When myself and my travelling companion arrived in a tiny, isolated village in the jungle highlands close to the Burmese border after eight hours of trekking we were struggling to stand. However, after dumping our bags in the wooden shack that would serve as home, we headed off for a shower under a freezing waterfall. It left us wide awake, but at the mercy of a ferocious hunger. Our guide, Tony, and the village head, Mick, invited us back to the latter's hut for a bite to eat. With our stomach's groaning Tony, a wiry, animated guy of little more than 18, hunched down and began cooking up a storm on an open fire in the middle of the room. It was around this time that we started to wonder if there were any other form of refreshments on offer and from amid the bamboo, thatch and mud Mick produced a huge cooler full of beer; which we were welcome to get stuck into for the equivalent of a Euro a pop.
We needed little encouragement and before we knew it the little room was crammed with almost a dozen blokes of various ages giving us hungry eyes in the hope of a free beer. One of them arrived in full military uniform – it turned out he was a Thai soldier tasked with keeping an eye out for Burmese army incursions in the area. But the villagers didn't come empty handed – a mysterious bottle of rice whiskey was produced.
Sadly, Tony was no Ansley Harriot. He let the side down badly, and the thin brown soup he handed around was humming with clumps of chillies and reconstituted mystery meat:
“What is this bit Tony?”
“Is meat.”
“What type of meat?”
“Is from the animal.”
It wasn't the best. What was worse, was that it was so spicy that it stripped several layers from the inside of my mouth. We cheerfully gobbled up our portions nonetheless, and then sought consolation at the beer cooler. The two New Zealand girls we were traveling with made a brief appearance. They came into the hut, sniffed sceptically at what was our dinner-in-progress, and then set up a little travel stove and began cooking packets of noodles for themselves. The villagers were more than a little put out by this, so they tried to bring them into the fold by offering them a drink. Sadly, only one of the grumpy bints accepted and although it was a bit rough going down, her overly dramatic reaction left our hosts looking visibly upset – the little they had to offer obviously wasn't good enough.
The New Zealanders drifted off to bed at about 9 pm while the rest of us made a bid for the bottom of the bottle and the cooler. By 2 am we were all plastered and rather unwisely, being given lessons in the art of spearfishing by Mick, who was ruthlessly dispatching beer cans with a homemade spring-loaded harpoon gun from across the room.
He promised that the following day, he would demonstrate his prowess by catching us our dinner. However, myself and my companion Robbie had bigger game in mind. All the main huts were up on stilts and tied up underneath each of them with red rope (which denoted the fact that the group we were with were the 'red' branch of the Karon tribe), was a pig. Although the exact conversation is difficult to recall, I remember it going something like this:Robbie: “So when do you kill the pigs?”
Mick: “Something-in-unknown-Burmese/Thai/Karon-tribe-dialect.”
Tony: “Mick say on special occasion because pig expensive.”
Me: “How much?”
As it turned out, for 2,000 Baht which equated to around forty Euro or 20 Euro each, myself and my compatriot could purchase our first piece of livestock.
To be continued...
Rampage
team 
No! Don't do it! The poor piggy!