A day in the life of Karen people

Visiting remote village tribes in the border province of Mae Hong Son in Thailand will put a traveler out of their comfort zone. It is an unforgettable adventure.

If somebody ever said that it's somehow fascinating to wake up to the cock's crow they're wrong. It's far from fascinating. When you've spent your night sleeping on the hard wood floor of a bamboo house without a mattress the last thing you want to hear is a village full of roosters having a screaming competition at 5 A.M. But when it happens there is no way to go around it. The best thing to do is to open your eyes, get up and take a "shower" in the primitive washroom outside. And believe me, that would be worth of its own article.

The night before we had arrived to the small village of Koh Seh Loh. After a rough day of trekking over the mountains we'd finally got there just before sunset and settled down at the biggest house of the village. We'd had a tasty dinner, shots of moonshine and a concrete language barrier. Karen people have their own language, so our guides had to translate everything. We could communicate only by pointing pictures in our travel guide. These guys didn't even recognize the name Bangkok! They preferred to call it Krung Thep, the traditional name of the city. Let that sink in for a moment.

The first meeting with the people of Koh Seh Loh

There we were, me and my brother, enjoying the moment and wondering where the hell we had arrived.

The agenda of the morning was to go bathing and refresh at the nearby waterfall. Getting there was like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie: we crossed waters, balanced on rocks and blazed our trail through jungle. Finally the fall appeared in front of us and it couldn't be more wonderful! Everybody started to climb up the 20 m-high cliff immediately to get higher to chill down under the splashing water. An 11-year old boy from the village showed us how to climb all the way to the top like a monkey, but for cityboys like us it was too dangerous. Still, even from a big rock about halfway to the top the view was amazing. Sitting cross-legged there and letting the falling water massage our sore backs resulted into a feeling I would call travelgasm.

Climbing the waterfall

Back at the house the guys were working on their annual roof renovation. The roof was made of dried waterproof palm leafs and they had to be changed once a year. Now, during the dry season it was a good time for the operation.

In the afternoon we left the house to continue our journey to the next village, Tah Kuh Puh. The first thing I saw there was a church, surprisingly they were christian! Next to the church was the headmaster's house where we sat down to plan our dinner. The headmaster told us they would kill a few chickens and grill them for us. It was a mental test but after all it felt nothing but natural. If you can't handle the fact that your meal used to be a living thing, then you should be a veggie. But then again, the mass produced chickens we're used to eat are not really even living. They are barely standing in their cages being force-fed until they're ready to be slaughtered. Another thing to consider when it comes to ethical eating habits.

A view from Koh Seh Loh village

The headmaster of Tah Kuh Puh

The dinner took a long time to prepare and even when ready, the meat was quite chewy. It's because in the village the chickens are running all the time so there's less fat in their muscles. We grabbed the food, a load of beer and a couple of bottles of "Karen whisky" and hopped into the headmaster's 4WD. Again, the radio was playing Thai metal as we drove to a viewpoint to enjoy the night under the stars. We dined, played drinking games and laughed. Went out Karen style. The headmaster was the first man down, the rest of us navigated home in the early hours. It wasn't our worst but surely the most exotic night out and there were no problems with falling asleep on the hard floor that night.

The next day the headmaster dropped our little expedition at the Salawin river where we took a longtail boat back to the road where our car was parked. On the way back to Mae Sariang everything that had happened during the last few days felt surreal. Kitti told us that he doesn't do these treks so often anymore and it was the first time to visit these villages for him as well. So it wasn't only a tour but also a holiday for him. Once again going with intuition and choosing the least obvious option had been worth it. An adventure always beats predictable tours. I recommend throwing all the recommendations from guide books away and going with the flow. For every traveler.

PS. Afterwards it came out that the guy who introduced us to the rice moonshine had fallen from an elephant as a kid, resulting to a permanent brain damage. Good thing that we didn't know, we probably hadn't trust him enough to enjoy the suspicious "Karen whisky" with this jolly good fellow.

Even traveling isn't fun ALL the time.