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Published: December 25th 2005
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We caught a train from Ayutthaya to Pak Chong; 2nd class this time, which is quite swish, they even feed you!.
In my correspondence with the guesthouse we were to stay at, my contact had called himself the Birdman, so we were pretty psyched to see what would be waiting for us at the train station. Stuart was pretty sure it would be a bloke in a lycra leotard and cape.
We were to be disappointed though, as the Birdman chose to send an emmisary from the League of Justice.
When we did see the Birdman he was pretty cool though; a no nonsense sort, until he spotted a bird, then the exuberance took over.
The first afternoon we went out to some caves where they reckon about 2 million Wrinkle Lipped Bats live. We wandered around in the caves for awhile then went to where the bats leave at sunset to go and feed.
It was a pretty tremendous thing. Our bloke was so excited he had us running through cane and tapioca fields to get the best view of them flying out. When they did, we could see why he was excited. It's pretty
incredible; they fly out in formation, moving back and forth in a sort of tidal pattern. It actually sounds a bit like the sea over your head.
We all stood there in a sort of trance, just staring at the bats and the sunset. Very peaceful it was, until they started splatting us with guano (Bat product - there was a French woman with us who didn't understand what guano meant, so I tried to explain, using every euphemism i could think of. Then people just started calling out, 'It's bat shit!'. The guide corrected them and said, 'No, bat product!'. )
Once it got too dark to see much more, we came back to the guesthouse. It's called Greenleaf, and it's really basic, but then you only pay 200B for a room, and you're not in it much anyway.
It was nice eating at the place and watching the family go about their business. Thais are extremely hard working from what we've seen, but pretty happy with it. I think it makes a difference that a lot of families seem to work together, so everyone just pitches in.
The next day was our big day
in Khao Yai National Park. We started out at about 8, and basically the whole day was spent either walking through the forest (I mean REALLY through the forest, the only trails these blokes followed were their own, as far as we could tell), and stopping to look at wildlife.
Finding new animals that we hadn't seen before was really great fun, but we were amazed at how excited the blokes from Greenleaf would get. They do this for a living, but everything they spotted elicited some jumping about and all sort of commotion with the telescope. That was half my enjoyment anyway, just watching them. Also, our guide took a shine to our camera, so every time he's spot something new he'd want to use it to take pictures, which was more than okay with us, we would never have spotted anything on our own. They have incredible eyes.
We walked through the forest for a lot of the day, then we stopped and they pulled out some lunch for us (tasty as always). Oh yeah, and about midmorning our bloke (I think his name was Mr. Kai) gave us some sticky rice with a sort of
sweet flavour to it. Jim was well pleased with this.
Later on we went for a bit of a drive to where they knew a family of elephants showed up most days. They were there this day, and it was really lovely to see them just wandering about with their young, eating etc. There was a lone male that wasn't that impressed to see us though, and gave us a bit of a charge. The driver had either taken a little nap, or thought it was funny, because he didn't drive off for a bit. Mr. Kai was less than impressed.
The only thing we missed really was a snake. I'd been hoping to see a python, because I'd seen other people's pictures of them in this park, and they get big enough to span the road. It was too cold though. Very bloody cold in fact! I don't think anyone was expecting to be cold in Thailand, but it didn't really matter, we had a great day anyway.
Oh yeah, we missed a crocodile too. Mr. Kai chucked us all out at one point and started yelling that we should run down this sheer bloody drop
to the river and find a crocodile. For some reason no one thought to dispute this, and we're wandering up and down the river searching for one, when Stuart says 'you know they could be on the bank as well?'. The search kind of wound down after that, but Mr. Kai thought they'd all moved off anyway.
The last little lookout we did was for cobra's, but by this stage it was really dark and cold, so we didn't see any, but we did see a mammoth porcupine. Much bigger than I thought they were!
And that was about it, we all huddled into the back of the ute for the long drive back to the guesthouse, and then jumped out and called for Hot, Spicy Food! and lots of it to warm up.
We were lucky with the people that we went with, they were a good bunch. We had some food, and beer and then everyone kind of slumped off to bed, to start something else the next day.
For us it was a day back in Bangkok for a few necessary purchases, and then on to Luang Prabang, where we are now. I'll
write about it when my arms recover from this lot.
Merry Christmas!
Also, we've added pictures to previous entries, so have a look.
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Tav
non-member comment
Sounds cool
Hey guys, me and Roke are sitting here in 39 degree heat checking out your bloggs, thats how dedicted to the core we are. Sounds like an aewsome time with the nature watching and we cant wait to see the rest of the photos.Every one here is doing well although we did lay Gran Gran to rest last week, she had a very peaceful ending.If your thinking of picking me or Roke up any gifts just think painfully expensive, Im sure you could afford to miss a few meals to cover it. Till next time travel well and we will keep an eye out for the next entry