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Published: August 26th 2006
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On the 24 August I set off for Sai Yok National Park, home of Kitti's hog-nosed bat. It is also called the bumblebee bat because that's how big it is. Its the world's smallest mammal. I had no hope of seeing it.
Sai Yok is west of Bangkok, near to Burma (where Burmese cats come from). To get there you take a train or bus from Bangkok to Kanchanaburi then a bus from there to Sai Yok. I arranged a mini-bus to get me to Kanchanaburi. It cost about the same as the ordinary bus but was more convenient. So I thought. What I hadn't been informed about was that the mini-buses apparently go to only one place, a resort run by Good Times Travel. The mini-bus stopped and everyone piled out. "I don't want to stay here, " I protested, "I'm going to Sai Yok" "Yes yes, go to the desk and they'll sort it out" "No, I didn't want to come here" The mini-bus left. I fumed. Eventually I got one of the staff to take me to the bus station on the back of a motorbike. Actually it was the side of the road where the
buses go past. I made my own way to the bus station. It is, I gathered, not uncommon for people like me to just get dumped at the resort.
When I got to Sai Yok I was confused. There are two waterfalls in Sai Yok National Park, Sai Yok Yai and Sai Yok Noi (big and little). The information I had said that the bus dropped you off by the road and there was a 3km walk to the Park HQ which was by Sai Yok Noi. Instead the waterfall is directly next to the road and the HQ is 100 metres up some steps. Maybe its a new road, I don't know. I wasn't impressed in any case. The "HQ", actually a ranger station, was unmanned and there was no information or trail maps or anything, just a topographical map of I don't know how many hundreds of square kilometres. The only good thing I can say about the station is that there was a 20cm katydid sitting on the wall. To ease my consternation I went to the food stalls by the road and found a place to stay. Its back down the road a-ways, called
a wee froggy
I don't know what this is (possibly a species of Limnonectes), but he's about the size of my little finger nail. I got one photo then he jumped and disappeared. Sai Yok Noi Bungalo (or Bangalo, or Bung Kalo: the names in Latin script are always variable, even on the same sign!). There are dogs and hens and ducks running all over the place, some small aviaries for budgies and hill mynahs, and lots and lots of geckoes. In other words, brilliant! It costs 120 Baht a night. Once that was sorted I went for a wander, saw some ashy woodswallows and sooty-headed bulbuls, both of which turned out to be common, and sort of stumbled across the real entrance to the Park. It was already closed for the day (8-4, although the sign curiously read 1800-0600) but at least I now knew where to go.
The next morning as I was heading along the road I could feel something pricking me in the side. I thought it was the bag pulling on the shirt but no. I put my hand up and there was something there. How'd I get a thorn in me, I'm thinking as I pull it out. It turned out to be a big red ant, gnawing away on my finger like an evil Bart twin baby. I had ants on me all day long at Sai Yok, though all others were fortunately of the small non-biting variety. I don't know if they fell from trees or scooted up my legs, but they were always there. Then there's the little sweat bee things which seem to find DEET an attractant. They're harmless but irritating, especially when they fly into your eye, you blink automatically, and have a bee stuck inside your eyelid. And don't even get me started on the kamikaze flies that come screaming in out of nowhere and slam directly into your earhole!
The entrance I had found the day before turned out to be to just one trail, to Wangbadan Cave which I'm assuming is "the Bat Cave". Its actually a good little bit of forest, mostly dominated by bamboo -- I'm talking the giant bamboo here, 50ft tall -- and I got such nice birds as forest wagtail, black-winged cuckoo-shrike, black-hooded oriole and racket-tailed treepie. I started to go down into the cave but of the two main things I really don't like, being entombed alive sort of tops the list (the second thing is heights). Apparently there are big rooms inside festooned with stalagmites and stalactites but the entrance is a foxhole going pretty much straight downwards. I decided to leave it, bats or no bats.
Sai Yok is really nice. Huge limestone crags thrust upwards into the sky, all blanketed over in mixed bamboo forest, but there seemed no way for me to get to any of it. There's just the single trail even though this seems to be the main part of the park (judging by the HQ), and so I'm not sure of where the best place to go actually would be. Still, it was good for a day or two, and it was really quiet which is good for birds (up until 3 o'clock I saw only two other people on the trail and they were together).
In the late afternoon I headed back up along the trail that leads to the HQ to see if I could spot any interesting wildlife as the sun went down. I knew that Kitti's bats came out of their roosts at dusk but I didn't really think I'd see any of those. I was hoping for owls and civets. In the event I got neither owls nor civets, but as I was standing there waiting for dark, ruminating on cabbages and kings, watching some big moths cruising around above me, I suddenly thought, "wait a minute, those aren't moths!" They were Kitti's hog-nosed bats!!! They were really hard to follow because they really are very small. I could see them as they crossed a bit of sky then they zipped along the foliage lining the path and were all but invisible in the gloom. Bats are pretty impossible to identify on the wing and there are lots of species, but how many are only the size of moths? Standing there watching those little bats passing was perhaps the most satisfying experience I've had on this trip yet. I'm so glad I came to Sai Yok. As a bonus, on the way back a Thailand hare ran across the path (its the only hare in the country and there aren't any rabbits, so its an easy identification!).
The next morning when I was leaving the place I was staying there was a pair of green-billed malkohas in a tree. Malkoha number five. Just one more to go. The most striking thing about the green-billed malkoha I found was the length of its tail, easily half as long again as in other malkohas. Really really long.
I can tell my bites apart with ease now. The mosquito bites stay as red lumps. The sandflies are worse; the bite swells to a huge welt, pale in the middle and red round the outside, and it really itches. The nastiest bites are still a bit of a mystery but I think they are from bed bugs because they can appear anywhere on the body; they are generally clustered and they turn an awful livid purple colour so you suspect you are about to die from some horrible disease. There's also little red bites which I think may be fleas. No ticks yet.
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woeiyann
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You definately a wildlife lover. a very good info for visitors going to the park.