walking not safe, hitch-hike better

This past weekend I took a trip to Kao Yai National Park with a large group of people. During the trip we had 8 people, then 14 people, then 4 people as groups split off to enjoy different parts of the park. We went camping (in an actual tent and slept on the ground). Im not a very outdoorsy kind of person, but I really enjoyed the trip. Luckily, we had a restroom area, so I was able to do things like wash my face and brush my teeth with the comforts of a running faucet. As always, practice makes perfect with squat toilets... and I did a lot of practicing. The main attractions of Kao Yai are waterfalls, and we got to see many of them during our day of hiking on Saturday. Josh and Steve got leeched (literally), but I somehow managed to escape the suckers! We did see many deer on the trip (I thought of you, Dad!) and a troop of monkeys (who purged our campsite while we were hiking).

We hired a guide to walk us around the area by the campsite, but he ended up just leading us through the well marked path through the woods. We started passing old men and women on the hike, a sight that made us feel silly for hiring a guide. But nonetheless, he braved the leeches for us- and we paid him 300 baht for his service.

How can falling water be so beautiful? One of my favorite things to do at the waterfalls was to pick a cluster of water at the top and follow it all the way down the waterfall to see how it breaks apart on the drop. I could sit and do this for hours!

Many places had signs for "No Swimming"... and even though I put on my cutest face and asked the guide, the rule didnt bend. Lesson learned: leeches. I often saw a "Beware of crocodiles" and "no swimming" signs together. Seems like you would just need to put a sign about crocodiles to deter people from swimming... but maybe not?

Our guide is pictured above (with appropriate leech gear). He seems like he is having a good time watching us admire the waterfall. We walked the 3 kilometers back to the campsite and decided to go exploring on our own.

Our task: Get to the visitor center... 10 kilometers down the road. There are no taxis in the national park. We could walk... but we had been told the night before by our songtau driver that "walking not safe, hitch-hike better." We started walking down the road and stuck-out-our-thumb in Thai. The Thai way of asking to be picked up is palm faced down extend fingers and curl them towards the palm. The US version of come here with palm faced up means something inappropriate in Thai (but still not sure what it means). A truck stops to pick us up...
driver "Where are you going?"
us "visitors center"
driver "I go to waterfall"
us "OK"

So we hitched a ride to another waterfall. BEST IDEA EVER. This waterfall was gigantically majestic.

We couldnt make it all the way to the bottom of the waterfall because the stairs ended here. The never-ending stairs were extremely steep and not to code at all! They are Thai-sized, so my foot (I wear a size six) was deeper than the step.

I thought the arrows before this bridge were great. You see them everywhere, reminding foreigners that people also walk on the wrong side of the sidewalk in addition to driving on the left side of the road. This bridge looked like a patchwork quilt. A really poorly done patchwork quilt with boards just nailed down over holes in the bridge. Made me feel pretty safe.

There are lots of these kinds of trees in the national park. We call them dandelion trees because they look like dandelions when you see them from afar on top of a mountain. It feels like you should just be able to blow the leaves away with a big breath. I guess we can see them above all other trees because they are pretty much the tallest trees I have ever seen.

After we left the waterfall, we hitched a ride to the visitors center with the same people who picked us up earlier. It honestly felt like I was on a rollercoaster during the ride- he drove waaay too fast for four people to be sitting in the back of his pickup, but it was fun! We slowed down to a stop at one point because a troop of monkeys had decided to hang out in the middle of the road. We had to drive AROUND them as they wouldnt move out of our way. Once we got to the visitors center, we ordered lunch (or early dinner). This was one of my first chances to order food in Thai outside of BKK, and I ordered sen-lek muu naam (or pork and noodle soup). The food was excellent. We signed up for a night safari tour but ended up having to wait for 3 hours for the tour to leave. We used this time to develop a closer bond between the four of us (Johnny, Steve, Josh, myself). Learned a lot, told a lot. Then a gecko peed on me. seriously. What are the odds of that happening? I was sitting there and felt drops on my arm. Turned on the light and sure enough there was a lizard on the top of the gazebo. It smelled REALLY bad. The night safari was a let-down because we only saw deer. We saw A LOT of deer. Then we started counting and reached 67 by the end of the tour. 67 deer? ugh. We hitch-hiked back to the campsite in the back of a jeep-size car. We practiced a bit of Thai before bed.

The National Park didnt have any food for sell after 5pm, so resisting the urge to snack on non-nutritional foods was pretty hard. I did however manage to just eat enough to satiate my hunger. We slept 4 people to a 4 person tent. I think all tents that say 4 people had a misprint and meant to write 3 people. The first night it POURED down rain which kept me up most of the night... probably because I had to use the restroom, but didnt want to go out in the rain. Also, we left our shoes outside the tent, so that was fun the next morning. All in all, it cost me 110 baht to rent a tent and a sleeping bag for a night... less than four dollars- score! The second night was much better (I had an extra blanket to keep warm), and I slept a lot. Had chicken fried rice (khaaw-phat gai) for breakfast and then we hitched a ride out of the park. The guy actually took us all the way to the train station (almost 60 kilometers!). At one point we stopped on the side of the road and thought he was making us get out of the truck. We hopped out and looked around like 'What the heck are we supposed to do now'... but turns out that he was just waiting for his friend. He just said FRIEND. which I thought meant ONE person, but before we knew it there were three others cars around us. One car had his friend. One car had a professor from Thammasat (weird, I know). The other car had a Thai family (with a baby on the front-seat passengers lap)... we thought these people were like 'hey there are white people on the side of the road, lets see whats up'.... I have no idea how all of these people knew each other, but we got back in the truck and rode the rest of the way into town with each of the three cars leading the caravan for some length of the journey. We pulled up with four cars to the bus station. Sometimes things really cant be translated, and you just have to smile and say thank you (khoop khun kha).

Lesson Learned this week:
Life doesnt stop or slow down for a day because you put on a sad face. Youve got to choose to be happy. Once you choose to be happy, you realize that true happiness doesnt respond to wishes. True happiness is a product of work.