This waterfall never ends. It simply goes where you can no longer see it. The water continues to new tiers of the same falling river. It pools, and rises, pools, and rises, and disappears into the dense overhanging foliage. Untidy banana trees extend broad, green leaves while dry, dead leaves hang against the thick stem. Bamboo leaves stretch like thin fingers on slender hands. A whole community of bamboo stalks holding hands. We sat for hours here and just listened to the birds, the water, the eerily creaking bamboo.
Nearby there was a school. We taught English for a day to the children who came from the neighboring hilltribe villages. The girls were shy and the boys loud, eager to show off until called upon. It is the same in every language. The same giggles from all of the kids not singled out by the teacher. The "that's what you get for showing off" giggles from the girls as you convince the boy to pull himself out of his seat and write the first day of the week on the board. We had lunch with the teachers. Green curry, scrambled egg with kale, a noodle dish, and a cabbage dish. They were as shy as the students to talk with us.
At the elephant camp we made a connection with an elephant, if only for fifteen minutes. He looked curiously at us with his cloudy, cataract eye. I held his trunk and felt the smoothness and the roughness of his trunk. I felt the short black hairs and then let his trunk drop. He brought it back to my hands. I caught it, and then let it drop. Next I gently blew into it and he tore it away, tickled by the air. He curiously, slowly brought it back. It always came back. Lizzie and I both played catch with an elephant's trunk. Sometime during the interaction he popped a huge boner.
A hot spring spa fed natural hot spring water into private bath houses and a swimming pool. The warm water soothed muscles that had walked far to get there; a long sought reward.
All of these things were within a several km walk from the Akha Hill House, a guest house nestled in the hills in an Akha village. The Beekers, who live upstairs from my parents, recommended it and it was a wonderful place to either have packed days of trekking or just to sit and relax. However, I'd wager the place has changed since they ventured through. There is a paved road going almost all the way to the village, there is wifi, lots of cement, and lots of jungle-cleared hills converted to mango groves. There is a single unconverted hillside remaining where you look out from the hill house dining,relaxing,reception area. The world is changing, there is no doubt. But even as I imagine what it would be like to be surrounded on all sides by jungle, the scent of mango blossoms fills my nostrils. One can find beauty in everything.
And then today we went to the Hilltribe Museum in Chiang Rai where they basically state that every manner in which you can access the hilltribes is exploitative (except, of course, the tours arranged through the Hilltribe Museum's Population and Community Development Association). So we hung our heads in shame and defeat. We didn't actually do that. But, I began to compare the experience to the way in which some Maasai villages in Kenya are constructed to be tourist attractions and have nothing real about them. Tourists come to a village of mobbing women soliciting their crafts. No way of life is interrupted by your arrival because the way of life has been changed in expectation of your arrival. The way of life is dead in these villages. Which begs the question, is there any way to see an authentic village of traditional people anymore? Can I realistically hope to have an honest, pure interaction with people who cling to their culture in the face of globalization? I like to think that everyone isn't out there to just sell me shit; that a simple way of life close to the earth still exists unspoiled by the desire to adopt western ideas of consumption. Does everyone want a slice of the metaphorical pie?
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