Our post Carrie-and-family loneliness didn't last too long, as we returned to Bangkok from Khao Lak to meet up with Clare's cousin Nicole, who had just finished her own 10 day tour of southern Thailand! It was wonderful to see her smiling face at the train station! After our excited hellos, we boarded a 2 hour bus to Pak Chong, where we would stay as a base for visiting Khao Yai National Park.

Two things became quickly evident as we arrived in Pak Chong: We were some of the only tourists there (apparently it becomes busier on the weekends), and...there was not tons to do. We decided to embrace the sleepiness of the town by succumbing to our own sleepiness through napping and relaxing for the rest of the day in our quiet little guesthouse rooms.

The next day, fully refreshed, we started the afternoon portion of our 1.5 day tour of the area by visiting some sites just outside the park. We started by a, uh, "refreshing" dip in a natural spring (we could have sworn we read it was hot), followed by a trip to a cave where we watched MILLIONS of bats fly out of their darkness at dusk, to swarm off in many different formations and directions. (There were actually millions, according to our guide, this is not Clare hyperbole.) It was absolutely fascinating, and we stood transfixed gazing up at the sky for ages. This was definitely a first!

Very early the next morning we were picked up for the full day tour, which gave new meaning to "full day tour" - about 12 hours from start to finish. We were lucky to have sunny blue skies, and even luckier to have had the right clothing, as it was a chilly-ish 13C up in the park (insert rage-y comments from home about characterizing this temperature as cold....?) Our guide did an excellent job of pointing out wildlife to us, and we managed to spy great hornbills, many deer (roaming around "Banff-style", aka, everywhere!), and macaque monkeys. Although we searched for the "big one" (the elephant!), they were not to be found this time, although we DID hear the trumpeting of one off in the distance on one of our hikes, which was chilling! It's wonderful to know they are still out there in the wild, managing to keep away from us humans. Perhaps the most captivating experience of the day was hearing the call of gibbons way up high in the trees as we approached them. A loud, sort of whooping call rang through the forest like none we had heard before. They quieted down once we were close, but we caught glimpses of them leaping freely betweeen the trees. So beautiful.

We realized at the end of the day that we had seen what we needed to from Khao Yai, and that the big city might be calling us, so we packed up the next morning and headed back to Bangkok for an extra night. Here we decided to treat ourselves, and booked a lovely hotel with a pool that overlooked the city, and celebrated our little reunion time! This meant venturing out to Khao San Road (the infamous backpacker street) to pretend we were 20-something backpackers again, which we evened out the next night by visiting a smooth, mature rooftop cocktail bar (like the 30-somethings we actually are.)

The next day Nicole was on her way back to Canada, and we are back to being a two-some. Who's coming to visit us next?!