In the morning we were picked up by our trek leader, Joe, a man who looked like a cross between a Mexican vaquero and Saddam Hussein. (If you think about it, that'll make a lot of sense.) After two more stops, the entire trek party was assembled in the back of the taxi: a French couple, an English couple and their friend, and us. Oh, and "taxi" in Thailand means a semi-covered pickup truck equipped with narrow benches running along the inside of the bed. After a couple quick stops for supplies and lunch, we hitched on our packs and started hiking into the jungle. Joe serenaded us with Elvis tunes and "Take Me Home Country Road" as the steep trail became slippery under the drizzling rain. Two hours later, we slip-skidded into the small hillstribe village of the Lahut people, where we would be spending the night.

Liz on the trail, with Joe up ahead.

So another thing about Joe we discovered is that once he enters the hillstribe villages, he apparently doesn't like to wear any clothes, because from the moment we arrived in the village until our return to civilization we didn't see him in anything more than his Calvin Klein boxer-briefs. So. A vaquero Saddam Hussein in skivvies. This was who we had entrusted with our safety in the jungle. Liz and I were also slightly creeped out by his repeated assertion that he loved foreign women "because they're so hairy," a statement he at one point followed with a joke involving a monk, a comb and a woman with copious pubic hair. Please don't ask.

But our fellow trekkers were fun, as were the girls we met in the Lahut village. We drew pictures together, wrote each others names in English and Thai, and one girl french-braided my hair. Any guilty (American guilt!) feelings I had about being a tourist attempting to have some kind of authentic experience by living for one night what the villagers live every day disappeared as I drew pictures and laughed with them. They reminded me of my younger sisters. We weren't Tourist and Tourist Attraction, just three girls getting to know each other as best we could.

After a night filled with scary howling creatures and mysterious shuffling under the thin bamboo floor of the hut, I kind of wished we were leaving by bamboo raft in the morning with the three English people, who had only signed up for a two-day trek. All of this was exacerbated by something possibly TMI: my period had started the night before. Sorry to mention it on this previously period-free blog, and sorry for using the term "TMI" on this previously vaguely-annoying-Internet-acronym-free blog, but I think it is an important part of understanding my jungle trek experience. Because bathrooms in the jungle? They are raised bowls with spots to put your feet on either side. The plumbing is buckets of questionable water and a plastic scoop, which you use to flush away what's in the bowl. The toilet paper is B.Y.O.T.P. and oh yeah, Liz and I forgot to bring any. I had a few tissues and we managed to take a couple wads from one of the English guys, who had brought a whole roll. Toilet paper and anything else is never flushed, but thrown away in a wastebasket, which in the jungle is often ant-filled. Not the kind of place you want to have to use every two to four hours, especially in the middle of the night full of strange howlings and shufflings.

How Joe likes to roll.

But it was too late to turn back. The raft was already floating down the river and Joe was ready to lead the French couple, Liz and me on to the next village, Karen, which is not pronounced like the name, but "KAH-ren." However, Liz and I referred to it as "Karen's place," as if Karen was some chick we knew who lived deep in the jungle. We were accompanied by a woman from the Lahut village, in whose room Joe had spent the night. It was a little weird.

By some stroke of luck, I was saved from another slippery hike in my unsuitable shoes by the French woman in the French couple, who seemed unable or unwilling to bend her knees like a normal person, which caused problems on the slick slopes. After ten minutes of walking, Joe decided she needed to take an elephant to the village (a perk of life in the jungle: elephant as transportation option) and since her boyfriend preferred to hike, I offered to go with her. Joe flagged down an elephant handler and we climbed on, Joe's girlfriend on the head and the handler hanging on to the back of the seat. The hour-long walk upriver was uneventful except for the moment about halfway through, when I felt an arm creep around my shoulder. Startled, I looked over at the French woman, wondering what she was doing, only to realize it was the handler, who began kneading my shoulder muscle. He smiled at me. "Thai massage?" he leered. "Um, no. I'm okay." The arm retreated.

Liz, Joe and the French boyfriend were already at the village by the time we arrived. "Karen's place kinda sucks," Liz said as we sat down to a lunch of bottomless bowls ofTop Ramen. "She's not much of a housekeeper." Bits of trash littered the ground and two dirty white Shih-tzus snuffled around on a table nearby. Village women sat at another table and ignored us, then tried to sell us junky jewelry, then resumed ignoring us when we refused. A guy about our age stared at Liz while singing "Wonderwall" by Oasis, humming every other line. There were no children anywhere. I started to feel a little bit sick. "Today is gonna be the day that hm hm-hm hm hm hm hm-hmm..."

It was only 1 PM. There was nothing planned until we left the village on our bamboo raft the next morning and I felt nauseous. Despite the dirty mats and moldy blankets, I lay down for a nap in the hut Karen had provided. My skin felt hot and too tight. My bones ached. I could see a spider the size of my hand creeping slowly across a wall beam. I was under a mosquito net, dirty and littered with leaves. I slept.

When I woke up, I felt a little better. It was late afternoon and shafts of sunlight sliced through the holes in the thatched roof. I pulled the mosquito net back and heard a commotion above me: a lizard darted down the side of the building and something, something, slithered and coiled around a roof beam directly over my head. I wandered outside. "I think there's a snake in the hut," I said calmly. Everyone jumped into action. Joe and his Calvin Kleins led the charge, with a wizened, stick-bearing old lady following quickly behind. A young guy with frizzy hair matted into almost-dreadlocks took aim at the roof with his slingshot. Everyone stood around shading their eyes, beginning to lose interest, until the old lady started yelping and beating the dry grass with her stick and there was the dead snake, harmless and nonpoisonous after all.

Searching for the snake.

Life at Karen's place went on. A dirty pig tied under a hut nosed through a pile of garbage. The cook smoked a cigarette and shot a rat with a slingshot, then grilled it over a charcoal fire -- fur, guts and all. Two puppies with crusty eyes played in the packed dirt at my feet. Dinner arrived, but I only ate a few bites before I had to lie down again. When I woke up, it was dark and I was shivering but hot. I wanted my mom. Instead, Liz came to my rescue, helping me gather up my toothbrush, face wash and flashlight for a trek to the bathroom. "I don't feel well," I told her, my stomach lurching. "I need to go outside." "Okay. I'll be right -- "

But I was already bent over outside. My barely-digested dinner splattered on the dry grass next to the hut. I cried a little, then felt better. "I'm sorry," I told Liz. "For what?" she said. Then she helped me brush my teeth and wash my face, got some stomach medication from the French couple and put a fresh bottle of water next to my sleeping mat. It was going to be a long night. But it would have been even longer if Liz hadn't been there.

I woke up the next morning and I realized I had survived what was probably one of the worst nights of my life. Feverish, nauseous and perioding, I had spent the night on a dirty mat under a moldy blanket, awake for hours on end because of my numerous naps during the day, forced to walk through the scary jungle night to the toilet with a flashlight that began to fail halfway there. It really doesn't get much worse than that. I felt optimistic about the day ahead.

This man is cooking a rat.

The bamboo raft had been constructed the day before. It sank slightly with the weight of the six bodies standing on it and the soles of my bare feet were underwater. Joe handed long poles to the French boyfriend and the Lahut girlfriend and we set off, Joe steering from the front with his own bamboo pole. I stood behind him, all our belongings wrapped in plastic and hanging from a tripod of bamboo set up between us. After dropping off the Lahut girlfriend in her village, I started to feel a bit nervous about the remaining ride. We had all heard Joe warning the French boyfriend that he'd have to be especially strong when steering the back of the raft; usually it took two men to maneuver the tail-end, making sure it remained straight. He told horror stories about rafts going out of control, wrapping around rocks or trees in the river and throwing everyone into the rushing water.

The problem was, the French boyfriend didn't look all that strong. Nor did he seem especially adept at handling the bamboo pole. "Can I use the other pole?" Liz asked, as we floated away from the Lahut village. "Mmm...you can help him," Joe replied. It was clear Liz's role was as assistant raft-rower, nothing more. We exchanged a shrug. Two hours on the raft lay ahead of us and at the moment, the water was placid, the tangled green wall of the jungle on either side. After awhile, Joe warned us we would be approaching some rapids and asked the French girlfriend and me to crouch down and hold onto the bamboo.

We could hear the sound of rushing water. The river pushed us to the left. "Right!" Joe yelled, and the raft dipped into a hollow, water rushing over the sides of the raft and soaking me up to the chest. "Left!" The back of the raft knocked into a boulder. I half-stood, trying to regain my balance. "Sit down, sit down!" Joe yelled at me. Everything below my neck was dripping wet as we passed the last boulder and returned to calm waters. Joe started singing a Thai folk song, his voice echoing against the rocky cliffs and tree trunks and hard blue sky.

Joe working on our raft.

Joe tugged at the hems of his boxer briefs, exposing even more skin. "Right!" he called lazily as we drifted dangerously close to a low-hanging branch. It barely scraped against me as we passed, but the raft was angled, the back coming too close to the branch to avoid it. I looked back to see the French girlfriend knocked off her feet and watched Liz get pushed off the raft completely. "Get back on!" Joe yelled, as if Liz had just jumped into the water for a leisurely swim and wasn't already trying to hoist herself back up. I watched in helpless horror as she struggled to keep up with the raft, tried to get on, slipped and finally pulled herself up. We could hear rapids up ahead. I was fairly certain we had a 50% chance of perishing.

Have you ever seen Apocalypse Now? ...Then perhaps you understand what this river ride felt like.

But we survived, just barely, and I couldn't have been happier to see the muddy trucks and potato chips and weird Speedo-clad European tourists in the small town where we stopped for lunch. I was ready for civilization. And a long, hot shower.