What time is lunch?
It was only at the end of that first day that I realised how preoccupied some of my fellow trekkers were with time
Halfway up a very steep, slippery hill in the north Thai jungle, someone asked our guide, "What time is lunch?" He replied in broken English that it would be in about an hour, as we trekked past a thunderous waterfall.
It was then that I started to wonder what the time was. Or in fact what day it was. On a three-day trek through the Thai jungle, time didn't really seem to matter any more. I was told that it became light around 5.30am and sunset was around 6.30pm. So for three days we rose with the sun and only stayed awake for a couple of hours past sunset.
It was only at the end of that first day that I realised how preoccupied some of my fellow trekkers were with time.
"Oh my goodness," Camille, a 20-year-old French student exclaimed round the dinner table, "it's only 8.30pm, it feels like midnight".
When you rise with the sun, what is the harm in sleeping at sunset? In the middle of nowhere, with no real concept of time, no roads, no electricity, communication or running water, does it really matter if you go to sleep at an earlier hour than you normally would in the modern, excessively structured world?
In the structured world you need to wake at a certain time, go to work at a certain time, eat meals at a certain time, make and keep appointments at various times, keep a check on the clock and calendar, listen to alarms reminding you of what you've forgotten, and go to bed at a certain time to be rested enough to start the whole structured rigmarole again.
I asked my fellow trekkers why it mattered what the time was, they replied so they "knew what time to go to bed".
"Why don't you go to bed when you're tired,"I asked them, only to be met with bemused and confused faces.
I decided to undertake a small social project for myself for the next couple of days — eat, sleep and wake up when I was hungry, tired and fully rested. After all, is there really any need for a Gregorian calendar in the middle of the jungle? We weren't on a schedule, we didn't have to meet a deadline and we certainly weren't on the way to the airport to catch a flight.
The next morning as I sipped black tea and ate boiled eggs laid by the hens that were clucking around our feet, I saw the head of the household return from the river having caught a fish for breakfast.
Simple life
With no children and living in an isolated house (not in a village setting) the family probably had no idea what day it was. And why would they need to know? Their simple life consisted of catching and eating their own food, renting out part of their house to generate a small income to passing trekkers from the West, rising with the sun and sleeping with the sunset.
While they had plumbed in a toilet, sink and shower attachment, the water and its pressure were provided solely by the adjacent waterfall. It was quite heartening to wash my hands with probably some of the freshest water I've ever been in contact with — leeches, silt and leaves coming down the tap, and all.
Even though the plumbing may not have been completely modern, I did spot the lady of the house heading towards the shower with a bottle of Dove shampoo — proof that the small income they were generating did give them some modern perks at least.
What I noted after my little experiment was quite interesting. Sleeping when you're tired, waking with the cockerel, cock-a-doodle-dooing, eating when you're hungry and drinking when you're thirsty put my body in a completely different rhythm. A more natural rhythm, out of the modern world and into the rural world of the Thai people.
"When's lunch?" someone asked the next day, I have no idea at what time. "I'm starving."
