(Daniel) This morning I woke up to find our hosts awake again, and still smoking the waterpipe, they offered some to me, I declined at first, but when they became insistent I accepted.  Next the Whisky came out and the men all drank a glass then passed one to me, which I drank down.  Once again Mr Joy went through his act of retching and acting out his pains.  I wondered if there was some meaning which I could not understand to his actions, as to my knowledge, one should always show how much they appreciated the strong drink, especially when offered it by your hosts.

During the night rain had fallen, and it was still spitting now as we ate breakfast and said goodbye and thank you to our hosts.  I gave one of the men a torch which I had been carrying, as a gift for the whisky and food.  As we walked out of the village, the Chief assigned us a guard complete with ancient rifle and Chinese army uniform. Two young women walked with us as we left the village.  We were heading for a Gui village about 10kms away.  As we walked the two girls sang the wailing traditional songs, I recorded a small sample of the singing which sounded amazing surrounded by forest with birdcall and rain to accompany it.

Our guard left us after about 30 minutes, but the girls walked on for another kilometer or so, before we turned around and they simply weren’t there.  We continued into the forest as the rain started to fall harder and harder, I found a couple of leeches on Nii, removing them without telling her.  Mum also had a leech on her shoe.  I found one biting my leg, I also had a strange feeling in my shoe, something told me that I had another leech inside, but I didn’t check, wanting to get up the hill and through the rain.  By now the track was little more than a ledge skirting the edge of a wooded hill, it dropped off steeply down to the valley below, and a slip could mean ending up in the river down there with god knows how many injuries picked up on the 60 foot fall down.

Not much farther along the track we came to a tree down across the path.  We hacked away with the machete until the track was safe to pass, all the while the tingling in my shoe became more and more obvious.  The rain really came down now,  a torrential downpour that soaked through our rain coverings to the bone.  I sensed the groups moral depleting as we trudged through the sheets of driving rain, pushing ourselves up the hill, as the ground turned from wet to sodden to a stream.  In an effort to lift spirits, I sang my repertoire of Johnny Cash songs.

After a couple of kilometers, the forest broke and we found ourselves in farmland again, a small bamboo and bark shelter sat up on the hill, we trudged up to the small shelter, sitting down under it’s roof to dry a little.  Nii wandered outside the area a little until she was out of sight.  Suddenly a scream went up, it was Nii, I ran over to find her jumping around and in floods of tears, she had two large leeches on her ankle they had taken hold, making it hard to pull them off.  I used a lighter to loosen their grip and then assisted by Mr Porn pulled them off her.  She was in a state, and had to be calmed down considerably before she would sit down and allow me to check for more leeches.

Afterwards I checked myself, as I removed my right shoe, I knew that the leech was in there, but was not prepared for seeing it so swollen and full of my blood!  I used the lighter to get the leech to release it grip on me, I saw it withdraw it’s long thin head from my skin, where it must have been at least a centimeter inside.  The feeling was quite horrid and invasive.  The hole in my foot bled profusely, partly due to it’s size, but mainly because of all the anticoagulant that the leech would have injected.  I took some comfort in relieving the leech of all my blood as the lighter caused it to dump it’s stolen meal.  We used ash from Mr Joy’s cigarette to try and provide something for the blood to clot around, but it was good ten minutes before the bleeding even slowed down, by then there were bloody rags and stains all over the shelter.

With the rain slowing, and our clothes a bit less sodden, we picked up our stuff and carried on walking.  The track dropped back down into another valley, which took careful negotiation on the hill, then climbed steeply back up through farmland, eventually we spotted the roaming farm animals denoting a tribal village.  The Gui village that we had been looking for.

The Gui are an interesting people, the men do not all dress up unless there is a festival, but the women wear colourful clothes, with garlands in their hair.  To me they looked a bit like Maria Pracatan, the Mexican woman with all the fruit on her head.  As we entered the Chiefs hut, I noticed a strong odour, which we discovered to be opium.  The chiefs wife sat in the corner smoking the drug in a pipe.  Younger girls and women stayed some distance from us, but eventually came closer allowing us to see their traditional dress.  The villagers were very interested in us, having only seen a couple of non Asians before from an aid charity.  The men had traditional clothes too, in which a couple were happy to pose for us. 

I noticed that an Arkha lady was amongst the crowd, and certain that I recognised her, asked Mr Joy who she was.  He suddenly realised that this was the wife of the chief of the first village that we had visited, and where the Wolf was parked, waiting for our return.   Then the Chief walked in, it turned out that he and his wife had walked here to buy some pigs from the Gui people.  We talked to him about the route which he had chosen to come here, apparently they had to cross a fast flowing river, which had become quite deep after the heavy rains.  I decided that our best bet considering the rain, and that our exit road from the mountains would be washed out already, would be to return to the first village along this route.  We could then stay the night there, and leave in the morning, as it would probably be a very different drive back down.

We ate lunch there with the Gui people, while our clothes dried by the fire.  Then thanked them for their hospitality, and left the village along the track that would take us back to the Wolf.  The way back down the hill was so steep that we all fell over several times.  Once I had been covered in mud for the second or third time, I decided that the easiest and fastest way down the hill was to slide down.  Squatting down on my shoes and using my hands to balance, I managed to get a good two hundred meters like this, although a few times I nearly slid off the edge of the track!

At the bottom, the river was brown and swollen, the water came almost up to my waist as I crossed, soaking my trousers.  The others arrived soon afterwards, and crossed to an island in the middle of the river.  We sat there for a rest, before crossing to the other bank, and climbing up the other side to more farmland, eventually reaching the Arkha village after about three hours walking.

Back at the village, we were greeted with recognition, and showed to the chiefs hut, where we sat down and changed out of the horrid clothes.  The Wolf was fine, although people had drawn and written all over it in the dust and mud!  The men from the village crowded around, and showed a particular interest in my knife.  One of them asked me for the knife, I explained through Mr Joy, that I would trade the knife for one of theirs.  As I had a spare Parang, but had really wanted one of the tribal knives.  The man disappeared, returning with a beautiful knife in a carved wooden sheath.  I agreed, and made the exchange. 

Later when the chief returned, I gave him a gift of two of Alan UK’s radios.  I had plenty of spares, and the radios would help him on the farm or in the forest.   I showed them how to use the PTT sets, by saying “hello”  down them several times, the men seemed to understand, but then only said “hello”  to each other after that, I hoped that they would progress to their own language soon!  The Chief was delighted with his gift, and gave me another knife, although this one did not have a sheath.  I felt like I had really made friends with the people here, and had been given gifts, and food by a people to whom these are the most important things.  A real achievement!

I killed the chicken that we ate that night, although Mr Porn told me that he did not approve of my method of wringing it’s neck.  Afterwards, we sat up quite late, talking and drinking, then slept in the chiefs hut, ready for the next day.  Before I went to bed, the chief lent me a pair of shorts to sleep in, as my muddy trousers would have made a mess inside his house.  A little embarrassing, but proof once again, that they saw us as friends!

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