Bat-tastic Khao Yai National Park!

Temples are great, quite literally awesome, but eventually you need to take a break from these worthy sites and do something a little different. Fortunately, Thailand offers difference in abundance, so it was easy to find a change of scenery. Since we’d missed out on the trekking further north, and were yet to see a real elephant in Thailand, we decided to make time for some action at Khao Yai National Park.

The bus journey was epic in every way – an epic pain in the arse, an epic wait half way while we changed buses, taking an epic day where ‘travelling’ became ‘endless transportation’. When we finally reached Pak Chong (the gateway town to the National Park) it was 6.30 at night and already dark. The bus driver evicted us and our luggage near a pay phone, and we gave the Greenleaf Guest House a call to confirm we’d arrived (at last!) and to arrange to be picked up. Their driver was out running a few errands so we used the time to pop to McDonald’s (groan) and to pick up water at the nearby Tesco Lotus (and we’d assumed Tesco had only started to spread its tendrils in Bangkok).

Our ride arrived, and we trundled down to the guest house to check in and book our tours for the next two days. The Greenleaf Guest House was lovely and simple, with rooms located around the back and a peaceful seating area at the front where they served drinks and breakfast/dinner, and you could watch the traffic heading in and out of the park pass you by. We’d already indulged in the McDonald’s (which was weighing heavily on our souls/stomachs) so we decided to save ourselves for a hearty breakfast and get an early night.

Greenleaf Guest House

The breakfast was worth the wait the next morning – not a lot of choice, but plenty of taste! It seemed that most of the guests were heading out for the same trip, so we befriended our day-trip buddies and suited up for a day at the park. Suiting up involved donning some lovely leech socks – big white oversocks with a drawstring at the top to protect your legs from the blood-suckers. 

Looking good!

We jumped into the back of an open van (or sorngtaaou) and headed into the national park. Before we'd even found our way to the visitor centre, the road came to life with pig-tailed macaques, so the drive was very slow with plenty of photo stops!

We found these guys en route to the visitor centre...

 

 

There was plenty to see before we reached our drop-off point – we drove past some long plains with elephants grazing, including an elephant with a cute calf that was shyly keeping step behind its parent.

When we reached the visitor centre, we were able to view the nearby river using a magnifying viewer (also used for the elephant photo above) that helped us get close-ups of some of the smaller wildlife, especially the birds and snakes. There was a flurry of hushed activity around the viewers near the river because, as we soon discovered, a monitor lizard was gliding along towards us, so we all took an extended break to watch it pass us by and clamber out of the water. Our guide also spotted some turtles emerging quietly further along the river, so we admired them too while the monitor lizard won the lion's share of attention.

Once we'd been suitably distracted by this immediate rush of wildlife, we set out to explore the forest. The rainforest stretched high above us, and the leaves rustled with more than just the wind – great hornbills watched us serenely as gibbons darted about the canopy.

Great hornbill

We walked past majestic strangler fig trees that had suffocated other trees, leaving a hole behind – if you were athletic and keen you could even shimmy up inside a couple of the cavernous hollows!

The guides knew the forest well and appeared to have some well-trained creatures on hand to introduce to hapless travellers. Some braver souls than me opted to have a scorpion draped across their faces (the guides assured us that they wouldn't sting if we remained still, but that's way too close for comfort!). Once the scorpion had performed for the day (after a speedy summons) it was released back to its hollow in the ground – a peculiar pre-planned circus!

We emerged from the forest and stopped for lunch at a two-storey shelter, where our guides unpacked a bland but healthy lunch of tofu, vegetables, rice and fruit (decidedly lacking in the gorgeous flavours of Thai food). The view out across the plains was wildly pastoral, and our guides were on the lookout for anything unexpected. We saw some more elephants in the distance, but nothing more dramatic (or ominous - aside from the wealth of disposable cutlery and packaging used during our lunch). Sigh. (Though maybe they reuse it?)

The sun shredded into us as we headed across the plain and gradually made our way to the trucks after a decent rest. The day wasn't over yet though – we were taken to a beautiful nearby waterfall, Haew Suwat, to cool down in the shade. The waterfall is quite a popular attraction so we were surrounded by tour groups, but it was worth it – and we discovered that it was a waterfall used in the Leonardo DiCaprio film The Beach, which meant we'd visited two locations from that film on this trip (as we'd also been to several of the Bangkok locations). OK film, better book, but great to recognise another landmark!

After an amazing day, we retired to the guest house for a fantastic meal with our new friends.The Greenleaf curries were amazing, with tons of flavour, and as we'd had such a fantastic day and could start our next day late (night tour to see the bats!) we decided to indulge in a few drinks with two guys from the US, a guy from Holland, and Minh from South Korea (apologies to the others, who's names we've forgotten!). We had a jolly old time, cracking open a bottle of Sang Som (Thai whisky) and toasting everyone from Benjamin Franklin to Winston Churchill, as well as analysing the merits of Chang beer (which are many, it seems). It was well after midnight before we staggered back to our rooms!

Amazingly, we woke at a respectable hour without a fiendish hangover, and sat down to a nourishing breakfast and some more blogging (you'd think with all our apparent blogging we'd have finished these blogs ages ago, but I must have been Whatsapping a lot too). 

Heading back out for the night tour, we saw some familiar faces from the day before... and had a quick pit-stop to meet a new friend, a biddable snake.

The night tour was just as amazing as the previous day's trip, if not more so. Before night fell we explored a large cave (full of bats, but also some massive spiders - urgh! - one of which reminded me of the spider Moody inflicts the unforgivable curses on in Harry Potter). The spiders that came out to play seemed pretty well trained too - they popped out when 'summoned' by the tour guides and sat contentedly in proffered hands (not mine!).

Lovely - and my socks look awesome!

After seeing the spiders, I was quite glad to get back out into the fresh air! Daylight just hove into view...

It seemed to be the goal to get willing harmless animals onto tourist's faces, as well as their hands!

When we got out of the cave, we found that some cows from the nearby farm had decided to wander over and obstruct our passage... (and the dog had just given up and was enjoying the shade).

And we saw another snake, camouflaged very well. Our tour guides had eyes like hawks (or maybe someone had just popped it into position minutes before, who knows - the reachable animals all seemed to be especially well-trained!).

But the bats were amazing. We drove to the perfect spot (next to some farmland) to watch the bats come out at dusk, and they streamed out of the caves, over two million of them flooding out as if the cave door had been opened and they'd been itching to escape.

Even now, it's phenomenal to think that we saw two million bats - they kept flying out into the night, spiralling across the sky, at the same rate for over 40 minutes. If you want to get even a sense of this, watch the videos below.

It was impossible to top the sight of the bats heading out for dinner, but the tour guides tried and took us to a lovely freshwater spring, where most of the group went for a quick swim. In the photo below, you can just about see Bradley playing dead in the water (in the green). It was very tranquil - I opted to stay on dry land but mainly because I was processing the sight of the bats!

Brad takes a dip

Another fantastic day, another fantastic dinner at the guest house, and our time in Khao Yai was drawing to a close. The next day we'd be heading to Ayuthaya on the Thai railway, and getting back on the temple trail.

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