One thing that I think most of us push out of our minds when we are running in the jungle is the fact that we are in fact, running in the jungle. There are plenty of creepy-crawly things out here and while Thailand isn't terribly dangerous as far as the species are concerned, it doesn't mean that they aren't scary.
While our native members couldn't tell me exactly what sort of spider this is, they did say "not dangerous" which is good because it is scary enough without being poisonous. We saw quite a few of these on the Thursday run and it was extra spooky for the person who accidentally ran through one of their webs and they freaked out because they thought the spider was on their body for the rest of the run. The spider was not on their body :)
When you are trudging through untouched jungle like this though, things like spiders and snakes are just part of the process. In the entire time that I have been running with the Hash in Chiang Mai there has not been a single instance of anyone being harmed by wildlife. In fact, the only thing that has happened from any animal was a dog "nip" that I wouldn't even consider a bite. It barely even broke the skin and the dog was just alarmed because all of a sudden there were 20 people that he or she had never seen before that were all running through their land. I think we can forgive the pooch for doing what it just in its DNA to do. It was just protecting its home from a bunch of strange looking people running around.
Back in the safety of the circle we all got a big laugh out of the spider encounters and because we don't always travel as one big group because some people are faster than others, it was kind of funny to find out that almost everyone had seen the gigantic spider that was really near the trail. The Hares said that it was not intentional and they do not recall seeing the spider when they were setting the trail. I guess we'll just have to take their word for it but doing something like that does sound like something that a Hare would do.