Trekking! Cont'd....

I've decided that I'm never going to get around to writing a day-by-day account of my trekking experiences, since that's now a good week or so behind me, so I will write a list of highs and lows, which gives a pretty good idea of what was involved.

Highlights:
Beautiful scenery
Great company/fellow trekkers
Guide who is originally from one of the hill tribes (and spoke English!)
Bathing side by side with the villages in a stream, wearing a sarong for modesty
Nightly fire circles
RAFTING!!! On bamboo rafts!!! Awesome!
Learning a song in Thai complete with actions on aforementioned rafting, then looking back while singing to see our whole group participating from my own raft and the other two raft
Not seeing another trekking group during our journey
Finishing off the trip with a waterfall visit
Meeting up with the entire group for drinks that evening
Sleeping inside of the home of some of the Karen hilltribe locals, with them sleeping on the other side of the fire.

Lowlights:
Tiny inch-long skinny leeches that penetrated through footwear (!!!) Creepy...
15 minute stretches up steep inclines
Leaky roof in our sleeping quarters, which prompted us to have to move over to a local home (see last highlight)... all in all, it wasn't so bad, and it was kinda amusing.
Straw mats that were our mattresses - Night 1, I didn't have a very good night's sleep, but by Night 2, I slept like a baby despite the lack of padding

So, all in all, it was a good trip. Day 2, we trekked about 6-7 hours (2 hours of which included the damn leeches!), and Day 3, it was an hour of bamboo rafting, then 45 minutes of walking. I'm glad I signed up for this particular trip because everything seemed to be focused on low impact tourism, and the communities we passed through seemed interested in us, but the people didn't beg, persistently try to sell us their weavings and necklaces, nor offer us opium, which is fairly common on the more-touristed areas for trekking.