Step 10

The Pukradueng adventure

Day 7

We woke up very early (and I had a freezing shower because there was no hot water !!) to go on our mountain climbing adventure up Pukradueng mountain. It was freezing cold when we made our way to the mountain ( 7°C) and we all stopped to buy hats and gloves, this is also where the strawberry hats where bought by the boys ! Then we gave our bigger bags to people to carry up for us. This is one of the most amazing and awful things I have ever seen, you pay 30 Baht (just under R10) per kilogram then they carry your bags up for you. They have very thick bamboo stick with the bags tied to the ends of the stick and a sponge taped around the middle to soften the weight on your shoulders. The men carry up to 70kg and the woman carry up to 50kg on each trip and they sometimes do 3 trips a day!! Then the walk started, the mountain is 1,288 km high but it’s a brutal and torturous 5km hike to the top. We spilt into 3 groups of climbers. Group 1 : who practically ran up the mountain, group 2: (my group) who took their  time getting up the mountain and group 3: who really took their time getting to the top. The 1^st group took a little under 3 hours to get to the top, we took just under 4 hours and the last group took just over 5 hours. All and all everybody just about died on the way to the top and we all had light backpacks. The whole way up my thoughts where stuck on the men and woman who had to carry our bags up this mountain to make a living. The trip to the top is something I will never ever forget! We had so much fun making videos, taking pictures with our flags, renaming the mountain Puke-a-dune, getting through cramps and Beto’s crazy running!! When we got to the top we got to relax and play card games while we wait for the rest of the people. Then it was a further 3 km walk to the camp, so a 8 km walk on our first day! When we got to the camp and sat down for dinner we all realised how cold it was on top of the mountain! The nights went down to 1°C and we all laughed when a girl talked to her parents in Finland and in that moment it was colder in THAILAND then it was FINLAND ! We then found out that after a 8 km walk and super cold weather there was no hotter water to shower with, we all decided that we just needed to be brave and just do it, we regretted the very moment we got under that water. We slept 9 in small rooms with mattresses on the floor, we slept in multiple pairs of clothing and hats and gloves and cuddled up for heat as we only had 1 thin blanket each.

Day 8

We got up at 6 and went to breakfast (with very painful bodies) and then we started our hike of one side of the mountaintop. We went to all the small waterfalls and rivers and took some amazing pictures! Then we came to an area where there was a pile of rocks with names and counties on them. We were then told that each year the exchange students have to go looking for rocks and then write their names and home countries on them and add them to the pile. I and Frederik then went looking for our rocks and he picked 1 up and found 2 smallish scorpions and a funny looking creature, I stepped back like a normal person but he decided it would be fun to irritate them and see what happens, we quickly attracted other exchange student’s attention. After a while everybody found their rocks and we made our pile and carried on with our walk. All and all we had a 14 km walk on our second day. After our walk we had free time to walk around and see the tiny stores on the mountain. At dinner we made balloons with our countries  flags on them and a message in your 1^st language. This is also when the famous Strawberry attacks started, the boys who bought strawberry hats would put them on and wait for the other to fall asleep and then jump on them and hit them with pillows screaming STRAWBERRY ATTACK !!

Day 9

We woke up at 4 am to walk 3 km to a cliff to see the sunrise, the belief is that if you watch the sunrise on the 30^th or 31^st of December you will have good luck for the next year. When we got there we found a place to sit between the hordes of people and had hot chocolate to help with the freezing weather. Then certain people fell asleep again while we waited for 2 hours to see the sun rise. After that we had a 3km walk back to the camp to have breakfast. Then the real day started! We all got bicycles to see the other half of the mountain top. We bicycled around to see many different cliff and had to wait at every 2^nd cliff for everybody to be together again, at one of the cliffs we had the wait very long for all the people and we fell asleep on the cliff just to all wake up with sunburnt faces!! We saw 6 cliffs and a lake and we really had fun on the 22 km bicycle ride! When we got back to the camp everybody was pretty much dead because of the last few days and we all had a relaxed dinner and a last ice cold shower

Day 10

We woke up at 5:30 to make our way down the mountain and we were told we had to be down the mountain by 15:00 otherwise we would not be in time to attend the New Year celebrations, we all laughed and thought it would never take us that long to get down the mountain. We were about 40 min into the walk when we figured out how hard it is to get down this steep mountain with narrow paths, people going both ways, painful bodies, knees that are killing u because of how steep it is and utter exhaustion of the past few days. The way down was not nearly as fun, everybody hardly talked and we just wanted to get off this damn mountain!! But no matter what Noemie, me and Frederik made the best of the walk and almost died laughing at jokes we were telling and we got happier the closer we got to the bottom.  We all got the bottom by 13:00 but our bags only arrived at 15:00. Then we left and made our way to the hotel. We arrived at the hotel at 21:00 after a good few hours of sleep in the Vans. We had dinner and then we were off to the new Year celebrations and we were told to be back at the Vans at 1 am. We found a place with lots of people and great music and danced for 2 hours; we had so much fun, laughed and just enjoyed night to the full! When we got to the hotel they told us we could stay up as late as we wanted as long as we kept it quite and woke up on time the next morning! In typical style we went to bed at 4 and ha to wake up at 7… it was very much worth it