Ok guys, this is a really long journal enrty…but if you want to know how to survive in the jungle, you should read the whole thing ;)

Before we had even left Chiang Mai for the Pun Pun Farm, we lined up a guide for a two-day—one-night trek into the remote jungle, where we would camp in a village with the indigenous Karen people. We only had four days in the Chiang Mai Province, so we had to squeeze lots of good shyza into a very short time.

50 km to the west of Chiang Mai, there are thousands of acres of mountain jungle. Some of these areas and protected parks and some are left for Northern Thailand’s hill tribes. There are a couple different tribes spread over dozens of remote jungle villages. These indigenous people are decedents of ancient Tibetan immigrants. They have been living in these mountains for many hundreds of years. I was really excited to get in there and see what life is like in one of these isolated villages.

Despite the fact that we had expressed early on, that we wanted to avoid running into other travelers, it seemed as though our guides, Jip (pr. jip) and Pi (pr. pie), were leading us on a pre-packaged tour of shenanigans.

With the elephant ride fiasco fresh in our minds, we sat Pi and Jip down at lunch and insisted on bailing on the gay “bamboo raft ride” (which was next on the itinerary). We told them we wanted to go straight into the jungle. Many of the tourists at the bamboo ride would be heading into a village experience of their own and I didn’t want to see any white people once we were in the jungle.

I pointed out that most of the tourists we had run into were overweight and that if we charged up the trail at a good pace, we could make it to a super-remote village by dark--and be the only gringos out there.

Pi looked daunted. He looked tired and we hadn’t even started the trek yet! That said, he had also had three beers and eight cigarettes in the one hour we had spent with him.

We were being demanding, and now instead of drinking three more beers while we “rafted” down class 1 rapids, he was going to have to follow us up some gnarly jungle trail at a vigorous pace.

I bet at that moment he would have traded us for some fat German tourists…but that was not an option. After weeks of traveling to big cities, Polansky and I were thirsty for some outdoor adventure and bamboo rafting was not going to cut it.

Luckily Pi got the picture and by the time we left the lunch spot, we had acquired a third guide. Disa (pr. dee-sa) was his name and when he jumped in the back of the pick-up with us, Ben and I looked at each other skeptically—almost fighting off the laughter.

Disa wore a thin red poncho and one of those plastic head bands that girls wear in grade school to keep their hair pulled back. He had a feminine smile and for a minute I thought he was a ladyboy!

Holy shit…were we headed into the jungle with a ladyboy? How could things have gone so horribly wrong?

But at the trailhead, Disa produced a water bottle full of homemade mountain moonshine from his bag and began swigging it. He offered us a shot and we reluctantly accepted. After a couple more swigs he took off up the trail at a good pace and we charged after him. This was no ladyboy; Disa was the real thing.

Later we learned that his father was the chief of his tribe and you could tell that Disa had plenty of skills and knowledge to survive in the jungle. And let me tell you: this mountain forest was no place to be free-styling your own trek. The paths were unmarked and we wound in and out of all kinds of animal trails and different canyons which all looked the same. It’s the kind of forest where you could get hopelessly lost in about twenty minutes.

There were so many sounds of life around you, it was hard to not get distracted. I walked right under a spider that was about the size of my hand (pictured), and didn’t even notice it until Ben pointed it out.

Almost immediately, I noticed all kinds of strange bites and marks on my legs, but ironically I was happy. We were finally in the jungle.

Three hours into the trek we came to a river and Disa began making this squawking-quacking noise with his throat. He cupped his hands, as if to shout it down at the river. I thought that maybe he was messing with one of his friends down there, but after a minute or two, there came a reply.

“What the hell is that?” I turned to Ben. “Is that a person?”

“It’s a big-mouthed frog”, Jip said as he caught up to us. “He is hunting the frog, but to find it, he must make it think that he is a frog too. Many times, the Karen people only hunt for what they need to eat tonight.”

Sure enough, Disa made his way down to the river. While he continued squawking, the hidden frog continued squawking back, leading him closer and closer to its exact location. Soon, he was standing in the middle of the raging creek water with his arm under a boulder, reaching blindly into a hole under the rock.

His eyes looked patiently up at the sky as he felt under the rock, like you would if you were trying to find your cell phone under a car seat. Then suddenly he smiled and I sat there amazed as he pulled a huge frog out from under the rock.

“He will make a spicy soup”, Jip said, in a thick Thai accent. And we continued up the trail behind Disa and his unhappy new friend (pictured).

The frog must have known he was about to be a spicy soup because he wouldn’t stop croaking and squawking. It was beginning to drive us all crazy when Disa ripped a huge leaf off a nearby plant. Within seconds, he had wrapped the frog up in the leaf and tied it up in a neat little package with some long pieces of grass (pictured). He threw it in his bag, the croaking stopped, and we continued up the ravine.

Even with their limited English, Jip and Disa were dropping knowledge on us at every turn. Every plant or insect was either dangerous or served a useful purpose. A small caterpillar that causes an aggressive, infectious rash on your skin; a plant with green, fuzzy leaves that will stop a deep cut from bleeding. I was impressed and happy to have Jip and Disa with us.

Pi on the other hand, was kilometers behind us by now, hacking up a lung. I have never seen any man smoke that much in my life….not even Robby Ronzone.

As we wound our way back into the mountains we encountered more and more Karen villagers and we really got to see first hand, how these people are in harmony with the jungle. They farm rice by building complex terraced fields with elaborate irrigation systems (pictured). We also passed an old man, precariously balanced on a log that hung over a pond—which they showed us was actually a Karen fish farm. He was hacking at a piece of an anthill he had taken from the forest, sprinkling ants into the pond to feed the fish, (pictured). Ingenious…

We passed some amazing waterfalls (pictured) and a few hours later, I was about ready for some spicy frog soup. Starving, we made the final push up a steep trail and arrived at the Karen village with an hour of sunlight left.

Ben and I walked around the village taking pictures of the beautiful kids (pictured), and saw an evening in the life of these kind, trusting people. It’s sad really, because the kids don’t even have a full-time teacher and without an education they will likely never make it out of their village.

We were welcomed into the home of Sun, who has a wife and four kids. They cooked us an amazing dinner of pork stirfry, pork curry, and tofu stirfry, (pictured).

Stuffed and exhausted, we went out to the fire pit and smoked huge joints of mountain herb wrapped in banana leaves with Sun, Disa, Pi, Jip, and Sun’s dog who was so cold he stood next to the fire all night (pictured). They challenged us to these crazy matchstick riddles that require minimal verbal communication (pictured). Again, I was impressed, and laughing and chilling in the jungle with these guys under a full moon is something I will not soon forget.

It had been an awesome day.

As Ben and I set up our mosquito nets, Jip came by to remind us to tuck the nets under our sleeping mats “for poisonous crawling insects.” He went on to explain that in addition to the numerous poisonous spiders in the forest, there are also multiple species of foot-long centipedes that can kill you. Great.

After carefully tucking my mosquito net under every inch of my mat, I felt the need to double check it with a flashlight to make sure I hadn’t missed any spots where something could crawl in.

I was working my way around the edge of my mat with the light when my flashlight did a double take. Oh god. I shined the flashlight up above the mat and there was a very large, brown spider, on the inside of my mosquito net. So there I was—all tucked in—and about to go to sleep, and I had just locked in, the very thing I was trying to keep out.

“Holy shit, that thing is huge!” Ben said “What the hell are you going to do now?”

“Pass me the sandal” I replied, trying not to disturb the spider. I knew if the spider disappeared in there, I wasn’t going to get one minute of sleep. Ben passed the sandal under the net and I let the furry little arachnid have it. He was a tough little bastard and it took three mighty whacks to do him in.

I tried not to think about what else could already be in my blankets, but it was tough, as Polansky taunted me for the next five minutes, “Oh dude, his whole family and all his boys are on their way to your bed, right now—out for revenge!”

The next morning we got up early and hit the trail. We hiked for four hours, chilled at another amazing waterfall (pictured) and didn’t see another soul. I had to pull a leach off my foot above the falls, but other than that, we emerged from the jungle with no more than a couple mosquito bites.

On the way home we stopped by a fruit stand that had a baby elephant chained up across the street. I felt sorry for the little guy and so I bought a huge bundle of sugarcane and went over and fed him the whole thing. We were homies (pictured).

I would highly recommend an experience with the hill tribes of Chiang Mai—just make sure you get away from the tourists and go deep into the jungle on less accessible trails with a local guide like Disa ;)