I've just got back from a 3 day / 2 night home stay in a remote village. I think I have pretty much got over every fear I've ever had. Where to start.......

So we get a local bus 4 hours away in the mountains. It drops us off in the middle of no where and no one speaks English. There's no shops or restaurants, it's literally trees, a few huts and loads of pigs, cows and chickens. The village was a 5k walk but half way the monsoon got us, we tried to hide under some trees but got drenched through. This woman took pity on us and invited us into her hut. We played with her kids for ages and since we couldn't talk drew pictures of our house, family, pets etc... it was really nice. Eventually made it to our village, there must be maximum 50 people living there. Our hut was tiny and just had a blanket and a mozzy net, very uncomfortable and I got bitten by loads of ants. At night I couldn't sleep because it was so noisy, hundreds of frogs, crickets etc... eventually fell asleep only to be woken by loads of cockerels at about 5am, that set the dogs off then they started howling too! They said we could shower by the toilet but no one uses loo roll, they use their hand and water. I didn't fancy using the same bowl of water that people clean their bum with to wash my face so we washed in the river with everyone else. It was quite fun actually but pretty difficult to wash with everyone starting at you because your so white!! They loved my skin, everyone kept touching my arms and they all wanted to feel my nose (because its so big!).

We hiked 10k UPHILL IN THE BLISTERING HEAT!!! It took us hours because we had to stop so much. Half way up we ran out of water, I thought I was going to faint. I was lying flat out on my back thinking I was going to die and this woman invited us into her hut and made us lunch. It was pretty sick, cows intestine and sticky rice. I was so hungry and tired I ate it all :0S Haha

Anyway.... eventually made it to the top and wow it was so worth it. The views were amazing, I sat on a rock right on the very edge of the waterfall. It made me feel so proud of myself. About 20mins later these local kids started screaming at me to come back (turns out at 5pm they open the dam and let all the water out so I would have been washed away, my second near death experience!) We played with them for ages, they were so cute. Luckily on the way back a man gave us a lift on his bike. The next day we went to see another waterfall. I wanted to buy some bananas so gave a woman 50p, she gave me about 30!! I kept trying to give them back to her but she just handed me more, it was so funny I couldn't carry them. Laurianne and I gave her some more money and handed them out to people in the village (we made lots of friends by doing this). She gave me some sticky rice to eat with the banana, actioning that it was nice - I thought it was ok but there was black chunky bits in the rice, Laurianne had a look and turns out it was crickets. I actually heaved!!

Just before we left, the whole experience was topped off by them cooking the village dog. No joke, they killed it, spit roasted it and cooked it over a fire!! I thought no one would believe me so I took loads of pictures. Thank god we didn't stay the extra night or we would have had to eat it too! The whole experience was shocking but amazing.