Red ants for dessert

our 2 day trek from Tha Khaek began with a dusty saengthaw journey to a village where we were introduced to a class of about 15 pupils. It felt a little bit awkward as we were paraded in front of the class then expected to talk to the children...all we managed was to get them to count to 10 and then luckily the now named 'Juggler' came to the rescue with his rather peculiar performance with a crystal ball.
Following the introduction to the kids we made our way to the next village, stopping on the way to swim in a lagoon at the mouth of a cave, eat lots of freshly grilled fish, sticky rice and to finish with a lovely crunch on some red ants...which I passed up! George assures me that they didn't sting and tasted of vinegar...mmm, nice.
At the village we had a fantastic evening with a celebratory ceremony where we were more or less forced to down shots of the village rice wine, which I suitably brought back up early the next morning. We met a great little kid we think was called George. He was partly disabled and took a while to warm to us but once we'd fed him he soon livened up and enjoyed posing for photos wearing my sunglasses! Great kid.
Our trek group consisted of the appointed names: Juggler, Maturer, Regressor, Space Cadet, Lucky (top guide!) and Mo (worse guide ever)