A day in the rainforest

We left Nong Khai on Tuesday morning, and becoming very au fait with Thai bus stations, we boarded a bus to a place called Khon Kaen. This is about a third of the way between Nong Khai and Bangkok. We spent just one night here to break up the journey. Then on Wednesday we took the bus from Khon Kaen to Nakon Ratchasima and did a quick swap at the bus station onto a bus heading for the town of Pak Chong. An hour and a half later we were deposited along Pak Chong's main road sans map and not really knowing where we were going. We found a collection of sawngthaews and one woman took pity on us and called a hotel for us (her English was about as good as our Thai). In the meantime Matt happened upon a young Aussie guy while buying water who told us about a cheap hotel down the road. So, we thanked the lady for her help and headed there.

On Thursday we had an early start; we had arranged to be collected at 7.30am for a day's trekking in nearby Ko Yai national park. There were 10 of us in the group altogether. We headed to the park with our guide, coated ourselves in insect repellent and put on our leech socks. Yes - leech socks. And we needed them. In the morning we did a 3 hour trek through the rainforest which was good but fairly strenuous. Luckily the leeches only seemed to be hanging out on the ground otherwise we'd have been in real trouble if they lived in the trees and plants as we were negotiating our way through. Leeches are so disgusting they sucker onto your shoes / legs and quite quickly make their way along a bit like a slinky goes down the stairs. So we had frequent stops to pull them off us. They seemed to like Matt, who luckily had a lighter with him; as soon as they were introduced to this they literally jumped off. Some people in the group had actually come on the trip with shorts, t-shirts, sandals and no hats which seems a bit mad. The other thing to look out for was ticks, which attach themselves to you and I believe, if not caught, sometimes burrow under the skin. Hence, a hat is a good idea in case they fall on your head. Luckily I only found one on my torso that I felt and promptly got rid of.

Anyway, we spotted gibbons, macaques, hornbills (birds) and lots of elephant poop (but no elephants - there are 200 or so wild elephants living in the forest). We had lunch then took another hour long trek to a creek where we saw one of the 2 crocodiles which inhabit the creek. We then headed to a waterfall area (used in the film 'The Beach' when Richard, Francois and Etienne jump over the edge on their journey to the beach, only it wasn't actually as high or blue or spectacular in real life, as the Dutch guy in our group said, this was how it looked before the Hollywood special effects people got to work on it). In the early evening we drove around looking for elephants (didn't see them) also didn't see the tigers that live here (thank goodness) - I think you have to trek for a few days for a real chance to spot them. We arrived back around 7.30pm and took a cold shower (to get any bugs off us) and quarantined our clothes.