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Welcome to Kao Yai
Like driving into Jurassic Park A new day, a new adventure. That's life on the road. To this point at least. I guess when it ceases to be an adventure, you're no longer on the road at all. At that point you've settled allowing adventure to give way to routine. Well, this has not happened yet. With our first full week of teaching under our belt, a few of us spirited teachers decided to open the pages of our Lonely Planets and seek out a weekend activity worthy of fullfilling our celebratory desires. Thank god I opened up to good old page 448, a page containing a brief but juicy description of Thailand's world famous Kao Yai National Park.
If you've ever seen the movie The Beach (also a book) staring Leonardo DiCaprio about a group of young backpackers in Thailand who discover a hidden paradise and go nuts all over the place for 90 minutes, then you have seen some of the world's most beautiful scenery compliments of Kao Yai, where the movie was filmed.
The park is about 2500 sq/km of mountains, rainforest, caves, waterfalls, rivers, grassland. You name it, it's got it. It's basically the Yellow Stone of Thailand. A
Hitch hiking
These nice Thais took a chance on some lost "Farang" group of ten of us, from the original TEFL teaching program, who were all stationed approximately the same distance from the park, decided to decend on this World Heritage site for a weekend of camping, hiking and whatever else we could dig up.
Saturday morning, 7am: We had planned on leaving as early as possible in order to catch the 7:15 train to Pak Chong, the jumpoff point for Kao Yai. However, we decided to go to a night club the night before with some local Thais that we had met during the week. The night was great fun and allowed us VIP entry into the real Thai night scene but it wasn't the best preperation for a 6:30 planned wakeup. Luckily all the other teachers who were to meet up with us in Pak Chong also had late nights, so we awoke to the sound of multiple text messages informing us of alcohol related delays. Needless to say, Kristin and I let out a sigh of relief and dozed off for a few more hours. We wound up taking a Bus a little later in the morning, which proved to be much faster than the train anyway. We
pickd up a bottle of Sang Som (Thai Rum) at the nearby 7/11, and I packed it properly next to the First Aid kit I had so Boy-Scoutishly remembered. We were set. We flagged down an open air bus which took us right to the green gates of Kao Yai. It did feel a little like we were entering Jurassic Park.
I'm still not sure how we convinced the gaurds at the front gate to let us in at the Thai price of 40 baht instead of the foreigner price of 400. I guess we all looked Thai in that light. When we got in we were confronted with a long road and a sign that indicated the visitor's center was a mere 14 kms down the road. I used the word mere before my British compadre informed me what a km was in miles (roughly .7 miles to a km). Suprisingly, Kao Yai is the only place in Thailand where you aren't harrassed by a thousand taxi cab drivers vying for your 20 cents. We started walking down the road with our thumbs out, hoping that was the international sign for "ride please" and not some Thai insult.
Luckily it was the former and we were picked up by a nice group of young professionals from Bangkok.
As per usual when mingling with local Thais, we answered the same series of rediculously worded background questions. As soon as that well dried up, we went on to asking them how to say things in Thai. Kristin as been keeping a nice journal of this sort of conversation stuff. I prefer to teach the entire country English. After a few photographs with some pretty backdrops, they dropped us off at the visitor's center. There we got maps of the park Of course the map was completely in Thai so it was best used later on as kindeling for our fire. We were pointed in the direction of a campground where we could rent 4 and 8 person tents for relitively cheap. There were also air con bungalow's available but i insisted on the tent experience. It was a good decision.
From the visitor's center we walked 10 km to the camp ground. It was a long and hot trek but we maintained vigilance of our surroundings and were able to spot some exotic birds, deer, and even a
few baboons daring enough to cross the road jst ahead of us. The deer found in the Thai jungle cannot be compared to the NY deer. These looked more like moose. Oh yeah, and they bark, much like a dog left outside at night. Very strange.
We arrived at our campsite and immediately rented the most ant infested tent the park rangers could find for us. After a brief stint of rolling on the ground (I assumed the covered-in -red-ant procedure was a lot like the on-fire procedure, 'stop drop and roll') I exchanged the infested tent for a shiny new 8 person monolith of a tent. Setting the great beast up was a minor excersise in advanced structural engineering, which culminated with me stepping on my brand new perscription sunglasses. This led to a brief hiadus in which I vented some frustration on a few unlucky tent poles. Eventually the tent was set up as fond memories of Boy Scout outings past flooded my mind. Ahh, good times indeed.
Almost as soon as the tent was finally up, the rest of the group arrived. "Sorry guys, we already set up the tent." By now the sun was
assuming its final position onthe visable horizon and we were all famished beyond comprehension. "What shall we have tonight Steven?" "Hmm, how 'bout Thai?" We headed over to the small outdoor restaurant setup within the camp grounds and pigged out on some savory curries, fried basil chicken, pork and prawns and thick noodles quick fried with veggies. Load up on the chillies and lime!
We made a quick stop at the on-site market and picked up a few dozen candles, some mosquito-be-gone sticks and two small pales, in which we were allowed to build small coal fires. Upon arriving back at our camp we unfurled some straw mats and laid back just in time to catch the evenings first guest star appearences. I, of course, am refering to those shimmering dots in the sky, not those of the screen.
Dark set in quickly and soon we were lighting candles and planting them around our area in an almost ritualistic fasion. If only we had had an Ouija Board. But I could already see our future, as well as a fresh bottle of Sang Som (remember, Rum) being pulled from Emma's backpack. A full bottle of Pepsi brought up
the rear and pretty soon we were engrossed in a game that involved passing the bottle in a circle and toasting whatever came to mind. No losers, only winners. As we did this, Jeff and I worked diligently to light our coal fire. Let me just say, for something that burns 24/7 all over the world and provides energy for billions of people, it's damn hard to get lit in a small bucket. Thankfully, a nice Thai man who saw us whimpy Americans struggling to survive on our own came over and showed us how to make fire. And the pilgrims where saved once again. Although, instead of repaying him with smallpox, we gave him a few swigs of Sang Som.
We basked in the candle light and the small coal fires, singing Kumbaya and such until the first rain drops were felt. We sat under the small canopy of our tent for a while and watched the most spectacular lighting show I've ever seen outside a science museum. It was unreal. So intense and blinding at times I swore it was was a camera flash in front of my face. And the thunder. God, the thunder shook the
change in my pocket. We all piled into the tent, not a moment too soon. As soon as the front flap was zipped up the skyes opened up and we all fell asleep to the sound of raindrops overhead, dry as could be.
The next morning we emerged from our tent bright and early to find little evidence of the past evening's thunderstorm. The sun was bright and lonely in the sky. We were all eager to hit a trail down to the storied waterfalls of Kao Yai, one of which was used as the feature waterfall in 'The Beach'. We ate a quick breakfast, packed some day packs, liberally applied bug spray, and we were off.
The trail started off routeenly enough. Clearly defined that is. Giant bamboo stalks in all directions. some even seemed to be growing horizontally forming opaque ceilings high above. One great thing about rainforests is that they maintain a consitantly cool temperature despite the brutality of the sun. Perhaps this has something to do with the high volume of plant respiration? You could literally feel the forest breathing.
Another thig we could feel, and started feeling quite often, was a slimey,
cool, wet presense on our feet as we marched along. What was this? We were in the company of ground leeches. Lots of them. Ground leeches are vile little slug-like pests. They stand straight up from the ground like a brown blade of grass. The only way you can spot one against the natural backdrop of the forest floor is by the way they sway back and forth waiting for some unlucky wanderer to brush up against them. Then, they casually climb on board your shoe or sandle, and treat your ankle like an all you can eat Vegas Buffet. This made hiking much slower as we had to stop every two minutes and flick these little bastards off our shoes and feet. Bug repelent seemed to keep them at bay as well.
We hiked and hiked. At one point we heard some monkeys in a nearby tree and I tried imitating their strange calls. We were able to spot them high up in some distant trees, jumpin' and hootin' an howlin'. We also came across a bright green snake in the middle of our "trail." I use the term trail loosly here because by that time, we were
Natural Swings
The forest is our playground following animal paths and mostly bushwacking our way over and under various vegitative obsticals. We stopped for some time at one set of waterfalls and did some hopping and jumping about some giant rocks and fallen tree trunks. All very dangerous and nothing you'd write your mother about. But, we didn't even stop to think about dangers and safety. The forest was our playground; the rocks and trees, our jungle gym. Every new hight we reached brought a new perspective of our playground.
After a solid 5 km of playing Tarzan and battling leeches we finally reached the big falls. The ralls are too amazing to describe in words so I'll let the pictures do that. All I can attempt to describe is the rush of fullfillment that floods the mind when confronted with something that awe-inspiring. Appreciation, was another feeling I got from basking in the presense of such natural beauty. All that shit aside, I stripped down to my swim trunks and jumped in without a care in the world.
The water was cool and refreshing, as you can imagine after a 5k hike in the tropics. We swam under the waterfall and felt the tremendous
force of cold, fresh water, plunging down on us from four stories up. Looking up from under the falls is an image burned into my brain for the rest of my life. Thank god.
We swam around and explored the area beeming with excitement like little children in Disney World. After dozens of photos and almost as much "this is paradise" comments, we gathered ourselves together, dried off and started walking, this time on the main road, back to camp. Luckily, we got picked up by a nice family with a good sized pickup truck. They dropped us off at our campsite and we packed up and stuck our thumbs out once more. This time, getting a ride all the way back to the train station in Pak Chong.
As we left in the open air bus, we promised that we'd have to go back to Kao Yai ASAP noting that we had barely scratched the surface. The park came into full view as we we drew futher and further from it and it was clear that we had seen but the tip of an enormous iceburg. Even as long as this blog post is, I have not
Leech Removal
Check yer shoes... yet begun to describe our trip to Kao Yai National Park.
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Reymos
The Beach
It was shown the movie last weekend (Northern Ireland) and yeah the place is cool! regards, rey