Pang Sida National Park

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I was really only in Thailand in order to make my way southwards to Malaysia, from where I would be flying home. I had been in Bangkok for a few days, visited a bat temple, visited some zoos ... but I felt like I should go to a national park as well and look for some wildlife. I decided to try out Pang Sida National Park which nobody ever talks about and which I had never visited. It is part of the vast forest complex to which Khao Yai National Park also belongs, so it has the same sorts of animals but no tourists because it is not really in a convenient place.

I had done some reading online. I knew how to get there, and that there was accommodation (tents and cabins) and a restaurant. There wasn't a whole lot else available. I did know there were Bengal slow lorises though, and that was important.

First step was getting to the Mo Chit bus station in Bangkok via the river boat and BTS Skytrain. I was a little later than I wanted to be because I'd been waiting 25 minutes for the boat for some reason, and I didn't get to the bus station until 9.20am. The bus I'd been aiming for was 9am. Instead I had to wait until 10.30am. The bus is the same one which goes to the border town of Aranyaprathet, but you need to get off just before there at the town of Sa Kaeo (or Sa Kaew). You can also take the train which is a quarter the price of the bus (40 Baht versus 167 Baht) but there are only two a day, the first one is way too early at 5.55am and the next one is a bit too late at 1.05pm (it's a five hour trip).

Pang Sida is around 30km from Sa Kaeo, and according to various sources online there are buses from the Sa Kaeo bus station to the entrance of the national park. I wasn't entirely sure this was true, but I made my trip on a Sunday on the reasoning that if there were buses to the park then a weekday would be when I'd be most likely to find them. Apparently Sunday is when the park is busy with day-trippers going there from town for picnics. At the bus station I asked the few employees who spoke English and both of them said that there were no buses to the park. So I took a motorbike out there for 180 Baht. At the park I found that there are songthaews or mini-vans between the park and the bus station, but there was so much dispute over times that I wouldn't be able to give any useful information on how to get them out there.

I got to the park at around 3pm. The visitor centre and accommodation areas are just inside the checkpoint. A few of the staff at the visitor centre spoke some English, enough to have basic conversations, and I have to say that unlike at Khao Yai everyone was extremely friendly and helpful. The bungalows are 800 Baht per night, well outside my budget (but I had expected that). Camping was what I was after, but even that was 300 per night - more than the room in my guesthouse in Bangkok! The restaurant that was supposed to be there was not in operation, presumably because they have no visitors, so you have to walk back out past the checkpoint to a small restaurant there (it's only a few hundred metres).

After my tent was set up I went for a walk up the main road into the park. It seems there actually is only one road. There are some trails off the road much further up - mostly too far to walk to - but otherwise just the road. After a kilometre the seal turns to red dirt and there is a checkpoint with a guard-hut, and I turned around at that point because it was getting late. Only a few common birds were seen - even in late afternoon it was stiflingly hot - but blue-bearded bee-eater is cool, and there was also a very large troop of northern pig-tailed macaques, the 28th primate of this trip. This group was around the visitor centre and campground area every day. Apart for the entirely-white variable squirrels which occur here, I saw no other mammals at all while at Pang Sida.

My plan for the next day was to bird along the paved road first thing in the morning before breakfast, and then to walk to the 6km-mark where there was a trail through grassland to a viewing tower where animals like gaur and dhole may be seen. I would just sit in the tower all day and see if anything turned up, and then walk back at dusk. This did not happen.

The first part went okay, although again the birds were all commoner species. The best of them was a pair of black and buff woodpeckers. A tall bare tree held some sort of fascination for many of the area's birds - in its branches there was a large flock of vernal hanging parrots accompanied by thick-billed pigeons, spot-necked doves, fairy bluebirds, hill mynahs, and several species of bulbuls. After a couple of hours I went for breakfast. At the entry-checkpoint the guard asked where I was going today and I said to the watch-tower. He said I needed to get authority to do that. So I went to the visitor centre and said I wanted to go the watch-tower. The answer was that I was not allowed to walk on the road beyond the paved stretch and that I would need a guide to visit the tower which was 300 Baht.

Now, 300 Baht is not in itself a lot of money (about NZ$12), but it was being added on to the excessive 300 Baht tent-hire, the food and water, and the 200 Baht that I'd already paid as the entry fee to the park. That meant something like 1000 Baht per day which was above my budget. Basically it was like I had paid to get into the park but then needed to pay again to actually go into the park itself. And, obviously, I objected to being required to pay for a guide to sit in a watch-tower. I couldn't even just keep walking along the road when I hit the red dirt, because there was a checkpoint there. Of course anyone in a car or on a motorbike could just sail on through without any hassle, but on foot - absolutely not!

This is the kind of thing where you can look back later and think "it was only 300 Baht" but at the time it has to be judged on your current financial situation. And so what it meant was that I was restricted to one kilometre of paved road running through rubbish secondary forest with only the most common of Thai birds inhabiting it. It was pretty much just a waste of time being there, so the next day I went back to Bangkok. If I'd had more money still, then I may have stayed longer - although I would still have the objection over paying for a guide for nothing, so maybe not. Difficult to say.

For the rest of that morning I sat inside the forest. There's only one trail off the paved road, and it's not even a trail, just a set of steps down to a picnic area by the Pangsida Waterfall (which has no water in it). But I sat on one of the decks there until midday, seeing nothing, then went and sat in a shelter at the campsite where there were a few birds and squirrels. It is so meltingly hot here that as soon as the sun comes up over the hills the road becomes a dead-zone as all the birds flee the heat. There's not much else to do except sit down in the shade somewhere.

Sleeping in a tent in this heat isn't much fun either. Even with the flaps all open it is still like being inside a sweat-box. On the first night my watch stopped working. I think it was killed by the heat.

On the two nights I had I tried spotlighting along the road and around the campsite. All I found of interest on the first night was a giant forest scorpion on the road. The campsite is thick with trees so I was hoping for civets and lorises but nothing. There weren't even any deer around, unlike at Khao Yai where sambar and muntjac are common. The second night was as equally unproductive, the only animals worth noting being a whip-scorpion and a couple of spiny turtles in a small pool at the campsite.

When I had first arrived at the park, the guard at the checkpoint had told me there was a songthaew or mini-van which went back to Sa Kaeo and to let him know when I was leaving. After finding out that I needed a guide to do anything I asked one of the ladies in the visitor centre about the bus times, and she said a mini-van left from the checkpoint at 6am. This was good because it would get me to Sa Kaeo in plenty of time to catch the 7.33am train back to Bangkok. When I went back through the checkpoint later on my way to eat, I told the guard that I'd be leaving tomorrow morning. He told me the van leaves at 9am (and showed me 9.00 on his phone so there was no misunderstanding). I said that I'd been told 6am at the visitor centre. He said "no, not at 6, but you can get one at 8" (again, showing me 8.00 on his phone). I said "my train is at 7.30, are you sure there's no bus at 6?" He then says "okay, 6am, you be here." I scratched my head. "First you said there was no bus at 6, and now you say there is a bus at 6. Which one is it?" "Yes, there is one at 6am." "Okay, so I'll come here tomorrow morning at 6am, and there will be a bus here?" "Yes."

I wasn't entirely convinced by the conversation - there's a thing in southeast Asia where people will just agree with you even when it is not true. When I was at the restaurant, one of the other girls from the visitor centre came through. I asked her and she didn't know (she at first said there was no bus at all), but asked the shop owners and there was a discussion involving a large degree of confliction, including that I needed to go to the intersection with the main road a kilometre away to catch a songthaew or van. Finally they settled on 9am at the intersection. I went with the girl back to the checkpoint where the guard tells her 8am. I pointed out that he had just told me 6am, to which he replied with "no I didn't."

Back at the visitor centre the bus-time there had now become 8am, although still with a dispute over whether it was at the checkpoint or at the intersection. But 8am seemed to be the fixed time - except that they then told me I could wait at the intersection at 7am! Gaaah. I was getting pretty frustrated by all of this, so decided that I'd just walk down to the intersection before 6am and see what went past. Except I didn't have a watch any more, so it would be "sometime early" rather than anything more specific.

I got up and packed before dawn, and after the sun came up I walked up the road. Along the way I asked at a shop and was told 7am for a songthaew at the intersection. When I got to the intersection I asked at another shop, and was also told 7am. So I think it is safe to say that 7am is correct for the earliest songthaew back to the town. I tried flagging down other songthaews which were passing on the main road but none stopped. I don't know how you determine where they are going because none of them have names or numbers, but clearly they knew where I was going and it wasn't where they were going.

A chap on a motorbike stopped to chat, asked me where I was from and where I was going. Then he rode away, chatted to a woman who was waiting a bit further along for the same songthaew as me, then rode off round the corner. A few minutes later he was back and said that his friend "the teacher" could give me a ride to Sa Kaeo. And that was how I got a free ride to the train station just in time to catch the train. The teacher also offered me a job at her school which I would have taken but to teach English in Thailand you need an TEFL certificate. She said they have five Filipino teachers who teach English there but they need a native English speaker and it is difficult to get one because the white people don't want to take a job in a rural school.

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