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I didn't get that much sleep as it was too hot and the fans we had didn't work, so woke up feeling rather grouchy. We did some morning swimming after breakfast and I took a tube out onto the lake. A false sense of security, but it got me out nevertheless. Edd had the other tube and spent a great deal of his time pretending to get pulled down into the water and eaten.
We had some lunch and a 30 minute nap before we set off for the afternoon's activities. We left on the long tail boats at 1pm and stopped on one of the nearby islands. We did a shortish hike through the forest to a small Burmese village. Tom explained that the Burmese people fled to Thailand as their country was under military dictatorship; they came to Thailand even though they had no rights, could not get jobs, own land, buy houses or get citizenship. Moving to an area that was a Thai national park, they were allowed to live for free in houses they built with bamboo, however, and eat the fruit the trees produced. The Thai built little houses all over Thailand for the 'spirits' - they believed that when they built houses and roads, they displaced the spirits and had to build them a new house to live in. They believed that if they did not do so, the spirits would disturb the people in their new house or cause accidents on roads. Even in a National Park forest with Burmese people living in bamboo houses, there was a spirit house between the trees with a ginger cat sleeping underneath it.
We continued to walk to a rock face, where a cave with a small entrance was located at the bottom. Tom then led us up to an area where you could walk up the rock face and even though it was quite steep, you could do it without it getting too complicated. 40 meters up, we came to a larger cave and Tom explained that this was where the Japanese stored their ammunition during WWII, while they were building the Death Railway. He said the Thai government were convinced many years later that the Japanese had left gold in the caves and used dynamite in an effort to find secret, forgotten treasures. They found nothing, but their efforts were still visible. It smelt like musty old trainers and there was bat pooh on the floor. We walked down one of the two entrances and could see hooks and screws in the ceiling: old, rusted and long forgotten. We turned around as Tom decided the other entrance would be a better option. He was the most indecisive tour guide I'd ever come across. Edd and I opted out of walking down the second entrance and hung out at the opening with the bat pooh.
We hiked back down and a few of the guys on tour wanted to climb in and explore the smaller cave at the bottom. The rest of us opted for cooling off in the river and Edd was the first one in. The water was significantly cooler than the lake and our shower water and he sat in the middle of the rapids, quite content with life. Local monks gave us another bottle of drinking water and Edd and I had a strained conversation with a local nun about why they were disassembling a building close by. She kind-of explained that it was a temple, but they were building a bigger temple further down; the old temple was being taken apart in such a way that all of the materials could be reused; it was very impressive to watch. Some of the monks were young boys - Tom told us Thai families sent their children to stay with the monks as they believed the monks could teach their children wisdom and keep them out of trouble. You could only officially become a monk at 20, anything younger than that was 'a monk in training.'
The long tail boat came to fetch us and then whisked us off to a local fishing village. We expected to see old Thai men fishing in little boats in the lake, but instead were greeted by 1 Thai man and his fish farm. He had approximately 2000 fish in each pen that were there purely because they were the species that was the most in demand. We precariously walked on small planks along the pens and I was quite concerned with falling in. I didn't like swimming in a freshwater pool where I could see them or a lake where I knew they were there, but couldn't see them. This was a high concentration of fish in a very small area. My worst nightmare could come true. I was quite relieved when we climbed back into the long tail boats and headed back for our House Boat. It was time for a swim.
It was very dry in Thailand at this point and the landscape was littered with constant forest fires. There were no fire brigades to put them out, so they outlined the mountains' edges in the evening. The wind picked up over dinner and Edd and I chatted to a group of 3 girls from Iceland. We discussed what it was like to live there in terms of temperature, schooling, jobs, prospective boyfriends, etc and it was quite an interesting conversation. It's a country with approximately only 300 000 people, one national tv station and 2 pubs that could be converted into clubs. It didn't get as cold as Greenland and they didn't live in igloos.
The wind got stronger and lightening began to light up the night sky. Edd and I went back to our room as we'd decided to see if we could get a picture of the lightening grounding. He set the camera up to take 100 shots automatically and we sat back to see what it took. The usually calm lake water started to become quite rough and one of the long tail boats broke loose. One of the Thai staff members jumped into the water to fetch it, accidentally knocking his face on the side of the boat. He sliced the underneath of his lip open on the right hand side, but had managed to get into the boat, grab an oar and paddle back to us. He passed the underneath of our room, as he wanted to tie the boat up at the back of the House Boat using it to protect the small vessel, and Edd leaned down to hand him our torch. (It was literally pitch black outside). He climbed back in over the balcony railing in the passage and went to the first aid kit to sort out his bleeding face.
The House Boat is made up of 2 separate parts: the communal area, which also houses the bar, kitchen, 1 bathroom and an upstairs area for the staff and the second section has 2 bathrooms and all the bedrooms. These 2 parts are joined together with bolts and chains that were under enormous pressure in the storm. At one point, the section with the communal area dropped down underneath the section with the bedrooms and got hooked underneath. The rough lake lifted the communal area section up and ripped the floorboards, breaking them on the bedroom section. One of the kitchen staff ran to get a life jacket and the rest scrambled to adjust the tyres between the sections, in an attempt to stop the 2 parts from ripping each other apart.
The storm lasted about 45 minutes and no further damage was done to the House Boat. The roof needs fixing and the floorboards need some TLC, but neither of the long tail boats got lost, the kayaks and canoes remained safely in place, and other than losing 1 bag of rubbish to the wind, everything went back to normal. It also meant that the rain put out the forest fires, naturally and the evening was significantly cooler than the night before. Edd opted to sleep on the couch as he was too long for the bed anyway, didn't need the bug net as none of them ever ate him and it squeaked, terribly. We settled in for the night and went to sleep with the sound of the rain falling on the roof.
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