As dusk set in, the other guests at the village left (turns out ONCE AGAIN we would be the only ones spending the night) and we took another long-tail boat ride to see sunset on the lake, then came back to the pavilion for dinner with Kung and Big. The electricity, powered by a generator, kicked in at 8pm and we were told it would stay on until 2am. After dinner, we played a game with Big involving dots and making squares on a piece of paper, but we lost him to the television after about an hour. We then sat around a read with Kung, who was reading a book about love and relationships that she received as a gift from her secret boyfriend. We showed her People magazine’s Sexiest Man Alive issue, and what she was most interested in was the ad for Crest White Strips. She was impressed that you could whiten your teeth by yourself, and said that she would really like to have them.
When we got back to our hut, we realized why the light bulbs were outside the huts—they were attracting bugs from all over the jungle. After seeing the stars for the first time in months, we fell asleep. The night got interesting at about 3:00am.The electricity had been shut off for the night and I awoke in the pitch-black hut to the sound of an animal rifling through those Koala Yummies Molly had been so excited about earlier. (Funny side note: Earlier that afternoon, Molly had reminded me to make sure I didn’t leave any food in the hut.) I tried to go back to sleep, but was too scared so I woke Molly up. We contemplated whether or not we should shine a flashlight on the cookies to see what animal was in our hut, but we decided we would rather not know and that we should just put our heads on the other side of the mattress and try to go back to sleep. I curled up into the tiniest ball possible and completely covered myself with my blanket so as to protect myself from anything that might crawl onto the mattress. We had been laying there for about 15 minutes when all of a sudden our entire hut shook and it sounded like some sort of large animal, perhaps a mountain lion or jaguar, was outside our hut trying to ram its way through the door. Now I was totally freaked out. I heard Molly ask me, “What the hell was that?!?! Was that a bird?” and I thought to myself, “That had to be one massive bird!” We didn’t hear anything walking around outside, and had no idea what it was. About ten minutes later it happened again. It was like attack of the jungle. We finally fell back asleep, and I literally didn’t move my human ball position all night.
The next morning we woke up to the calmness of morning in the jungle, and there were no animals to be seen. We could only hear the calls of wild gibbons in the distance. We were laying around talking about the night’s events, and we could see boats coming in. When the waves from the boats hit our hut, it shook just like it had the previous night. We figured out that the wild cat trying to get into our hut was really just the huts shifting from the movement of the waves. I guess we’re not used to the noises of floating structures. We never found out what type of animal was in the Koala Yummies.
Another side note: A few days after our jungle adventure, I noticed that my hip was hurting when my school bag hit against it so I looked to see what was wrong and I saw a bruise on my hip bone. I figured out that it was there because I had slept in the same position on that paper thin mattress all night, and there must have been too much pressure on my hip bone!
Pictures: Molly in our hut, pre attack of the jungle; The village the next morning; dinner with Kung
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