This morning before our next day of trekking we went to visit the local monk at the temple in the village and then spent an hour at the local School with some of the school kids.

The village was mainly a Catholic village, which was a little strange as 95% of Thailand are Buddhists, but in the village there was one monk who lived on his own in the temple. We took a walk up there with Sam our guide, who used to be a monk for a little while. When we got there the monk was eating so Sam showed us around telling us how the monk would sit and prey for about an hour, then get up and walk backwards and forwards (very slowly, trying not to stand on any ants, insects, etc as this brought bad karma!) along the same path preying, this way his legs don't hurt from sitting all the time as they prey for about 6-8 hours a day. After the monk had finished eating we all went into the temple and sat down on the floor, making sure of course, not to point our feet at the monk as it was disrespectful. Sam spoke with the monk a little and then the monk blessed us and gave us all two luck charms which he had blessed, one for luck and one for good health.

We then headed down to the school and just seemed to walk straight in to a class of 3 year olds and sat down with them and started making plastacine models for the children. We started off making animals then we ran out of things that we could make so started making anything. I made a camera and the girl loved it as it looked like the camera that I had with me. Christina and I were with the two most adorable children, whereas Julie and Damien seem to have a devil child who was throwing everything he had and they joked that they wanted to give theirs back, lol

Leaving the school to go back to grab our things and start the trek for the day, which was only a couple of hours to the next village, we kind of picked up a dog that followed us everywhere and even walked with us to the next village. The walk today was a lot easier and involved no jungle, just farmers paths through the coffee plantations. When we got to the village, in the evening, some of the local villagers performed a traditional dance, while Blackie (the dog we acquired along the way) stood guard outside our accommodation barking all night and keeping some of us awake.