can tell.
Imagine if they had all been quite capable of walking through the jungle all properly equipped with sensible hiking boots and a ruck sack. There would have been no story to tell.
My lovely Chinese friends were just the most pathetic bunch of people when it came to hiking. The previous day they had all been told what to wear, what to do, what to bring. Everyone turned up very punctually the next morning. Obviously some of them genuinely thought that ‘stout walking shoes’ all had the brand name Gucci and that it was essential, in the jungle, to look up to the minute fashionable even if it meant carrying a few extra pounds of Tiffany jewelry as well as the ultimate accessory of a Prada handbag.
We set off as a group. We hadn’t gone far when suddenly there were cries and shrieks coming from behind me. As soon as the path started to go down hill and a bit slippery many people began to fall over. The Gucci’s just didn’t cut it that day. They became extremely tense and anxious about walking down hill and, unluckily for them, the path started at the top of a mountain and went down to a river. Every few minutes someone fell over.
Some of the more athletic and strong from the group began to help the rest. A human banister was formed to enable the most pathetic and wobbly down the slope. The nervous ones literally shook with exhaustion and fright each time they were required to pass over a small bridge or stream. When it came to very steep areas they edged their way down very very slowly. It reminded me of learning to ski for the first time. People constantly falling over and becoming tired and emotional as they began to realize that they only way out of this situation was to complete the walk. No taxi was about to come along and rescue them for a small fee. The only way to go was down hill.
This arduous walk became even more difficult for them when the jungle thinned out slightly which meant we were no longer in the shade but in bright sunlight. It is very hard to walk on a slippery path, down hill, while holding an umbrella as a shade. The shade is essential to Chinese skin, god forbid they should ever get a sun tan and spoil their clear white complexion. Its funny, I have watched a few adventure programmes recently as well as Michael Palin in the Himalayas. No one ever uses an umbrella while trekking in the jungle!!!
Needless to say the estimated time of one and a half hours to finish the walk actually took three hours. It really wasn’t a difficult route by any ones standard but if you have lived in a city all your life and have only experienced concrete pavements the sudden transition to a wet and slippery down hill slope is too much to cope with. I suspect that going from apartment building to taxi or shopping mall isn’t really the proper preparation for jungle hikes.
It was terrific!
Some parts of the walk were horribly frustrating. Sometimes I wanted to scream at people for their total lack of co ordination. Occasionally I felt like striding off into the distance and leaving my group of designer clad mall walkers to fend for themselves.
It was terrific because of the story I can tell.
Imagine if they had all been quite capable of walking through the jungle all properly equipped with sensible hiking boots and a ruck sack. There would have been no story to tell.
My lovely Chinese friends were just the most pathetic bunch of people when it came to hiking. The previous day they had all been told what to wear, what to do, what to bring. Everyone turned up very punctually the next morning. Obviously some of them genuinely thought that ‘stout walking shoes’ all had the brand name Gucci and that it was essential, in the jungle, to look up to the minute fashionable even if it meant carrying a few extra pounds of Tiffany jewelry as well as the ultimate accessory of a Prada handbag.
We set off as a group. We hadn’t gone far when suddenly there were cries and shrieks coming from behind me. As soon as the path started to go down hill and a bit slippery many people began to fall over. The Gucci’s just didn’t cut it that day. They became extremely tense and anxious about walking down hill and, unluckily for them, the path started at the top of a mountain and went down to a river. Every few minutes someone fell over.
Some of the more athletic and strong from the group began to help the rest. A human banister was formed to enable the most pathetic and wobbly down the slope. The nervous ones literally shook with exhaustion and fright each time they were required to pass over a small bridge or stream. When it came to very steep areas they edged their way down very very slowly. It reminded me of learning to ski for the first time. People constantly falling over and becoming tired and emotional as they began to realize that they only way out of this situation was to complete the walk. No taxi was about to come along and rescue them for a small fee. The only way to go was down hill.
This arduous walk became even more difficult for them when the jungle thinned out slightly which meant we were no longer in the shade but in bright sunlight. It is very hard to walk on a slippery path, down hill, while holding an umbrella as a shade. The shade is essential to Chinese skin, god forbid they should ever get a sun tan and spoil their clear white complexion. Its funny, I have watched a few adventure programmes recently as well as Michael Palin in the Himalayas. No one ever uses an umbrella while trekking in the jungle!!!
Needless to say the estimated time of one and a half hours to finish the walk actually took three hours. It really wasn’t a difficult route by any ones standard but if you have lived in a city all your life and have only experienced concrete pavements the sudden transition to a wet and slippery down hill slope is too much to cope with. I suspect that going from apartment building to taxi or shopping mall isn’t really the proper preparation for jungle hikes.
