Tigers and Bears (but no lions)

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An interesting few days from Loas to Bangkok where we decided to go via Khao Yai National park in the north East of Thailand. Most of this time was spent travelling but as its not a major tourist route (most people go from Bangkok to Khao Yai rather than Loas) so we decided to negotiate local buses and trains. These are no worse than the tourist buses and much less expensive, we covered about a 1/3 of Thailand for under two pounds! Travelling from Nongkhai to Pak Chong to be precise, this gave us an opportunity to see another side to Thailand, experiencing areas where there were no other white people or tourist shops/informations centres/travel agents or even people who spoke English. Despite this these places where incredibly western and American! We had an overnight stay in where all the young Thais were out on the streets breakdancing, listening to American Hip-hop and wearing appropriate clothing, nothing like the Chaing Mai traditional thailand that's sold to you by the tourist board and interesting to see.

When we eventually reached Khao Yai we organised a pretty comprehensive tour with our guest house and away we went. Now for a bit of burb on the park (copied and pasted straight from wikipedia) - The park is the second largest in Thailand. It covers an area of 2,168 square kilometers, including evergreen forests and grasslands. Its altitude mostly ranges from 400 to 1000 m above sea level. There are 3,000 species of plants, 320 species of birds and 67 species of mammals, including Asiatic black bears, Asian elephants, gaur, tigers, gibbons, Indian sambar deer, Indian muntjac, dholes, and wild pigs. Its waterfalls include the 80 metre Haew Narok.

After spending a day trekking and exploring and climbing trees and also seeing plenty of animals, birds and plants (and very large bear claw marks imprinted into every tree!) with our very friendly and very informative guide we headed over to Haeo Suwat waterfall which is the waterfall used in the film the beach and were able to go swimming in the fall. Unfortunately as it was dry season the waterfall isnt as spectactular as in the film but still pretty special and was an interesting few days which broke up the long journey down south.

Further breaking up the journey was another day in Bangkok, as you should be aware you ALWAYS have to go to the capital before going anywhere in SE Asia although a day wandering rouund Khoasan road wasn't too bad and was nice to have another experience of Bangkok which is a very unique place. Like going via capitals we suffered from another of SE Asia's trademarks, random time keeping. Having been told to be on a bus at 7pm to the port to go to Ko Toa for a 7am ferry to bus actually arrived at our destination around 2am leaving a fun few hours first at a random wooden shack and then hanging around a travel agents office very tired and ratty, this wasn't ideal but heading to the sun sea and sand is so it wasn't too bad of a price to pay.

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Photos

"That" waterall
Trust me going under the waterfall hurts, alot!

On the prowl
A warning sign in the national park (although Tiger sightings are rare, theres only around 12 in this huge area)

Random monkey
These were everywhere

Comments

[Cozza]

...jus the goals n major incidents
bloody hell jimbo, these journel updates are practically individual novels...any chance of MOTD2esque highlights show?

[James Sharpe]

Mate I could write forever on this stuff, its as condensed as I can get! But just for you Went travelling - Had a few beers - looked around a bit - few more beers - met lots of people different nationalities - went home.

[Sister Sharpe]

Im enjoying the random monkey. x