This is a national park that is definitely not set up to be super easy for foreign tourists. It is an easy drive from Bangkok, so it is a common vacation spot for Thais. Having my own transportation would have been really nice around here. (Learn to drive a scooter, Laurel). My amigo Victor joined me for this leg of the journey and it was really nice to have a travel partner. We went with a tour to see the park, and this included 1.5 days of getting to see the highlights of a very undeveloped and spread out area.
The first day consisted of a 5km trek in the jungle, some smaller waterfalls, and most importantly, a wild elephant!!!! Various people in the group had spent a lot of the day talking about the elephants or asking the guide if he thought we would see one. He seemed skeptical because they hadn't been seen in several days. We're heading home, just a little bit before sunset, and alll of a sudden the truck comes to a stop! A lone male elephant has decided to stand on the road to eat some tree leaves. We stayed in the truck and watched this guy munch on some food, cross the road and eventually wander up into the jungle again. It was so exciting!!!
This was particularly exciting for me because the elephant was wild. Many tourists I have talked to have had some sort of elephant experience. This usually means riding them around for an hour or so as part of a tour. To anyone planning this in the future, I seriously urge you to do some research on who you are giving money to if it involves any sort of animal experience. Yes, its really great to get a picture of you laying on a tiger or riding on an elephant, but its also important to consider the quality of life for that animal and how it is treated so that the organization can get your money. Wild elephants spend sixteen hours a day eating, four hours a day sleeping and the final four eating and walking around. Even if you ignore the way that the elephants are usually trained (broken), when they are used as work animals they do not have enough time to eat an adequate amount. And it's hard for me to ignore the way that they are trained. This is the reason why I have avoided any of these types of tours and will be waiting until I am in northern Thailand to visit an elephant refuge that rescues abused and rehabilitates them. It allows people to have experiences with elephants while treating them properly and making sure that they do not work an extraordinary number of hours per day. I have talked with a couple of fellow travelers who simply did not know this was an issue to think about. Please please please, as with at home, please think about the organizations you are supporting with your money.
Alright, step back off the soapbox. Another really amazing thing we got to see at Khao Yai was a sunset near the entrance to some caves filled with bats. As it got dark, we got to watch and hear thousands of bats exit the cave all at once. They're noisy little things, but they eat bugs. Totally ok in my book.
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| That one cloud is bats! |
With one more day to explore in the Khao Yai area, we hired a taxi and went to two wineries and a dairy farm, Farm Chokchai. At the farm we missed the morning tour, so we wandered around until someone politely told us that we were in an area we were not supposed to be in. It was interesting to see that the farm sold both fresh milk and pasturized lactose free milk. I don't think SE Asians like lactose-containing foods much. I miss cheese soooooooo much.
Supatra Winery was very small, and it definitely didn't get much foreign business. The taxi driver tried repeatedly to politely imply that it was small and not worth my time. I made him take us anyways, and I was pretty happy I did. The wine was much cheaper than the other winery, I got to make some kitten friends, and they had this really strange unfiltered grape juice. We also got an incredibly sweet bottle of red wine to drink back at the hotel. Khao Yai Winery felt a lot more like the fancy wineries I have been to in California. We did a tasting of three wines, and apparently they serve red wine chilled here. Odd. Once again, we missed the tour and wandered around until someone told us to go back towards the tasting room. She also told us that the tour was in Thai, so it didn't really matter much that we missed it I guess.
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| Supatra Winery |
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| Biggest bottles ever! |
The next day we were up early for a couple of bus rides that would take us to the border and on to Cambodia.
What did the grape say when he was crushed? Nothing, he just let out a little wine.