Khao Yai National Park, Thailand

  Pak Chong, Thailand
Saturday, January 10, 2009

 After four days too many, we finally got out of Bangkok.  Most people go north to Chiang Mai, which is a town (really it's a city of over 200,000) up in the mountains in the northwest that is famous for its trekking and indigenous hill tribes.  We heard many mixed things about it and the fact that it puts you much further away from Laos led us to opt out of Chiang Mai.  We decided instead to head northeast, where there is a mostly straight path to Laos, with buses and trains the whole way.  We found a national park in our guidebook called Khao Yai, which is over 4000 sq. km of mountains and forest.  It is known for its diversity of wildlife and 250-300 elephants that roam freely.  We hopped on a bus where we were the only falang (white people) and took it three hours to the nearest town, Pak Chong. 
 
We found a guesthouse outside the park that was quite cheap and did full package tours into the park.  It was called Greenleaf Guesthouse.  We arranged it from Bangkok and they picked us up from Pak Chong, about 20 mins way.  The accomodations were modest, but fine for 6 dollars.  We had dinner and rested up for our big trek the next day.
 
It was freezing cold when we woke up and we had to wear all the clothes we had with sleeves.  We piled into the back of a covered pickup truck with four Germans and two French girls and they drove us to the park.  Immediately upon entering, they stopped at a turnoff so we could take pictures of these macaques, which are kind of like mini baboons, on the side of the road, at the edge of the trees.

Told ya they line the roads

They were so cute and weird looking at the same time.  The adults look like they're wearing Ziggy Stardust eyeliner and makeup.

Papa monkey

You could get quite close to them because they were used to being fed by people (discouraged but not condemned).  Of all primates, they probably resemble humans the least, until you look at their hands.  They look just like ours. It's creepy.  Then we proceeded down the road, which was nicely paved all the way through, stopping every few minutes for something the driver or spotter were able to somehow see off in the trees.  The first thing we saw was a gibbons about half a km away in the trees.

Gibbons

The guides set up a telescope on a tripod for viewing, but our new camera was able to accomplish the same zoom- and takes pictures.  It was really cool watching him swing through the trees.  They have really long arms for this and we got some great pictures.  Then we saw more gibbons, both white and black, sharing a tree branch- a really encouraging sight for race relations and maybe even a new ad slogan for racial tolerance:  "Tolerance- so easy a monkey can do it."  I don't know.

Mixed gibbons

 
We then parked the truck and started on a hike in the woods on a lightly trodden trail.  The big hope on this mission was to see wild elephants, which only happens a small percentage of the time.  It started out cold but soon warmed up- it's the rainforest. Along the hike we saw more gibbons, a tree sloth, great hornbills (massive birds with a huge horned bill) some tree lizards

Lizard

, but no elephants- yet...  along the way, we saw lots of evidence of elephants being there recently- freshly trampled vegetation and fresh scat (still warm), namely.  Then we started to hear noises in the distance, like a repetitive cracking.  This is telltale of elephants bowling over land through trees.  We follwed the noises and then found what was likely their trampled path.  We then found some scat the flies hadn't even found yet- we were hot on their trail.  And then we could see rustling treetops about 30-40 meters away.  We pursued slowly and cautiously, quiet so as not to alert the elephants.  At this point, our guide whispered, "I'm going to go up there and see.  If I yell 'Run!', run back to the big tree we had lunch at."  That's when we remembered that these are gigantic wild beasts that aren't used to human contact.  They can be aggressive and territorial, especially when protecticting the pack.  He took one of the German guy's cameras up there and was gone about ten minutes.  He came back with a video of the last elephant in the group taken through some trees from about fifteen feet away.  He spooked them and they got a little aggro, so he came back and decided we should leave.  It was still exhilarating to be that close to wild elephants though.
After the hike, we stopped off at the Haew Suwat Waterfall and spent some time relaxing there.

Haew Suwat Waterfall

Waterfall, aka Debbie's shower for the day

 
The next day, we scheduled a half day tour that didn't start till the afternoon.  We were trying to decide what to do till 3 o'clock and then the lady that ran the guesthouse, Mrs. Nin, asked us if we would have any interest in joining her across the street at the elementary school in serving food to the school children on what was kind of an ice cream social day.  We decided it could be fun.  It was.  When we got there, all the kids were performing these class song and dance numbers that were really cute.

Cute kids - they love the ice cream

When they finished up, these two strange white people scooped them ice cream cones.  They ate reluctantly.  One cone after the next.  Then a group of teenagers that had come on a tour bus, all wearing blue shirts that said, "Let's we inspire you," began to congregate near us.  They were taking pictures of me and Debbie from about 20 feet away.  Then one came up and asked where we from.  We said America.  They got super excited and asked if we could pose with them in pictures.  They were from Bangkok.  This is actually not the first time this has happened.  The first time was on the beach in Bali- these teenagers from Borneo really wanted to be in pictures with us.  It's a really weird experience.
 
We then went by bus ( big pickup truck with covered bench seating) down the road to an elephant camp, where you can ride an elephant around a circuit trail with the trainer for about forty minutes for a few bucks each.  Our elephant was Tom-kun, a 55 year old Thailand native.  Our mahout (trainer) was a Thai David Crosby from Crosby, Stills, and Nash.  He wore all red, including his beret.  We walked through the river and when we came out, our trainer got off and put us in the driver's seat on the neck and took pictures.  

Riding our 1st elephant

He barked commands, which the elephant followed, all the while chatting with him.  It was a really cool experience.  We fed Tom-kun bananas at the end as a thank you and he smiled for us.
 
The afternoon/evening tour was centered around a bat cave, which we had heard so much about.  Every evening at sunset every day, over 2 million bats pour out of a cave up on a mountainside to go out and feed.  It lasts for about thirty minutes and is incredible.  We walked out into this massive corn and other crops field and got into position for viewing.  While we waited, several hawks circled waiting on some dinner for themselves.  Then it began, only a couple at a time.  Then more came.  Then more, until it was a steady river of bats flowing out of this cave.  They would wind and change direction, like a ribbon in a breeze in slow motion.  When they flew overheard, you could hear their wings flapping. We furiously snapped pictures thinking it would end any second.  It didn't.  It lasted at this rate for half an hour.  To top it all off, it was a full moon that night, and there was still daylight and blue sky. 

Bats in the full moon

Watching two million bats flying past a full moon was by far one of the most amazing natural things we had ever seen.  We got some great video and pictures.  Check out the video.

Bat video

 
We went back to the lodge and had dinner and packed up our things to board a night train north to the Laos border that Mrs. Nin had arranged for us.  The night train was hell, but we'll leave it at that.

Full moon