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Entrance to Khao Yai

We spent three nights at the Khao Yai Garden Lodge. Owned and run by a 60+ German called Klaus it was a weird place. The rooms were a bit quirky, and the grounds seemed to be in a constant state of reconstruction. Gerry reckoned he was spending every penny he earned on expanding the place hoping eventually to generate a decent living. In any case while we were there there was a constant stream of guests. Some like us were independent travellers, but many were tour groups. In addition to providing accommodation and food to his captive audience (we were on the main road to the National Park, ten kms or so from the nearest town), he also offered a swimming pool and tours of the national park. He charged US$20 per person for a 1.5 day tour. It seems almost impossible to take a tour without a guide. Jan believes that the National Park conspires with people like Klaus to make the park difficult to navigate for the foreign tourist so that they are forced to take a guide. Trails were not well marked, maps were not clear and so on. The guided tour was pleasant but not great value for money.

We got on well with our travel companions who were the Burke family from Ventura, California (Donna, Doug, Eric, and Spencer) and an American-Japanese couple, Ginny Parker and Gen. Ginny had just quit her job as a reporter for Time magazine in Tokyo to take a graduate program in Creative Writing at Johns Hopkins on a full scholarship.

The landscape

The monkey

The searcher

One of the most memorable parts of the tour was an early evening excursion to see bats. We drove into the park and to a clearing where we stood around waiting for the so-called million bat cave to empty. We were a little sceptical, but it gave us chance to talk to some of our fellow tourists. Suddenly a cry went up and our guide set off at a run saying they are over here. We followed him down the trail we had driven in on and suddenly high up in the sky you could see a band of creatures flying in a kind of wave formation silhouetted against the fading light. What was extraordinary about it was how many bats there were as they just kept coming and coming and coming. Was it a million? It sure seemed like it could be. We stood and watched for at least 20 minutes. Afterwards we laughed at the way our guide ran us all down the trail, as if the show would be over if we didn’t hurry up. It truly was spectacular. Sadly photos of such an event are difficult to say the least.

Park waterfall

The following day we toured more of the park, catching glimpses of spoonbills perched on branches high, high up in the trees, seeing monkeys on the road and waterfalls, and getting to see a huge lizard. Two of our party also got to see a cobra. Driving along the park road, we all saw what we thought was a stick, but the young Japanese guy and the Californian both thought they saw it move, yelled to the driver to stop, and ran at full tilt back up the road. By the time we slowpokes got there the cobra, which it indeed was, had high-tailed it into the woods.