We left our hotel at about 5.30am, to make it to the station in time to catch our train. We need not have worried about making it to the train in time as it just sat in the station for about 40 minutes. So eventually we pulled out of the station and started off on our journey to Pak Chong and the national park. It was quite interesting seeing daily life along the railway, with people living literally on the railway lines in tin shacks. The railway tracks seem to be a public foot path as well, with everyone walking to work or wherever the have to go along the tracks. If a train comes, they all just step aside, let it pass and then off they go again. They don’t bother with shutting outer doors on the trains either, and the end of the train is just an open doorway, but this is good, especially with the heat as you can hang out the side and get a bit of a breeze.
We finally arrived in Pak Chong and were picked up and taken to the Khao Yai garden lodge, which was to be our base for the next couple of nights. We checked in and were shown our room, which was right down the end of the garden, past all the brick buildings to a tin shack at the bottom, which was extremely damp and smelt just as bad. We politely declined the offer of staying in this room and asked to be moved to a slightly drier room, which was actually not too bad. So after some food and a quick swim in the pool it was time to join our tour group.
We had booked onto a 1 ½ day tour. The first afternoon of the tour, we drove out to some volcanic caves, which had some temple or prayer areas in them. To be honest compared to some of the other caves that we have visited these were not all that good. In one particular part of the cave, the tour guide kept looking for bats, and couldn’t understand why there were no bats around in the roof of this part of the cave. I think that the very bright halogen light that had recently been installed to illuminate the cave might have had something to do with it, but I might’ve been wrong. After the caves, we drove on to a hill top, which had some great views of the surrounding area. We had here to watch 1.5 million bats leaving their cave at dusk to go off and feed in the national park. We had to walk along the edge of some farmer’s field, but the walk was worth it. Although it was pretty much dark when the bats finally came out, you could still make them out. It was just like a sea of bats, swirling across the sky all following each other. It also sounded like it was very windy, but in fact this was just the noise made by all the bats in flight.
The following morning we piled into the back of a pick up and drove up towards the national park. Our group was made up of 6 of us, all from the UK and we all had a good laugh on the way to the national park, mostly at one bloke’s expense who was a bit behind the program most of the time. Having stopped off to see some elephants on route we arrived at the national park entrance. Having paid our entrance fees and donned some very nice leach socks, we drove off into the national park and within about 10 minutes we had seen our first bit of wildlife. A 1.5 – 2 meter long monitor lizard lazing around in a tree. The rest of the morning was spent driving around the national park, seeing the odd animal here and there…black tailed squirrels, eagles, plenty of very cheeky monkeys, hearing but not managing to find baboons.
After a good lunch, we then went for a walk into the jungle, where I am glad that the guide knew where he was going, as I was fairly disorientated within about 2 minutes. We saw a few more animals and a tree, which had been scaled by a rather large looking bear. I’m glad that we were not around when he was as from the claw imprints on the side of the tree he was no baby!
We then drove onto a waterfall, which is the waterfall that Leonardo Di’Caprio jumps off of in the film the beach. It is a really nice place to just chill out for an hour, even if there are an awful lot of people there. I was going to go for a swim there, but there was not really time. There were a lot of Chinese tourists around who all wanted to have a photo taken with you, which I found very strange, but there we go! The tour finished with a night safari around the park. We all piled into the back of a very flash brand new pick up truck and drove around the park with big flash lights. We saw about 3 different types of deer, some form of jungle cat as well as plenty more monkeys. All in all, a pretty good day out.
The following morning we caught the train back to the airport. It was a third class train, which to be honest was not all that uncomfortable. I can say with plenty of confidence that it was the cheapest train journey that I have ever made. A three hour journey cost us just 26 Baht each, about 35 pence!
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