Skatbos in Thailand

Leech socks on, ready to trek!

A few weeks ago we had another AMAZING adventure.  We took a bus with 5 of our friends to Pak Chong.  This town seems to have little to offer, but close by is the Khao Yai National Park.  It has been listed as one of the best parks in the world.  It covers 2168 sq km and is covered in jungle.
We stayed at a guesthouse that offers Jungle Trek day trips into the park.  We signed up and were up and ready at 7:15am on a Saturday!  Now in Thailand we always were sandals and we didn’t realize that we needed shoes for our hike.  SO, we had to pick through a pile of old shoes, left by other tourists, to find appropriate footwear.  Now I wear a size 10 womens shoe…..nobody in Asia has feet as big as me.  I ended up with a size 7.5 shoe, pretty funny!

Jungle fun with friends (Sally, Nadia, Andy, Amy, Meg)

When we first arrived in the park we stopped and were given leech socks.  It is the rainy season in Thailand and leeches are waiting on every leaf to find a body to cling to.  Adding even very thin socks to my already tight shoes made things a little more challenging, but better to have cramped toes than leeches!

After we were appropriately dressed for the jungle we jumped back in the trucks and headed further into the park.  It wasn’t far until the truck stopped and we were told to “GET OUT.”  Across the road was a wild elephant slowly making his way through the tall grass.  We were all so excited and

Meg with a machete and hat made of jungle foliage....scary huh?!?!?

we weren’t even in the jungle yet!

When we finally got to the jungle we realized this wasn’t your typical tourist hike.  Our guide has a machete and we started hacking our way through the jungle!  Within the first 30

Python, our first find of the day.

minutes we found an enormous Python, tons of monkeys, gibbons, a hornbill and a monitor lizard.  The monkeys were very curious about us and made a lot of noise.  The guide told us that the monkeys were nervous because of the python.

Hornbill, beautiful and a lot bigger than I thought.

We trekked through mud pits and ducked under vines and jungle brush.  Our guide was some kind of Tarzan, Eagle Scout, GI Joe combination.  We could barely keep up with him and he would stop suddenly, listen to the jungle sounds, and start chopping through the jungle brush with his machete.

Enormous insect about to be placed on my NECK!

At one point he found a HUGE millipede and picked it up.  He kept making people hold in and eventually it got to me.  I let it crawl on my hand thinking to myself, “I’m pretty sure these are poisonous.”  Before I knew it

Tim attempting a balancing act over an elephant mud pit!

the guide had taken it off my hand and put it on the back of my neck.  I squatted down and just kept saying, “Take it off, take it off, take it off….PLEASE take it off.”  Then Tim chimed in, “TAKE IT OFF HER!”  He finally took it off.  Nobody got hurt, he was really messing with us and he LOVED IT!

Checking for mites.

A little while later he found a hole in the dirt.  He got a stick and started poking it in the hole that could have fit a snake.  Then he pulled out a HUGE scorpion and just picked in up by the tail.  He tried to put it on everybody and definitely got cussed at.  Quite a few people held the scary monster but nobody got hurt and we put it safely back in the scorpion lair.

Leonardo's waterfall

We saw cinnamon trees, ate cinnamon fruit, and hiked to a viewing tower for lunch.  After lunch we were back in the trucks.  Our next stop was the Haew Suwat waterfall.  If you have seen the movie “The Beach” this is the

Tim's pic of the falls...he's good!

waterfall that Leonardo DiCaprio jumps off.  We thought the day couldn’t get better, but the jungle is full of surprises!

Our guide told us that someone had spotted a wild elephant and her baby.

Tourists disturbing and elephant family outing.

We sped through the park and stopped when we found 13 wild elephants on the road!  We kept our distance and one of the females kept walking toward the trucks as if to say, “we are trying to enjoy a family outing,

AMAZING!

please leave us alone!”  After a few minutes of watching them in awe, we left to watch the sunset over the mountains and returned to our guesthouse thrilled but exhausted!

Megs and Tim

The photographer, dreaming he is actually on a National Geographic assignment.