Thailand - Khao Yai National Park

We finished our last report with the ominous words - off to meet the elephant and tigers! We are glad to say we fulfilled at least half our mission and survived. Albeit at the very end of our 'expedition', eventually we saw eye-to-eye with about seven elephants, including one cute little baby - ahhhhhhhh...... This encounter has been fully recorded with 40 pictures and a video clip, one or two of which will be posted on these very pages (again, the connection speed is still an issue; for those interested - apparently an earthquake in Taiwan, just before Xmas, has damaged all major backbones for South-East Asia, this is due to last for at least another two weeks!). But now back to the beginning.....

Upon arrival at the Khao Yai Garden Lodge ( a three hour train trip from Bangkok, plus an hour delay upon departure - Thai Railways seems to have benchmarked itself against the UK!), we booked ourselves on a day-and-a-half guided tour, including a full day in the National Park, a night safari and a visit to the bat-caves.

An 8 AM start the next morning. Guided by Mr A (which made our group the 'A Team' - JP's comment Nicola insists!) we set off the the Park in the back of a truck. Once in the Park, the animal spotting started. What an excitement! Both the guide and the driver managed to spot birds, mammals and reptiles from a moving vehicle. Within the first hour, we had sightings of Pigtailed Macaques (these monkeys are very common), a huge Monitor Lizzard sitting on the side of a tree, a serpent eagle on the prowl and two Great Hornbills (these beautiful birds reach a length of ca 80 centimeters, have a wingspan of 1.5 meters and we were lucky enough to see them both in flight and eating in the figtrees).
Then a three hour hike, which gave us various tropial birds and much to our delight Whiteheaded Gibbons. It was absolutely amazing how Mr A. spotted these, as they were in the top of the canopy approximately 200 meters away (but through a telescope almost on our lap). One of the highlights of the day!!

After spending most of the hottest time of the day (when the animals make themselves scarce) around the waterfalls used in the film 'the Beach' (no Leonardo di Caprio though!) we set off on our hunt for the elephants. That they are living in the Park had been evidenced during the day by the massive amounts of dung that we came across, even at the bottom of the waterfall. Now, however, they proved to be very elusive, so after one hour of intensive searching no elephants to be found!

We had already given up hope and settled in for the night safari (where various kinds of deer were the highlights) when a text message to one of the guides gave location of elephants at a salt lick (where would we be without a mobile phone). Needless to say we hot-footed it over with the result as above.

The second part of our tour was a visit to an ancient Buddha cave (to Nicola's delight filled with bats, spiders, snakes and toads) and a bat-cave where ca 2 million bats make their way out everynight. An impressive sight and sound......

With all of this wildlife in our bag, we set off to do a bit of culture - for the nex few days it will be temples and trains as we make our way north through the central plains of Thailand. More of which next time.....