Khao Yai National Park + Ayuthaya

So last night I wrote for an hour, a detailed, inspired update about the last little while. The ancient computer I was writing on crashed and I lost it all. Needless to say it was frustrating.

We've just spent a great day walking through the vast ruins of Ayuthaya in the heat, and find ourselves with a few hours to kill before we catch a night train to Chiang Mai, so I'm going to start over.

Khao Yai National Park was incredible. It's a wild piece of wilderness only a few hours from Bangkok. In some regards we didn't know what to expect, and wondered if it would be highly developed and kind of theme park-like in areas. Not even a little, it's a 2000+ sq km piece of wild, dense jungle, and I have a hunch that it will stand out as one of the highlights of our whole trip.

The park has lots of trails running through it, but we opted to splurge on a day and a half of guided tours through our guesthouse, Greenleaf. The value for what we spent was outstanding, our guides taught us a lot about the area and we saw far more wildlife than had we just been hiking on our own.

On our first day we spent some time hiking and tracking wildlife, and saw:
Gibbons (a treat - they're quite elusive and require a good eye and ear, they never come down from the canopy)
pig-tailed macaques
Great Hornbills ( maybe 8 or 10 throughout the day...this is rare to see so many)
barking deer (didn't hear them bark though!)
samba deer
a gigantic black scorpion
Bear Cat (the largest of the civets, totally resembles a cross between a bear and a cat)
water monitors
an amazing array of beautiful butterflies

Khao Yai is the best place in Thailand to see Asian elephants that are still completely wild, and 200+ elephants live in the park. The group from our guesthouse that toured the day before we did saw an elephant...but alas we did not, despite seeing much evidence of elephants in the form of trampled forest and dung. As it is breeding season they are covering a lot of ground in the park right now and sightings are commonplace. We were hopeful, but quite honestly, it was such a fun day we didn't mind.

The next day was a half day tour, and we were taken to a delightful spring for a swim. There's no beach nearby, the park is in Northeastern Thailand, so it's the best place to go cool off...and there wasn't a foreigner in sight, we were surrounded by picnicking Thai families. Exquisite crystalline waters, it felt so great! Before long we were invited to join a random Thai family for some food, they were feeding us the spiciest food possible and cackling away, surprised that we liked it, and pouring us shots of Thai rice whisky. One of those magical moments of connection with no common language at all - so special.

After the spring Mr Nine took us to a very special place... There is a temple just near the park boundary that is built above a network of deep underground caves. I have yet to hear of anyone that knows of it, it's not in any guidebook weve heard of. I have a hunch that Greenleaf makes generous contributions to the temple for the privilege of bringing his small groups down there. We walked down a long steep scary ladder/stairway into the darkness and found an expansive network of quiet, still, warm caves. Walking around just with headlamps I felt like I was on another planet. We felt privileged to visit such a place.

Mr.Nine spent nearly an hour with us down there, showing us how to walk softly so as not to disturb the community of intriguing insects and the bat colony. (There are actually three different bat species in these caves) The monks have set up many altars and shrines throughout the caves, and there is a tiny room that you need to crawl into with a damp rug where the monks go for a 7-hour seated meditation in the still darkness. I wasn't scared down there - it was extremely peaceful. We were introduced to an enormous tarantula about the size of my fist...we needed to be very slow and cautious, not because she is dangerous but because she's very shy. Apparently she's lived there for years and would never jump at someone, but sudden movements or heavy footsteps make her shrink back into her big fuzzy white nest.

After this we left to drive through endless dusty crappy roads through farmland until we got to a hill, and walked to the edge of a cornfield. We stood about 50m under the opening to another cave, and right on schedule, at 6:20, a shockingly beautiful ribbon of two million wrinkle-lipped bats flew out. The sky was clear, the dazzling full moon was out and as the sky changed to darkness we stood for a half hour watching this endless cohesive stream of bats. Mr.Nine had brought a container of pineapple for us and Jon, Pedro from Columbia, Henrik from Denmark and I just stood transfixed watching the bats. The soundtrack of beating wings and cicadas was beautiful.

It happened to be a major festival day in Thailand - it's actually the reason we postponed our trip to Chiang Mai and timed Khao Yai as we did. Later that night we were just hanging out having a beer with Henrik and Pedro when our guesthouse hosts invited us into Pak Chong to join them. We were stoked! The festival was happening on the grounds around the temple...we expected it to be rather austere. Quite the opposite! It was actually pretty rowdy for a Buddhist festival!

Fireworks, midway games, monks handing out blessings everywhere. An endless lineup of carts serving tasty snacks. A muay thai ring with a huge crowd watching people fight. A small karaoke stage. A big stage with a beauty pageant of local girls?! This was seriously fun people watching. We were the only foreigners in sight. Lot of firecrackers and fireworks. Awesome.

The next morning we said our goodbyes at Greenleaf and took a class 3 train (under $1 fare) for 3 hours to Ayuthaya. A fun ride sardined in with hundreds of Thais. It made me really aware of how cold and detached North Americans are with strangers....it was a very social train ride. The nice guy next to me shared his totally new and unfamiliar fruit with us, and helped me when I bought a pomelo - vendors walk the aisle nonstop selling tasty food and drinks. The pomelo, a citrus sort of like a green grapefruit the size of a large melon, was peeled, so I thought I was in the clear. The next layer of skin is a very fibrous membrane and I seriously could not get through it. Buddy showed me The Way, and we had a good giggle.

So glad we came to Ayuthaya....this modest city of 137,000 people was once a very powerful city, the capital of Siam in the 1300s, and it's been very cool. It was a long sweaty day in the sun walking for hours through the ruins and visiting temples and I feel like I have a better understanding of the history of where I am.

In 3 hours we board a sleeper train bound for Chiang Mai, 12 hours to the north. We're stoked for Chiang Mai for lots of reasons, and looking forward to a respite from the heat.