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January 14, 2007
Khao Yai National Park. We went on a truck for a full day trekking in the rain forests of Khao Yai. The ride starts early in the morning inside an open pickup truck so it’s very cold. You must bring a long sleeved shirt. It’s also very cold in the evening. During the day the weather gets hot.
The tour in the reservation was nice, but I was expecting something completely different. After a couple of hours walking in the park I already canceled my plans for staying another day. The rain forests, and I emphasize on the forests, are not the known jungles as you might have seen in Africa or in the movies. No jungles and no animals.
Trekking in Khao Yai
The forests are made of huge trees going up high to twenty to thirty meters. The trek goes through the wild bush, but it reminded me of the Israeli forests which are not the jungle-type at all. I’ve seen enough of these. The park itself is huge so you have to drive on the road which goes threw it. From time to time the guide stops the truck when he spots some animal on one of the trees. We spotted a couple of hornbills (birds), one huge squirrel, a couple of more birds and one or two monkeys on the trees.
As I said, the trees are pretty high, so in order for you to actually see the animals you need a telescope or a very powerful binoculars. I’m not the kind of guys who like to observe birds or animals from a thirty to fifty meters distance. I have a television for this, and the woods were almost empty from animals while we were walking. We spotted wild elephants droppings but no elephants were found. At some point we stopped near a waterfall to refresh a little, and kept looking some more without any impressive result. One of the attractions we did find was actually humans. A small rare bird standing on the top of one of the highest trees, twenty to thirty meters high, caught the attention of ornithologists and professional photographers. They gathered around one by one at the same spot with highly advanced telescopes and their SLR cameras with huge lenses and stood there for about an hour photographing the same insignificant looking bird.
After all, the trek was not that boring. High trees with tangled roots were seen everywhere. The singing of gibbons was heard from afar and the sounds of the forests added to the special atmosphere.
The interesting stuff we found during the trek was wild elephant droppings, nails marking of a wild bear on one of the trees, and one gibbon who sat on a far away branch, but not far enough for my Super-Zoom camera. It caught the creature quite easily.
Relaxing in a waterfall
After walking we stopped near a waterfall to swim a little. The huge force of the falling water made me lose my sunglasses. I looked for them under the water and just before I was going to give up on them, one of our group members, whose name I’ve forgotten, found them for me. We continued from the waterfall toward the exit of the park. We ate lunch and went back to the pickup truck.
Monkeys on the sides of the road
Near the exit from the park, large groups of monkeys waited near the road. They are probably used to visitors giving them food. We didn’t get close too much because they were really wild monkeys.
We came back at 7:30 PM to the Green Leaf. I went with our guest house’s driver to the city to catch the bus to Khorat (also called Nakhon Ratchasima).
The way to Khorat
On the bus to Khorat, a nice girl handed out cold cups of Coca Cola with ice. I didn’t know why, but on the buses in East Thailand I noticed there was a food tray or a drinks holder coming out of every chair. An interesting and useful idea. Another interesting idea was that in many of the government buses in East Thailand there’s a female ticket-seller that stays on the bus for the entire drive.
I arrived at Khorat after about one hour and a half. It was already dark and I didn’t know the city at all. In fact, the option to go to Khorat was only an option for me so I didn’t have any information about it whatsoever.
A tuktuk driver approached to me pretty fast, so I asked him if he knows a recommended guest house in the city. A frequent phenomenon that I’ve seen in the Isan was that almost no one and especially tuktuk drivers did not understand a word in English. The only way to get around Khorat was using tuktuks or motorcycle-taxi. There are also local buses but you have to know exactly where you want to go because the driver doesn’t understand one word in English.
The procedure of explaining the tuktuk driver where I was to go usually takes between five to ten minutes. The explanation is usually followed by hand signals and repeating the English words many times until the tuktuk driver would hit his head thinking why he didn’t learn English in school when he was young. Then he would call his friend, another tuktuk driver whose English knowledge is a little more advanced and included the words guest house and hotel.
Since my requests were usually a little more complex, and required the recommendation of a good guest house for the best price possible, after a few minutes I found myself surrounded by a large group of tuktuk drivers. One of them was supposed to drive me, the other was the friend with the more advanced knowledge, the third was was a little more knowledge in English. They would all consult the third and the fourth in the Thai language regarding where I should go, and the fifth would give advices to them all. I stood there and restrained myself from laughing of all the commotion. The people are really nice in the Isan, even the tuktuk drivers. The price for driving to the center is about 50 baht.
As I found out earlier, there are no guest houses in Khorat, only hotels. This means the prices for staying are high. 450 to 600 baht in a normal hotel. I went to the cheapest hotel I was offered. A room for 180 baht. The place is called Chatye Hotel, and it won’t suit everyone. I got a room with a fan, toilet and a cold water showers
At the reception I received a touristic map of the city. I went for a short walk and back to sleep. During the night I spotted a big cockroach walking on the wall. The place is not so clean. There’s also a room with a television for 200 baht.
This article was originally written in Hebrew. It was translated to English at a later time.
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