When I was living in Thailand, I went with a few colleagues from the school to Khao Yai National Park during a weekend. The park is at 4 hours from Pattaya, and I read that a lot of people during the weekend were coming from Bangkok (just to get out from the town, but, once you started a trail, there is nobody. Thai people don’t walk, or they just follow the most accessible trail ).
It is the oldest park in Thailand and the most visited. It is covering 2168 sq/km, and it incorporates one of the most extensive monsoon forests remaining in mainland Asia, which is why it was named a Unesco World Heritage site.
We arrived Friday night in our hotel, and the name was actually quite interesting: Sida Hotel (which means Aids), but apparently, it was the name of the area where we were. The next morning after managing how to go there (and without any car). We had to bargain to get a kind of taxi/shuttle to get there (which took us almost 1hour and a half!!!), but the landscape was beautiful.
We went first to the Visitor Center, where they told us to take a guide (people get lost in the jungle), but we decided to follow their trail (ok to be honest, we were not very sure), and what can happen? I don’t’ know what would have been the worst case, meeting an elephant or a tiger??? Actually, we just met a roaster!!!
We walk in the jungle and up to a lot of trees down to Nong Pak Chi Wildlife Watching Tower, and we finished with a little trail just near the Visitor Center, where you can see that elephants are just passing through the trails and destroy quite everything!!!
When we got out of the park, we saw a lot of monkeys, and I was so grateful to see elephants (I didn’t have time to take my camera ), they are just so beautiful!!! And you now in this kind of place in Thailand, they will live happily with no harassment from the tourists and the Thai people who want to make money on them.
A wonderful weekend to remember!!!!
