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Published: September 2nd 2006
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Monday 28 August: Woo-hoo, finally an easy place for me to get to. Taxi to the bus terminal, complete with such pearls of wisdom from the driver as "teaching elephant is easy, teaching people is hard", bus to Pak Chong, songthaew to the entrance of Khao Yai National Park, then hitch the last 14 km to the visitor centre area. Not a problem. There were lots of wetlands and paddies along the bus route with dozens of openbill storks in them which was exciting. I got my first pig-tailed macaques on the road through Khao Yai which makes a change from the ubiquitous crab-eating macaques. On the other hand, some of the males round the visitor centre area are huge. Imagine a monkey the size of a pitbull terrier but twice as muscular with canines the size of small bananas, and that's a male pig-tailed macaque. I wouldn't want to meet one of those having a bad day!
Khao Yai was the first national park in Thailand, opened in 1962. It covers 2168 square kilometres. First impressions weren't great. Not with the Park itself, that looked great, but the attitude of the woman in the visitor centre was
abyssmal, treating me like I was wasting her time asking about trails and so forth. And the restaurant is of the kind that serves only food cooked in the morning then left sitting there all day. The lady in the place where you arrange accomodation tried to sell me leech socks. "No, it's alright," I say, "leeches don't bother me." Then I went for a wander round the 'Nature Trail', an easy 30 minute walk just next to the visitor centre (well, its described as easy, but its very steep and also paved so very treacherous in the rain). It turned out my almost superhero-like ability to repel leeches has been revoked by the Elders. There were leeches EVERYWHERE! Any time I stopped for more than half a second there were whole battalions looping up onto my boots. There were leeches in the toilet blocks, leeches around the dorm rooms, I even got leeches on me several times in the restaurant. The few times I actually found leeches on my skin, though, they were just sitting there looking confused, so maybe I am the leeches' Kryptonite (I actually got leeched one time, but I'm suspecting that particular leech either died
later or was from the leech equivalent of Superman's Bizzaro World). In any case, after the Nature Trail walk I bought some leech socks. The only problem with them is that they retain water. I can walk all day in woollen socks and I'm fine; wearing the leech socks my boots just filled up with sweat and I could feel the water sloshing around in there with every step. On the plus side, there may be tonnes of leeches but there were no biting insects. I used no repellent at all and got one sandfly bite.
I stayed in one of the Park's dorm rooms. Think dorm and you think bunks, right? Not at Khao Yai. I'm sleeping on the floor. But its only 50 Baht. The alternative (apart from actually camping in a tent) is a bungalow at 800 Baht a night! To teach the cheapskates a lesson, the dorms are at the bottom of a very steep hill.
The next day I attempted Trail 5 (which used to be Trail 6 apparently). Perhaps I should say I attempted to FIND Trail 5. The instructions I had turned out to be wrong. Once that was
sorted out, I was off. Trail 5 is supposed to be excellent for wildlife. Not for me it wasn't. A big part of the problem was that the first part of the trail was so rough with gullies of mud and recent tree falls that I was watching my feet most of the time. Almost the only highlight of the entire walk was a very obliging white-handed gibbon. Gibbons are very common in Khao Yai. I saw them twice and heard them calling every morning. Hornbills are also common, but the only ones I got good enough looks at to identify were the oriental pied hornbills (which I'd already seen on Pulau Ubin in Singapore) which I saw every day. I had to leave the Park without adding the much-sought-after great hornbill to my list, even though I'm pretty sure they were among the ones I saw brief glimpses of. Trail 5 is supposed to take three hours. After two hours I was thinking I must be nearly done. Then I came to a signpost. I'd gone one km. In two hours. I had 3.8 km to go. It was 4 o'clock. It would be dark in a couple of
hours. I had no torch with me. I was a bit worried. However I think their measuring stick must be warped. I did the last 3.8 km in one and a half hours. There's a watch-tower overlooking a lake but I had no time to stop. The dirt track to the main road is one km. I did that in ten minutes. From there to the visitor centre is two km. I did that in twenty minutes.
In the night it started to rain. Hard. It continued raining all day. I walked back along the main road and spent most of the day in the Nong Pak Chi watch-tower I passed by yesterday. I got some good new birds but narry a whisker of any of the big mammals that Khao Yai is famous for (tiger, elephant, gaur, etc). I had to content myself with the sambar and muntjac that live round the visitor centre area.
Everything is damp at Khao Yai. People complain about the damp at Bukit Fraser but I had no problems there. When I was at Khao Yai it was actually cooler than at Bukit Fraser, even though its several hundred metres
lower in elevation. My towel, instead of drying, just kept getting wetter. Every time I took a shower I was drying myself with a wet towel. My clothes were wet when I put them back on in the morning. Even the mosquito net was damp.
On Thursday I walked to Haew Suwat waterfall, 8 km away. It was supposed to be a 3-4 hour walk. It took me 5.5 hours. On the way it started to rain. Again. Harder than ever. Basically you couldn't see the forest for the sheets of water coming down. The only bird I got on the way (before the rain started) was a red-headed trogon, my second trogon. It was, frankly, a thoroughly miserable hike. Trudging along in the rain, pack on my back, up to my ankles in mud, took me back to my days on foot-patrol in 'Nam. The only things missing were the trip-wires and Sarge getting half his face blown off in a fire-fight with Charlie. Poor Sarge, he had only one day left to retirement. The waterfall was pretty spectacular. Not high (assuming I was even at the right waterfall) but an absolutely thunderous amount of water coming
through. I did the return hike in 2.5 hours, really motoring along trying to beat the dark, but picked up a nice male Siamese fireback pheasant along the way.
I left the Park the next morning. Birders rave about Khao Yai, but I got very little from it. Fifteen new birds and three new mammals in about 3.5 days. The atrocious weather may have been at fault, but I really preferred Taman Negara over Khao Yai. In comparison, I got 44 new birds and 2 new mammals in about 2.5 days at Bukit Fraser, and 42 new birds and 9 new mammals in 7.5 days at Taman Negara. And the only snakes I saw were a squashed viper on the road and some pickled ones in the visitor centre. And, to tell the truth, the weather was starting to get me down. I hitched back to the Park entrance in a songthaew full of school children. The teachers spent the entire trip taking my photo and flirting with me, despite me looking somewhat sasquatch-like, not having shaved in over a month and being covered in jungle. The bus from Pak Chong to Bangkok was 42 Baht more expensive
skeleton of gaur (Bos gaurus) in visitor centre
the sign says this is the only articulated gaur skeleton in the world; one would presume they are not including those still articulated in the living animals :-) than the bus from Bangkok to Pak Chong for some reason, but they played a Jackie Chan movie (I think it was 'Police Story' but I missed the opening credits, and it was dubbed into Thai in any case). Prakorb's House had no vacancies so I moved over to Kawin Place instead. I took my clothes to a laundry to be cleaned.
Best animals: openbill storks on the way there; white-handed gibbon; bicoloured giant squirrel; variable squirrels (the ones at Khao Yai were mostly white with a black back); a huge brown fish owl (near the end of Trail 5); blue-bearded bee-eater; red-headed trogon; Siamese fireback; flying dragon.
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