After a couple days in the hut, we decided we were ready to return to modern amenities, and booked a guesthouse down at Karon Beach. But before heading down that way, we drove a few hours north east into the Phang Nga Province to Khao Sok National Park, one of the last remaining remnants of Thailand rainforest - home to gibbons, elephants, tapir, tigers, and the giant Rafflesia flower. We hiked the main waterfall trail, but being the dry season, there wasn't much to see in the way of waterfalls, but that also meant we didn't have to deal with the abundant leeches that plague the trails at other times of the year! We did get to see giant bamboo, huge trees, and numerous species of lizards and birds... but were unsuccessful in locating the giant rare Rafflesia flower, which only blooms for one day. Overall a nice hike, though! |  Bamboo dwarfs Brian |
 |  |
We got settled in down at Karon Beach, which was quite a change of scenery from the quiet Mai Khao beach (see pic). The area was teeming with tourists, primarily Russians and Europeans, and we were constantly stalked by tuk-tuks, which look like tiny red pick-up trucks here (see pic). On our way to play some Dino Putt-Putt, I was finally able to snap a picture of the baby elephant street begging (see pic). The animal was surrounded by tourists eager to give money to feed the elephant and have their picture taken - if you look closely, you can see the scared baby elephant in the middle. We also passed a funny sign advertising a performance by "The King of Thai Elvis" (see pic) - I guess he's alive after all! :)
 Tuk-Tuks |  Karon Beach |
 Elephant begging |  Thai Elvis |
The following day we decided to visit Khao Phra Thaeo National Park, which is home to the Gibbon Rehabilitation Center (see pic). Many street beggars here use baby gibbons as a gimmick to get money (they shoot the mothers in the wild and steal the babies), but once the animals reach maturity, they often become violent and are abused and abandoned. This center takes in these gibbons and rehabilitates them so that they can hopefully be returned to the wild again one day. After touring the Gibbon area, we continued on the main trail up to Khao Phra Thaeo waterfall, which wasn't very impressive, but we did see this really cool giant vine! (see pic)
 Gibbon |  Giant Vine |
We got up early the next day for our self-paddle sea kayak caves tour in Phang Nga with Sea Canoe, and headed out on a large boat with about 15 other people. We arrived at the site and set off in our kayak (see pic), passing macaque monkeys in the wild and eagles soaring overhead. When we got to the cave, however, it turned out to be so jammed with other tourists that our kayak got stuck; we had to get out and swim through the pitch-black cave amongst a huge claustrophobic cluster of canoes to finally reach the mangrove lagoon on the other side (see pic). It was an interesting experience though! And we did see some really cool walking fish hanging out on the mangrove branches. (see pic) Sea Canoe Traffic |  Walking Fish |
We spent our last day in Phuket on a day-long snorkeling tour on a speed boat out to Phi Phi Island, Maya Bay (where "The Beach" was filmed, see pic), and Monkey Beach. Again, the vast number of tourists everywhere really detracted from the scenery, but we did get to see the caves where locals harvest birds nests for "birds nest" soup (an Asian delicacy), lots of baby jellyfish (and lots of barbs that stung us in the water), and the "wild" monkeys on the beach eating bags of chips and drinking from bottles people had left behind (really sad, actually). We did stop for lunch at a relatively un-touristed beach, though, and were able to do some nice snorkeling there. Overall, to us it seems that Phuket has become so over-touristed that it really takes away from the overall experience of the place. But now we're off to Boracay Island in the Philippines to do some comparisons!
Oh, and just in case you were wondering, the Austin IRS-building plane crash did in fact make the front page of the Thai paper. (see pic)
Posts
