(Daniel) The crowd outside the hut woke me up this morning, I walked outside to find half of the village outside standing around the Wolf as if it would suddenly get up and do a dance.  Mum was asleep inside, unaware of the forty or so people outside watching her.  I called up to the tent, getting an answer after a minute, much to the amusement of the surrounding tribes people!

Mr Joy had already started breakfast, after eating the simple meal of rice, noodles and the eggs which the people had gifted us yesterday, we packed our equipment, supplies and clothing into a bag.  Nii took my Golf umbrella, as a walking stick and shelter if the monsoon rains get too much!  I brought my Parang, the Malaysian knife which had served me so well in the rainforests of Cameron.  The tribes people here rely on a knife as their primary tool, and most of the men and children carried a wooden handled machete in beautiful scabbard, handmade by the village tool smith.  I had asked about buying one, but it seemed that they were made to order, and not something that could be bought.  The rain had fallen after we arrived yesterday, and again overnight, making the ground soft and slippery.  I locked the Wolf, using all of the various security devices and checking the padlocks on the equipment and doors.  Then joined the group as we walked out northwards from the village on a small track heading down the mountain.

The track started out wide and well used, but soon shrank to a footpath barely visible under piles of slippery leaves.  The way fell steeply down to the bottom of a valley, where it crossed a small river.  The ground was treacherous, and made for slow going.  These paths have never been used for trekking, and are solely known and used by the tribes people.  We stopped for a while at the bottom, to wash and rest before the climb back up to the next village at the top of a huge hill stretching off in front of us.  The climb was long and hard, but the track was well worn on this side of the valley, and even the odd spattering of rain didn’t dampen our excitement at the prospect of the next village on our route.

At the top of the hill,  after two hours of walking we entered a forest, stopping to drink water, I noticed two small pigs rummaging in the distance, indicating the presence of a settlement.  We walked on further until the village appeared in a clearing through the trees.  A small settlement, the twelve or so huts sat high on stilts separated by wooden fences.  We approached the houses passing a gateway surrounded by carvings and effigies.  This was the spirit gate, relics of dead animals and carvings of guns and phalluses adorn this gate to protect the village from evil spirits that roam the forest.  We passed through the gate, incase any villagers were watching, this would prove that we were not such spirits.

As we approached the village, the few people walking around, ran for cover inside the largest hut.  We followed them, looking up from the eves of the house into a porch area, were invited in by some young men sat on stools there.  The men were dressed in the Maoist army uniform, popular as clothing in the area, and cheap to buy from tribal markets.   A few old ladies, and several women with babies stood around.  The babies seemed to be in a permanent state of breastfeeding tied to their mothers with sarongs.  Small children ran around, most of them carrying toddlers on their back or tied to them in the same way as the mothers had their babies. 

We sat down, accepting some small stools from the villagers, who seemed very hospitable now that we were in their home.  Mr Joy pointed out a small hut at the end of the porch, which although used as a food store, actually was built and is used for the parents to sleep together if they want to be ‘alone.’  We took some photos of the villagers, careful to ask in each case so as not to cause offence.  The people here are extremely nervous of cameras, not really understanding our fixation with pointing them at them and snapping away!  Strangely though they are fascinated themselves to see their own picture when you show them on the digital screen, but delighted as they are, the minute that you ask to take another photo, they run away and hide just the same way as before!

We left the village, to a small crowd of people waiving, and accompanied by a young man who had agreed to walk us to the track which would lead us to the next village.  As we left, the weather cleared up and became sunny revealing the hills surrounding us, from our vantage point we could see the village where we stayed last night as a small clearing in the trees opposite us on the other side of the valley.  The track dropped down in to the valley again, this time the path was steep and slippery.  One after another we all fell over, getting covered with the slippery mud.  Mum was having a little trouble with the tracks, as she was quite rightly afraid of injuring herself so far from a road or easy passage out of the area.  Eventually we made it to the bottom of the valley, where a river cut through the area in a shallow estuary.  We decided to have lunch here, the boys setting up the food which we had carried with us.  Nii started a small fire to keep bugs away, meanwhile I took off my muddy trousers and t-shirt to have a wash. 

The shallow water and salty stones attract butterflies and bees of all kinds, these insects swarmed us while worked, my trousers in particular attracting hundreds of bees.  The butterflies of all shapes and sizes fluttered around the rocks beautifully, while the bees made you think twice about every step just in case you stepped on one of the creatures.  Soon lunch was ready, pate and sticky rice with pork floss.  The boys had found some large waxy leaves which they served the food on, and we ate next to Nii’s fire to keep the insects at a safe distance.

Once we had finished, I tried to recover my trousers, picking up a couple of stings in the process, the bees had filled my gloves too, which were difficult pick up and clear of the tiny stinging creatures,  With my trousers back on, I crossed the river to where the others had already started to climb the hill on the other side.  Just as I started up the path behind Nii, I saw that she had a leech on her belt, which I pulled off and showed to her.  Nii is tough, I mean really tough, I have seen her pick spiders off her arms, and crush them between her fingers. She can eat raw meat and kill animals for food without flinching.  But the sight of the leech awakened a fear in Nii which surprised me, she screamed at the tiny wriggling creature, and didn’t stop until I threw it away!  

We continued up the hill, finding some eating berries that turn your tongue purple, eventually the land flattened out to a plateau where we could look far back at the two settlements that we had visited, just ahead of us was another village, smaller than the first two, this was to be our home for the night.  The village was Arkha again, as we could see by the headdress of the Women that we saw.  They men wore the Green and Red Maoist uniforms with the typical hats that they liked.  Here unlike the other villages, I noticed that a few of the men carried guns, ancient flintlock rifles that had to be loaded through the barrel and surely were used for nothing more than hunting.

As we entered the village, Mr Joy took us to a hut where an old lady was preparing a barrel of rice and herbs to make whiskey.  We sat down to absorb the village atmosphere, somewhere a girl was singing the traditional Arkha songs.  Most of the Women were topless as is the style that we have seen through out the other villages.  The faces of the Women very often looked similar, and you could certainly be forgiven for saying that the Arkha people had a look all of their own, not Chinese or Laos, but more like a South American Country like Peru.

The people from the other huts, slowly congregated around us, watching our every move.  Mum and Nii took photos, while I relaxed and pondered on my decision to carry all our equipment!  After a while, Nii went into the kitchen to help with preparing a chicken curry for dinner, I took photos of the Chicken being killed, as the people here have a certain way of slaughtering the animal, so that the blood is pumped out of it’s neck by it’s heart before it dies.  This blood is kept and cooked with the other organs, including the testicles for eating with the meal.

Once the food was ready, we sat down in the kitchen, to eat together.  As usual, Mr Joy furnished me with the Chicken Brain, and Testicles.  This was a great compliment, as they were serving me the best food in honour of the fact that I am the Leader, of course the compliment is a little hard to take when it involves eating another creatures testicles.  The taste is as you would expect, salty and when eaten the organ pops in your mouth with a sticky liquid centre.  I don’t feel like eating them everyday for breakfast, put it that way.

After dinner, the men came back from the fields, eager to show us their hospitality, the whisky came out, and started to flow through the one glass that tradition dictates.  Mr Joy was very nearly was sick again, in a retching fit which I can’t imagine looked in any way polite to the villagers, who had a mixed look of amusement and disgust at his overacted trouble holding the drink.  I drank down the strong alcohol easily as I had last night.  This village made a slight variation of the rice based spirit, which was considerably stronger, but had an almost sweet berry flavour in the aftertaste.  After drinking, the men brought out huge water pipes made from bamboo, through these they smoked a yellow fragrant tobacco, I smoked with them as the passed the pipe around.  The others went to bed now, but I stayed up talking and drinking with the men from the village until finally I had to fall asleep too.

About ten minutes after I lay down, the chief came and made his bed along side mine,  then lay down next to me with his son, they slept there on the same platform, I am not sure of the meaning of the action, but I’m sure it was friendly and almost protective of their guests.

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