Evening and Morning at a Karen village

Just before it began to grow dark, we arrived at a small Karen village where we spent the night. We spent the first part of the evening in the 'kitchen' (a small hut devoted to food preparation) socializing with our trek leaders, some of the villagers, and the other four tourists who were on the trek with us. After we ate the delicious Thai dinner, we spent hours sitting around the night fire entertained by our trek leaders' jokes and stories, as well as the local peoples' string games and music. Although I was a bit leery about the whole idea of a trek that involved visiting hillside tribes people, since I thought it might be terribly intrusive, insensitive, and consumeristic in that neo-colonial sort of way, I felt like the tourists, trek leaders, and villagers all seemed to enjoy connecting with each other. I like to think that we all learned something from the others.