Fuck it, I'm posting whatever I can pump out in the next fifteen minutes. The "wait for inspiration" method has failed me for a week and lacking external deadlines I'm having difficulty with my own. Regardless, Thailand continues to be real and to surpass whatever fuzzy expectations I came to it with.
The weekend of the 4th of September was simply stunning. If you're reading this I presume you have access to my facebook photos (they are far from doing justice but given that each is a thousand words they're more than this blog). The weekend was a retreat, a chance for all us farang to hang out and decompress from our host families at the feet of an immense waterfall. It worked.
We left on Friday, stopping first at a lake to take our swimming test. The test is no small matter, as it determines who will be able to kayak without the encumbrance of a life vest and with their dignity. Three hundred meters of swimming followed by fifteen minutes of treading, not floating. The relativity of time becomes a lot more real when you are forced to count out fifteen minutes in leg kicks and arm swirls. Amusingly, the normal health hierarchy was somewhat reversed in the test. While I would never aspire to a claim of being remotely fit or competitive, I had a vastly easier time floating than my muscle coated, olympian peers. Frankly I think they just psyched themselves out and don't swim enough (we're a distressingly midwestern group for all my east coast mores, and god knows those people don't have the joy of a real ocean). Swim test accomplished we cleaned off the murky mucky lakewater with buckets of still more lakewater in the squat toilet restrooms. Lunch was served on elevated bamboo huts which surround the lake, perhaps a foot above the water. They creaked when we moved and the atmosphere was delightful, the scene being completed with a dozen plus cats lounging about. After lunch it was back into our plush vans for an hour or so ride to our destination: the mork fa waterfall and camp.
The initial entrance to mork fa is far from novel: a small parking lot and ranger station next to a stream and a welcome sign. The true attraction of the place is 350 metres down a trail, and a bit out of hearing range. We unloaded our packs and walked to the sala, our dining, lecture, and general congregating room; though covered patio gives a closer picture. Had to listen to some quickly forgotten rules and regulation (no drinking, never any drinking) and then went to the third barrack on the left. We trotted across the stream over a vine coated and picturesque bridge and dumped our belongings in our building, a large single room with long rows of mattresses. I think after that we visited the falls for the first time.
The falls were the crowning element of the weekend, although other parts were of course life changing as well. Mork Fa waterfall is infinitely more beautiful than it's name sounds, at least to me. You hear it first of course, like most waterfalls I've visited. Then you feel it, the droplets thrown into the air landing forty or fifty feet away and slowly soaking any bag you leave too close. The falls are perhaps eighty feet tall, muddy some days and crystal the next. The river splits, falling on two sides of the rock precipice above. You can swim behind the wall of water on one side, or climb into a sort of cave behind the other. Jamie managed to find a particularly comfortable perch behind the fall, and sitting there was for both my classmates and myself a deeply calming experience. Rather zen, how calm you feel inside a waterfall. Strangely enough in that small space the water droplets rebound and bounce upwards.Playing in the falls was equally rewarding, and possibly the most fun I've had in two weeks. Once you've actually gotten into the pool at the base the spray gets more and more intense to the point that you can't turn towards the falls and open your eyes. It was lovely.
The highlight of Saturday was our wilderness emergency exercise. In it, the group was divided in two and given an emergency scenario to deal with in the jungle. We were told that two of our classmates had disappeared into the jungle, were handed a map, and then told to come back with them in an hour and a half. Both groups had the same goal but carried the exercise out separately (it may have proved two easy if we had our full complement of thirty two out to rescue two). It turned out one of our classmates had broken both legs while the other had injured an ankle or leg. It wasn't entirely clear.It's fascinating to watch mob psychology and panic run through a group you are personally familiar with. People act significantly different even in simulated emergencies. While scenarios like this may be intended to foster trust and faith I favored drugging the injured and fireman carrying them out. We opted for carrying the victim in a hammock instead. An hour and a half of pure sweat later we made it back to camp. I would have liked to compare the sequence of events of both groups but the lesson was in other areas than behavioral psychology.
After that more swimming, and then dinner and activities. It was Taylor's 21st birthday and we had banana bread or mana from heaven, the reviews were good enough for either. Sunday was spent on a hike up the mountain, a brief little jaunt showing the local environment. We saw the spring of a stream, enormous stands of bamboo, and wild banana trees, as well as a tree whose sap indigenous groups coat their arrows in when they want to be thorough. The whole weekend left me relaxed and comfortable with the thought of three more weeks of host family life. Huh, I guess you can force inspiration if you want to. More to come when I fancy it...
