Jungle

The day of the full mooin, two Finns and I paid a guide to take us on an all-day trek across the interior of the island. The Jungle was impressive, the guide was irritating. Part of my irritation stemmed from the language difficulties, but I think I partly just didn't like him very much. I'm the kind of person who wants detail about the local ecosystems, not just being pointed towards semi-obvious elements. He clearly knew his way around the woods, but his understanding of the systems at play in the jungle seemed pretty limited. He kept whacking at thing with his machete that weren't in the way and probably didn't apreciate being cut at, and he brought his dog along which probably reduced our already slim chances of sneaking up on any wildlife down to the vicinity of zero. This guy's generic answer to lots of questions was, "big waterfall!" Um... Ok. Perhaps I was too quick to jump on the first trek I found without sussing him out a little further. My fault. I did feel like he misled me a little as to what I was getting included in the price of the trek (800 Baht). I swear he told me, " free gas, free food at end, free beer at end." The Pad Thai his wife cooked was okay, but he charged us for everything, premium price. Whatever. IT was still a pretty cool experience. I think I'll go back alone and sit patiently so maybe I can esw a few birds or animals. We did hear a troop of monkeys barking off in the distance. For two hours of the five hour hike, we were caught in a world-saturating rainstorm. But hey. The big waterfall was nice. We swam in a pool at the bottom of the cascade to cool off. A few pools down when we were walking down to the road, we caught sight of a couple who I'm pretty sure didn't think they were visible fvrom the path. She looked like she was working pretty hard.

And then a nap and then the Full Moon.