Khao Yai- Thailand's oldest National Park

Khao Yai

After the pawaw training in Surin five of us took a trip to Kao Yai national park.  We took the full day tour which started with a drive up into the mountains in a songtao.  Song means two and tao rows: a songtao is a tuck with two benches running down the bed and a roof.  It is essentially a minibus used for cheap transport in a city, or for a tour trip like this in Thailand.  We enter the park and pull off at a scenic view.  Here we put on leach socks and see our first monkey, a pig tailed maqauc. Carly, you are right, it does look like it has a toupee.

 Here Kevin demonstrates what happens when you don't properly wear your leech socks: LEECH!

  We also see a few beautiful green birds.  Into the truck and deeper into the park.  We see a hornbill fly over.

  Next we hear loud hooting, the truck suddenly stops and we file out of the truck bed and into the forest like soldiers except we are not hunting an enemy, we are looking for the gibbons we hear in the canopy.  We see them.  They are white haired gibbons swinging through the tree tops.  Gibbons are not monkeys and they hardly ever come out of the trees. Here is the crowned gibbon family.  We were not able to get a good shot of the white haired family.

 Next we visited the nice visitor center where the electricity was out and many of the displays used computers,so not too much to see there. Next, a long trek through the forest. Our hike through the forest took us to see a giant scorpion,

 we asked our guide why he does not sting and he said “he is a pet”  the sting is small like an ant.  We saw another family of gibbons black with white “crowns”, another hornbill, giant trees, 

giant mushrooms, a birdwing butterfly, and cicadas.  Lunch was served in reusable Tupperware; steamed vegan tofu and veggies. Yum!  Great to see our guides were trying to keep the environment clean.  We then went to a beautiful waterfall featured in the movie “the beach”.  I don’t know if I ever saw that movie.  I remember reading the book when I was here in Thailand in 2000.  I finished an excellent book, "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down.”  Highly recommended.  We drove around for a few hours looking for wild elephants, we didn't see them, but we did see some barking deer and then, on our way home, we saw a sun bear  up in a tree, high over the forest busting up a beehive.  It was the coolest!!!  After that we saw ribbons of bats flying through the sky after emerging from nearby caves.  Awesome trip. I did not take these photos so thank you to Carly, facebook, and google, for allowing me to not have to carry a camera.