The jungle park in Thailand
Trip Start
Jan 11, 2009
1
32
53
Trip End
Apr 12, 2009
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Pak Chong,
Thailand
Thursday, February 19, 2009
On the full day tour we stopped in several spots for bird-watching. The guide had a monoscope and an amazing talent for finding all sorts of birds from the distance of a football field through thick jungle. We saw a variety of lovely colorful birds including a few Great Hornbills which have a wingspan of 3 meters!! The hike was about 5km, which took several hours through thick jungle. We kept in step with the guide since there were king cobra's and wild elephants roaming around! We found several groups of white hand gibbons high up in the fig trees
movie 1 - gibbon money
. It's really quite rewarding to hike in the jungle and find monkeys in the wild. In the afternoon we drove around for hours, looking for wildlife at the side of the road; unfortunately we did not find elephants which would have been quite incredible but we did see a bear cat (rare and endangered) in a tree at sunset. The animal is like a giant jaguar, but has claws and coloring like a bear with the face of a raccoon and acts like a monkey (spends a lot a lot of time in trees and can hang upside down using its tail, and eat fruit off the tree). Yes, we're not kidding this animal really exists and we saw it do all the things we describe, but at dusk, so we don't have photos.Well, we've been in Thailand only a week and A2 has managed to pick up fleas, ticks, and stomach bugs. Not too bad for one week in Southeast Asia! We think the illness was from tea, so no more almost boiled water from guesthouses for A2. Thankfully it was just a 24 hour fever with stomach pain. A2 got just enough rest that we could go on the half day tour the next day, which did not involve hiking or other strenuous activities. The half day tour started off at a natural spring watering hole. We had a very refreshing swim which was A2's only source of "shower" in 3 days since there was no hot water back in the guesthouse. The spring was as lovely as B2 remembered, but a lot more crowded. Sadly, it also looks like the place has been taken over by the Thai mob, since we saw some kickback money given to thugs by our guide
movie 2 - bats
. I guess this kept our stuff from getting stolen as we were enjoying a dip, but it's quite a shame for people to "own" a natural landmark like that. En route to our next destination the tour guide found an Oriental Whip Snake in a bushy flowered plant. B2 was forced to hold it for a bit, not by the Thai mob but rather our insistent guide. We don't like doing these sort of things as it stresses the animal, but when someone hands you a snake its not like you can just drop it at your feet. Eventually the snake was put back on the flowers and went about its' day, slightly shaken. Our next stop was a Buddhist cave temple where the priests share their temple space with hundreds of bats. After this we drove to another cave for the most spectacular part of the tour. We stood at the base of a karst at sunset to watch 2 million bats pour out like a wild tornado river into the night. We have some video, so hopefully you can get a sense of what we saw. The bats come in a never ending stream, it takes an hour for all of them to leave the cave. The ribbon of bats winds through the sky, changing shape and moving further away, but always attached to the mouth of the cave by a weave of preceding bats. At the end of the mass-exodus we stood still in a farmer's field as the bats swooshed by us, missing us by inches.
Overall we're happy to be leaving Thailand, it's just not as fun as B2 remembers. It was a useful stop since A2's camera got fixed and Bangkok is one of those crazy places worth seeing at least once (to be grateful that you don't live there). However, travel here is not easy. It's hectic, dusty, polluted, ugly, and rife with scams.
