XVI. Trapped in the Spotlight, Part One

When the Thai government declared the jungle a national park, they cut a two-lane road directly across the middle, not taking into account that it might interfere with the animals’ feeding routes. Tom depended on this very oversight to stay in business.

We carried a full load of travelers in the pickup. Tom drove as I stood on the back fender, holding onto a railing with one hand and a spotlight with the other. It was our nightly routine – crawling down the road, spotlighting for animals, and hoping for the best. I explained the fine art for the travelers, “Comb each and every tree. Slowly up… and slowly down… The whole tree, then move on to the next. The rest of you watch for pairs of glowing dots. That’s their eyes reflecting the light. When you see any, pound on the side of the truck and Tom will stop.”

I demonstrated a couple of passes, then somebody spotted eyes high up in a tree. Everyone pounded on the truck. Tom stopped as I shone the light on the animal, figuring it was probably a civet. I’d seen at least half a dozen civets every night for months. The first time, it was exciting.

“Oh! What could it be…?” I wondered to the travelers. I got out the binoculars, “Ohhhhhh! I thiiiink it’s a… Yes, I do believe… it’s a civet! Yup, I’m sure. It’s a civet. Here take a look, it’s a beauty.”

“Ooh, a civet!”

“What’s a civet?”

I explained how a civet was like a jungle cat (“Jungle cat!”) but actually related to the mongoose (“Mongoose!”), as everyone took turns with the binoculars. Everyone except Davide, yet another in a long, long line of disaffected Frenchmen who seemed to be drawn to our tour for reasons of their own. He sat in the truck-bed and just watched me, smiling, his head ever so slightly nodding.

When everyone had enough of the civet lying high up on his branch yawning, I pounded on the truck and Tom drove on. I offered the spotlight to the travelers. Davide immediately volunteered. I sat down and watched for glowing dots with the others. He swung the spotlight beam up to the sky, paused on a low cloud, then swooped down to the ground. What was he doing? The beam then arched over the truck and down to the road on the other side. I got up to correct him.

“Yes, yes, I know. Each tree. Up and down, up and down”

I sat back down. He methodically combed one tree, then started swinging the light around again. Again, I corrected him.

“I understand what you want, but this is better,” he whispered, “Watch their heads.”

Every head on the truck, in unison, followed the beam wherever he aimed it. The heads went up, they went down, they went round and round. I had to admit, it was amusing, but I was the Jungle Guide. I had to be serious. As I snatched the light from his hand, somebody pounded hard on the truck. Everybody stood up and pointed straight ahead. Bull Elephants, three abreast, taking up the entire road, were walking straight towards us.

To be continued…

XV. Thai Lessons

“Khun Philip, kin cow!”

Ah, the call to breakfast. I came running. Yai, tiny, wiry ancient matriarch of the Jungle Adventure Tour family, greeted me at the door with a sweet smile, her gums stained bright, bloody, betel-nut red. She said something to Maow and they both chuckled.

“What did she say?”

“She say you now understand as much Thai as the dog.”

It was true. After seven weeks of living in Thailand, the only Thai I knew was food related.

Yai sniffed at me and pointed to the washing area, an open tank of water with a hand-bucket, surrounded by a chest-high wall for modesty. As I left to bathe, she said something else to Maow and chuckled. I didn’t ask, she might have said that I smelled like him too.

I didn’t think I smelled that bad. I just hadn’t washed the night before. In the eyes of the family, though, if I didn’t wash at least twice a day, I was just another filthy foreigner. Maow once told me that they could always smell farang coming. She thought it was because we used toilet paper instead of water. I thought it absurd at the time, but once I made the switch, I could see what she meant. Toilet paper just didn’t seem as thorough anymore.

I sloshed the cold water from the tank over my body and dried myself off with a sarong. Once properly attired (my clothes had to be fresh and clean as well, even though I’d be wading through jungle muck within the hour), Yai fed me the usual breakfast ─ whatever spicy meat concoction was leftover from the night before, mixed with rice porridge. Occasionally, I craved a western breakfast and would have been happy to make myself some eggs, but Yai wouldn’t let me in her kitchen. She never let anyone, not even Maow, her eldest daughter, into her kitchen without supervision.

One night, the entire family went out to some local Buddhist ceremony. I was invited and ordinarily would have loved to go, but it was a rare opportunity to stay home alone and relish the solitude. I made a little something to eat, some fried rice and, although I had never used a wok before, I had seen it done enough times to figure it out.

After cooking a reasonable approximation of Yai’s fried rice, albeit a tad heavy on the fish sauce, I cleaned up. I made sure to do a thorough job. Although Yai never explicitly said I couldn’t use her kitchen, I knew I was transgressing. I was careful to leave the kitchen looking as though I never set foot in it.

The next morning, I got no breakfast call. Wondering what happened, I tiptoed into the kitchen, where Yai, looking angry and holding a meat cleaver, was discussing something with Maow. Yai saw me and zeroed in. Her head came up to about my chest, but she scared me, talking fast, harsh-sounding Thai, and waving her meat cleaver every which way. Even if I could understand her, my attention was focused solely on the cleaver. I felt her resolve was weakening, she lowered the cleaver and the slightest hint of a smile came creeping in. She must have felt it too; she quickly finished her tirade with a derisive, snorted “Hmph!” and left the kitchen.

“What’d she say?” I asked Maow.

“She say, ‘Your fish have no tail.’”

“Huh?”

“It’s old saying. ‘Fish must have head, must have tail.’ She always tell us when we’re kids.”

“What does it mean?”

“It mean I think maybe you don’t cook anymore, okay?”

XIV. Rumble in the Jungle, Part Two

I kept my hand raised, holding the girls in check, as I waited for another sound. I knew there was something out there in the bush. I just didn’t know what it might be.


On a trek earlier in the week, during a lunch break while the travelers were relaxing, I decided to do a little exploring on my own. I went down a trail I had never been before. As a jungle guide, I would warn the travelers from going off into the jungle alone. There were too many opportunities for something to go wrong, for a person to get hurt. To have a buddy with you was just common sense. Being The Jungle Guide, of course, I was immune from such common sense.

One side of the trail dropped off sharply into a deep ravine. I couldn’t tell how deep, the bush was too thick. I looked over the edge, trying to get some sense of it, when I heard a crunch. It was a slight sound and far off. It was probably a falling branch, but it just might have been an animal. I decided to wait around and see.

There was another crunch. This time it was closer. Then another. And then more. It wasn’t falling branches. The sounds multiplied, crunching louder, crunching closer. The air filled with the reek of animal. My heart started racing, blood pounding in my ears. For all I knew, it could have been a herd of elephants. I backed away from the edge and crouched down behind a tree. If it was a herd of elephants, and they suddenly found me in the middle of nowhere, they could startle, and God knows what they might do.

Hundreds of crunches spread throughout the ravine, just below the ridge. I was surrounded by the sounds. Then, up over the rim they came: eighty, ninety, maybe a hundred monkeys ─ macaques ─ chattering, running, jumping, and tumbling. I held my breath and stayed absolutely still. I didn’t want to scare them off. In the midst of all the ruckus, I sensed something next to me. I turned slowly and looked down. It was a fuzzy, wide-eyed, baby macaque, standing stock-still, staring up at me. He didn’t seem frightened or confused. He just seemed curious. I held out my hand like I was offering him food. He came up and sniffed. I opened my hand. He jumped back, and then slowly returned. He poked at my palm for a little while and then he climbed on and crawled up my arm. I slowly stood up. He sat on my shoulder and looked around as if surveying his realm. After he had enough of that, he climbed around the back of my neck to my other shoulder. I extended my arm out and he crawled to my other hand, lounging in my palm.

I heard a growl and it was then that I saw his mother. Macaques are not large animals, but Mom was huge. Her chest was puffed out and her lips were curled back, revealing two very sharp fangs. I slowly backed away, gently lowering her baby to the ground, gibbering sounds that I thought might soothe an angry monkey, but she wasn’t buying it. Once Mom saw he was safe, she came tearing after me. I turned and ran, but she was too fast. She leaped onto my calf and took a bite. I fell to the ground, yelling and kicking wildly, trying to get her off. I managed to shake her loose, then I jumped up and ran away. After about a half a kilometer or so, I looked back for the first time, expecting hundreds of angry macaques coming after me. They were long gone, so I stopped to check my calf. It wasn’t a deep wound really, just a graze. I rinsed it off at a nearby stream and made a mental note to buy some anti-biotic cream. I also thought it a good idea to bring along somebody on my next jaunt, if for nothing else but to remind me not to play with the animals.


Back on the trail with the Danes, my ears listening for any sound, my eyes searching for any movement, my nostrils flared open for any scent, my safari hat cocked at a rakish angle. We waited…

Nothing. We moved on, maybe ten steps, then Tcht! Alright, I thought, there was definitely some animal out there and it could be anything. We would wait as long as we had to. Then, out of nowhere, Hehehe!

What was the hell was that? It seemed to be coming from behind me. Again, Hehehe!

I turned around very slowly to find… the Danish girls. Their hands were over their mouths, barely restraining themselves from giggling. “What’s so funny?” I asked.

“You stop every time we throw away a banana peel, then you sniff around like a… a mouse. Here, look,” one of the girls threw a peel off into the bush, Tcht!

They all burst out laughing. I took off my hat. It just didn’t seem to fit right anymore.

XIII. Rumble in the Jungle, Part One

If my first three weeks in the Thai jungle taught me one thing, it was this: I was not prepared, mentally or emotionally, to be a guide. There was nothing I could really do about that, and while it’s never stopped me from doing anything before (and it certainly wasn’t going to stop me now), I figured the least I could do was be better equipped.

I combed the local markets, piecing together odds and ends for a survival kit: bandages, medicine for sunstroke, salt tablets, anti-biotic cream, anything that might come in handy, at a reasonable price (the Jungle Adventure Tour Company did not share my sense of responsibility, or expenses, in these matters). Once I had the essentials, I shopped for something to complete my Look, something to make up for my utter lack of experience and competence, something that said, “I’m not just another backpacker who’s taking a job away from the locals, I’m a Jungle Guide.”

The first thing I found was a machete, but I couldn’t quite work out how to hang it from my belt and walk without cutting chunks out of my leg. I searched for something a little safer; I wanted to cultivate a certain aura of danger without actually hurting myself. Eventually I found the perfect accessory: a classic Clark Gable Mogambo African Safari hat with the brim snapped up on one side. I tried it on and instantly became the Great White Hunter. The only things missing were the elephant gun and the team of porters, but I couldn’t afford them.

The morning after my purchase, I led a trek out in the jungle, proudly, no, shamelessly wearing my hat, forgetting the survival kit back at the compound. I swaggered down the trail, leading a tour package of Danish girls who put their young, nubile lives into my now oh-so-capable hands.

After about an hour on the trail, I heard a sound Tcht! off in the bush. I stopped dead in my tracks and held up my hand, the signal for the group to stop and be quiet. Then I explained to the girls that raising my hand was the signal to stop and be quiet. I wondered if the noise could be an animal. I looked, I listened, we waited…

Nothing. I lowered my hand. We moved on. A few minutes later, another Tcht! I stopped, my hand raised. What was out there? Again I looked. I listened. I sniffed for the scent of animals. After only a few weeks of being in the jungle, I noticed that all my senses were becoming more acute, alive, sharper than ever before. I could feel the jungle. I was the jungle.

The girls were getting antsy and chattery, but I just knew there was something out there. I whispered back to them, “Whatever you do, stay close and do not, I repeat, do not pick up any babies.”

“Babies? What are you talking about?” one of them asked.

“Ssh!” it wasn’t the time for questions.

To be continued…