Why did the wild elephant cross the road?
Trip Start
May 06, 2007
1
117
166
Trip End
Jul 24, 2008
Pak Chong,
Thailand
Thursday, February 7, 2008
The next morning 3 Germans, 2 Dutch, 1 Swede, 1 Aussie, and I climbed into our songthaew (pronounced song-tao), a pick-up truck with two rows of padded benches in the truck bed covered by an awning, along with our guide Lek and headed off to the jungle. Once we entered the park, we spent some time driving around looking for animals. As the park covers an area of over 2000 square kilometers we obviously couldn't cover the whole thing on foot. During this section of our drive, we spotted a hornbill, a couple of different types of deer, and a family of gibbons (a monkey-like animal that walks on 2 legs instead of 4).
After a nice 3 hour hike in the park, including spotting a potentially fake crocodile that Lek swore was real) we went swimming in the waterfall that was used in filming the movie The Beach (although this National Park is a few hours drive from the closest beach). The water was really cold, but it was a welcome break from the hot day. I managed to cut my toe on a rock while coming out of the water, but thankfully two of the Germans in the group are med students and they helped with my first aid. We wasted some time watching the sunset over a grassy field because the best time to possibly see an elephant is at dusk.
We drove around for about 45 minutes waiting for an elephant to appear, meanwhile seeing a slew of monkeys waiting by the side of the road hoping to be fed from the cars. Feeding the monkeys is just one way to help kill them since it causes them to lose their ability to find food on their own. When the rainy season comes, there aren't nearly as many Thai or foreign tourists and many of the monkeys die of starvation. Lek told us that the worst offenders are the Thais who come up from Bangkok for the weekend, but even after hearing how bad it is for the monkeys one of the German girls in our group still proceeded to feed them. Gotta love the egocentricity of some people.
After seeing the monkeys we were all chatting away and not really paying attention to anything around us when the car slowed down and Lek interrupted us to point out an elephant on the side of the road. Obviously our attention turned to the relatively young (Lek guessed about 20 years old), male (he was a bit excited at first) elephant that was walking through the brush on the edge of the road. Eventually about 6 trucks full of tour groups had gathered around to watch the elephant. Eventually the cars cleared a path so the elephant could cross the road and head into the forest. We were all quite excited that we actually got to see a wild elephant. There are about 200 of them in the park, but they typically live in the depths of the forest and avoid humans.
When we returned to the guesthouse and sat down for dinner, a woman from the restaurant/bar down the street came by and told us that there would be a Thai boxing exhibition that evening. After eating we decided to go check it out. First up was an old American guy versus a professional Thai boxer. Obviously the Thai boxer was not fighting full out which most likely would have killed the America, instead only indicating where he would normally punch or kick his opponent. After quite a bit of prodding from us and some encouraging words in his native tongue from a random Swedish man who happened to be there, Martin decided to give it a try. Even though the professional won no problem, Martin actually put up a bit more of a fight than the old guy and was a lot more fun to watch.
This whole day was a lot of fun - hands down my best day in Thailand. I lucked out with a great group of people for the tour group. I thought about staying another day to go on the half-day tour that's also offered by the guesthouse, but decided that I didn't really care about seeing hundreds of bats (the highlight of the tour) and would instead joined the two German girls traveling to Sukhothai the next morning. Since we had to get up very early to catch our bus we were lucky enough to witness the monks walking down the road collecting their daily supply of food. Thai Buddhist monks are only allowed to eat the food donated by the local people (or food bought from money they donate) so early each morning they walk around town collecting food from the townspeople. Lek's sister had a pot of food waiting for them and scooped out generous helpings of rice and other goodies, afterward bending down for a blessing from the monks. It was a really neat ritual to be able to witness and almost made it worth waking up extra early only to miss the bus. Lek had told us that we should be ready to leave the guesthouse at 7:30am to catch an 8am bus, but actually the bus left at 7:30 so we had a three hour wait for the next bus. Oh well.
