Coffee, anyone?

Our three day jungle adventure started bright and early with a 7:00am pick-up on Monday morning. We hopped into the Siam Safari van and met our tour guide, Kung, a little Thai woman with heavily accented English. For the next two hours, we drove through Kata picking up the other members of our tour and made it to Siam Safari’s Elephant Camp on the south of mainland Thailand. I sized up our group to see who Molly and I could be friend with for the next three days….there were two couples from Germany who spoke little English, one couple from somewhere who were very unfriendly, and a pair of Australian women who seemed like our best shot at friends. My first sign that we were in the jungle was the surprise in the bathrooms at the camp. It came in the form of a 4 inch wide black spider sitting in the trash can next to the toilet. It was the biggest spider I have ever seen. I prayed that it wouldn’t jump on me, or I would have been out of the bathroom in a second, shorts at my knees. Luckily, it was content to stay in the trash can and I made it out without incident. The first part of the tour was a kayak trip down a river in the jungle. On the van ride there, Kung told us a story about the river, but all I could understand was that a decade or so ago all the local people drank out of it and because it was unsanitary (too much bacteria) they all died. Seems like a great river to kayak down, right? It was a nice, relaxing ride (although it was dreadfully hot) and the tour guides pointed out animals along the way. They were able to spot the most miniscule frogs and we even saw a snake resting in the root system of huge tree. The funniest part of the morning was when we stopped to take a coffee break. It was literally 100 degrees and everyone was sweating through their clothes, but the tour offered hot coffee on the side of the river. I declined the offer.