Khao Yai National Park
I've sort of being putting off posting this for a bit because I think it makes me sound like whatever the Kiwi equivalent of a Whinging Pom is, but it is part of the trip so here goes. I was at Khao Yai on the 21 January......
Thailand is sort of my rest break in the trip, a country that was supposed to be cheap to sit around and not do much of anything. I'm not very good at that though, so as a break from my break I decided to go to Khao Yai National Park for a bit. I had been there only once before, in 2006, and I didn't think overly highly of it then but I had only been there a short time (due to heavy rains every day) so I hadn't really given it a good go and over the years its appeal had grown in my head. In fact I kept recommending people to go there if in Bangkok because it is super-easy to get to and (it was) very very cheap. In 2006 I found the staff at the information centre to be absolutely terrible, making you feel as if you were wasting their time by being there, and it is exactly the same now. I have had bad experiences and service here and there in my travels, as you do, but nowhere have I come across such a constant and consistently bad level of customer service from all members of staff as I found at Khao Yai. I really liked being out in the park, walking around looking for animals, but whenever I had to deal with the people in the information centre I just kept wanting to bang all their heads together. I definitely won't be going back to Khao Yai again. The following blog post is not very complimentary, it is maybe 90% complaining and 10% animals, so read on at your peril.
Khao Yai is still easy to get to from Bangkok, so that's a good start. You just take a bus from the Mo Chit 2 bus terminal to the town of Pak Chong. I think this is about three hours away, or maybe three and a half. I lost track because the bus broke down on the way, so everyone was sitting on the side of the road for two hours or so until it got sorted. From Pak Chong there is a songthaeow (like a truck taxi) which runs to the entrance gate of the park, twenty-odd kilometres away, and then it is another fourteen kilometres to the HQ. If you're on foot you have to hitch this last stretch but this is easy because the park is busy and most people arrive by car. In fact the park is too busy! I have heard local birders say they never go to Khai Yai anymore because it is too crowded. Since I was last here the road leading up to the gate has become lined with dozens of guesthouses and hotels and restaurants. Most backpackers stay outside the park and use a tour to get around. This is fine if you're just there for one day (like most of them probably are) but you need to pay the 400 Baht entry fee every day if staying outside, so if you're planning on being there for a while it makes more sense to stay inside the park at the various accommodations provided.
Last time I was here I stayed in the dormitory, which at that time was just 50 Baht a night (less than $2). There were no beds or anything fancy like that, just the floor, but that's fine by me. The dorms were right at the HQ which is where the only restaurants/food stalls are as well, and where most of the trails started at or were close to. So that's what I was planning on doing this time, and staying maybe a week or so. I arrived at the visitor centre and walked up to the counter and said hello. I waited patiently for some acknowledgement from the three staff members sitting there, and waited some more, then a bit more. Finally one of them decided I'd been there for the required five minutes and drawled “how many people?” “Just one,” I said. “800 Baht a room,” he said, in the most bored tone I've heard in a long time. “Er, and how much are the dorms?” “No dorms, 800 Baht” “Oh, last time I was here I stayed in the dorms...” “No dorms, 800 Baht” “That's a bit expensive for me....what happened to the dorms?” “No dorms. You can camp, 200 Baht” “Oh, Ok, where are the camp sites?” “Here” – he pointed on a map – “seven kilometres” “Hmm, do they have food there?” “Yes” (he liked short answers, this guy). “And do they have tents, because I don't have one?” “Yes”. I didn't want to pay 800 Baht for a room because this was meant to be a cheap excursion, so I went outside and flagged down a motorbike to take me to the campsite. The motorbike driver was an American named Chris who was staying at the second campsite, not the same one as me. The next day I wished I'd stayed at his campsite because that night a wild elephant had spent the entire night there! (Even worse, Chris moved to my campsite for the next night, after I'd left it for a room, and the same elephant came to that campsite! So I missed it twice in a row!). At the campsite I discovered that the only food available was pot noodles and coffee, and that's why I only stayed there for that night before moving to the expensive rooms back by the HQ – the food at the stalls by HQ is terrible but at least it is real food, and I could hardly be expected to walk 7km from the campsite every time I needed to eat! It cost 200 Baht to stay at the campsite – and then they also charged a 30 Baht camping fee! Basically that's like paying for a hotel room and then having to pay an extra fee for staying at that hotel. Just ridiculous. Then there's all the add-ons you have to pay for individually, things like sleeping bag, blanket, ground mat, etc etc. I ended up paying more for a crappy tent at a monkey-infested campsite with no food than I did for my room in Bangkok! I would have still stayed there for the entire time but with no food available it just didn't make sense! On the bright side, there were lots of nightjars chasing moths above the campsite that evening. I don't know which species they were but you can really see why they are called “night-hawks” – they look like falcons zooming around in the darkening sky. I tried doing some spot-lighting along the road after dark (there are no trails near the campsites) but it was interrupted by the Night Safari trucks haring past every five minutes so I gave up. (More on the Night Safari trucks coming up later).
In the morning I did some birding along the road and found a flock of Swinhoe's minivets and two pairs of fairy bluebirds, some green imperial pigeons flying past, and a female red junglefowl on the road. Chris passed by on his bike and told me about the elephant in the campsite and showed me a photo of it. Then I packed up and hitched back to the HQ where I asked for a room. At 800 Baht I was just going to get the room for one night so I would have all of that day and then half of the next before going back to Bangkok. Not long at all but I didn't want to be throwing money away. However the room was only 560 Baht, so I decided I would probably stay a bit longer because the food there is cheap at least, so it sort of evens out. The girl at the desk said I could just come back in the morning and pay for the next night if I wanted to stay more than one night. Then she gave me the key and said it is just up the road and to the left. While I was there I asked about the Night Safari drives. I didn't know how much was ever seen on the drives but it was probably worth doing one or two just in case (I expected sambar and muntjac to be the main species seen, both of which are easy to see wandering around the HQ all day long, but maybe also elephants and civets and hopefully lorises). The Night Safari was 500 Baht I was told. “Per person?” I asked, “or per truck?” “500 for the truck” “And how many people can fit in the truck?” “Ten” “So if there's ten people in the truck, they pay fifty Baht each?” “Yes” [I was being very specific with my questions so as to avoid any confusion]. I asked if anyone was booked on already for that night because I didn't want to pay for the whole truck of course, and they said no but I could put my name down and if I came back at 5 or 6pm they would be able to tell me if anyone else was going that night. I knew there would be, because the trucks were passing me continuously the night before and there were lots of people here. So, with that sorted I walked up the road to find my room. I came to where the dorms are (the ones they don't have.....) but that wasn't it; I came to another building but that wasn't it either; I kept going to a junction with a guardpost and showed them my key number. “Oh, yes,” he says, “that's about a kilometre down this road”. The room turned out to be in a block of rooms about 1.5km from the HQ (but at least it wasn't 7km!).
There are lots of trails through the forest at Khao Yai, but you are required to have (i.e. pay for) a guide on all of them except for two short ones. I asked why and the response was because the trails are very long and it is very dangerous in the forest. I do understand when national parks make guides mandatory because most visitors have no clue what they are doing in the forest, but for those people who do know what they're doing a paid guide is at best a waste of money and at worst a total hindrance. The bad side of guides being a requirement is that people who don't need them just go ahead and do the trails anyway without telling anyone, and then if anything happens to them (say, an elephant stomping on them) nobody knows they are out there. I have done the trails at Khao Yai before (in torrential rain!) and they are very basic to follow so after putting my stuff in my room I just went ahead and did Trail 6 without telling anyone. This is the trail which used to be called Trail 1 (they change the trail numbers every so often to confuse birders reading old trip reports). I saw Siamese fireback pheasants on here in 2006 so it seemed like a good idea. In a nice change from 2006 when in places the forest floor was almost literally seething with leeches, this time I saw absolutely none because it was so dry. I wore my leech socks on the first walk but then didn't bother after that. I didn't do the whole of Trail 6 on this day because it was a late start and I don't do trails to reach the end anyway, I just do them to see what there is along the way. Also I got turned back by an elephant. There were some really nice birds before that though, starting with puff-throated and Abbott's babblers and a green-billed malkoha. Best bird of the day was a male blue pitta pottering around in the leaf litter. It is always good to see a pitta and even better when it is a species of pitta you haven't seen before. It was only a very brief sighting but I stood there and waited in case he came back. After about ten minutes a white-rumped shama flew in and landed exactly where the pitta had been. As soon as the shama started scratching around in the leaves the pitta came darting back in, chased the shama off, and then spent several minutes in view. A bit further along the trail I came across a big flock of white-crested laughing thrushes working their way across a slope, tossing leaves around as they searched for insects on the ground. There were some other birds in the trees above them, including a black-winged cuckoo-shrike. Further along again, I stopped to watch a group of hair-crested drongos feeding on fruit in the top of a tree, where they were joined by another (or the same) green-billed malkoha and then an absolutely stunning emerald cuckoo, glowing the most brilliant green in the sun. Actually I don't know if the emerald cuckoo might not be a better bird than the blue pitta! The elephant came next. I didn't see the elephant but given the thickness of the forest along a lot of that trail that is probably just as well, because if I could see it then it would have been too close! I was looking at some birds in the top of a tree – I can't even remember what they were, black-crested bulbuls I think – and I heard a deep rumbling, like a distant motorbike, but I knew that was no motorbike. I don't know how far an elephant's rumbling carries but it sounded close. Really close. I got up on a big fallen tree to see if I could see anything over the understorey. The last thing you want to do in thick forest is surprise an elephant, but at the same time it's probably not the best idea to let it know you're right there. Suddenly the top of a small tree not more than a hundred feet away started shaking violently. That was definitely too close for my comfort! I decided to head back the way I had come! That was fine though, because on the way back I saw an orange-breasted trogon and some sultan tits.
Back at the HQ I returned to the visitor centre to check on the Night Safari situation, and was told that nobody else was doing it that night so I would have a private car just for me and it would cost 500 Baht and it would pick me up direct from my room. “There's nobody at all going?” I asked, a little incredulously. “No, just you.” “How can there be no-one going tonight? Last night there were trucks passing me continuously and there are still heaps of people here” “Oh, last night there was a big group here. Today there is nobody doing it. So 500 Baht”“500 is too expensive,” I said, “are you sure there is nobody at all doing a Night Safari tonight? “No, nobody.” It was a bit weird but if nobody is doing one then nobody is doing one. I said I would try again the next night because I didn't want to pay for the whole truck by myself. As it turned out everything I was just told at the visitor centre was a bald-faced lie to make me pay the whole 500 Baht! (To go along with the lie about there being no dorms any more, which Chris said they had told him as well). [I should point out I suppose that 500 Baht isn't a lot of money in real terms – about NZ$18 or so – but budgeting on a long trip is very different to budgeting on a short trip of a few weeks or whatever, and also you have to judge prices on the costs of the country involved, not in terms of what something would cost in your own country. For example, in NZ I would pay $25 for a dorm bed because that's just what it costs, but in Thailand there's no way on earth I would pay that much]. I had decided to do my own spot-lighting on foot of course, and I thought the Nature Trail just by the HQ would be a good place because the whole trail was paved but it passed through forest which looked good for lorises. After dark I left my room to walk to the HQ area. Just up the road a Night Safari truck drove past, spotlight waving all over the place, two people in the back. OK, those people had booked for a private drive I thought, that's fine. Five minutes later another truck drove past with two people in the back. Not a coincidence. I got to the HQ and there were three Night Safari trucks sitting outside the visitor centre with about a dozen people all standing there waiting to leave. I went inside and said to the guy at the counter “this morning I came in to ask about the Night Safaris.....” He interrupted with “How many people are you?” Just me” “500 Baht” “No, it's 500 Baht per truck. I came in today and asked if anyone else was going and was told nobody at all is doing the Night Safari. I've just been passed by two trucks and there's a dozen people outside going out.” He just shrugged and walked off. And that was about the standard level of service I kept getting there. I went off round the Nature Trail and didn't see anything, but after that I stopped in the area by the food stalls in case any animals had been attracted by scraps – and I finally broke my porcupine curse! Like slow lorises, porcupines are really common all over southeast Asia and yet somehow I had never managed to see one. I don't know how, but there it is. Tonight there was a Malayan crested porcupine cruising around. As soon as the light went on him all his spines went up and he scuttled a short distance, then stopped and sniffed the air trying to tell what I was. I moved closer again and when I got too near he scuttled away again and stopped. I've only ever seen relaxed porcupines in zoos, the noise an annoyed one makes when running with its quills up is amazing. Its a whirring buzzing sort of noise like one of those little wind-up toy cars that run along the floor. Chris said he reckoned they sound just like a rattlesnake (he's from Arizona).
The next morning the early birding got me a pair of lineated barbets, a blue rock thrush, blue-winged leafbirds, a greater coucal, Oriental pied hornbills and a whole flock of red junglefowl feeding out in the open in the sun where the males' plumage just glowed like anything; then I headed to the dreaded visitor centre to extend my stay by two more nights. I showed the girl my key with the room number on it, and said I wanted to pay for two more nights, for tonight and the next night, the 23rd and 24th (being as clear as humanly possible because I was aware that “pay for two nights” sounds very similar to “pay for tonight”). This all took about five minutes for her to figure out (it is a complex assessment for one's brain after all) but eventually she got all the forms filled out, and said “that is 560 Baht” “No, two more nights.” “What?” “Two nights. Tonight and tomorrow night.” After the cogs in her head finished slowly ticking over, she filled out a new form, gave me the change, and said she had taken out the 200 Baht key deposit from it. I said I had already paid the key deposit yesterday – the fact I was holding the key to the room when I walked in should have been a giveaway to that one would have thought – and this caused her even further mental anguish but eventually I got that 200 back again. Then she gave me the form and I saw it said 23 (for tonight) up the top instead of 24 (for the second night). “This is for two nights?” I asked. “Yes.” “Are you sure?” “Yes, two nights” With that all taken care of, after only 25 minutes (!), I went to the restaurant across the road for breakfast. While there I had a closer look at the booking form she had filled out. It was all written in Thai but by comparing it to the form I had got for the previous night's stay I could plainly see that instead of the 23rd and 24th, she had filled it out for the 22nd and 23rd. I didn't want any more confusion coming from this, so I returned to the visitor centre. The girl saw me come in and said something in Thai to another girl, and then she refused to talk to me so I talked to the other girl. I showed her the form and said I had paid for the next two nights but the dates were wrong on the form. Very simple. This was, in fact, the same girl who I had paid for the first night in the room. “So you want to stay for tonight?” “For two more nights. Tonight and tomorrow night. The 23rd and 24th.” “For two nights more?” “Yes” “Okay, so tomorrow morning you can just come back here and pay for the next night.” “I've already paid for the next night!” She looked at the form and said “two nights, so tomorrow you come and pay for the next night.” My brain was actually hurting now. “Look, here is the form from last night, that form is for tonight and tomorrow night. I have paid for three nights now. The other girl just wrote the wrong dates on the form.” I really couldn't make it any clearer than that. The girl took the two forms and then all the people behind the desk got in a huddle for five minutes discussing the cosmicly-complicated situation before them. You know that posture people in movies have where they put their fingers on either side of their nose bridge because they are getting a migraine from the stress. That's the posture I had while waiting for them to sort this out. Finally the girl appeared to have got it. “So you want to stay for two more nights?” “Yes, tonight and tomorrow, the 23rd and 24th, both already paid for.” “Okay, so tomorrow morning you come back here and pay more.” “I've ALREADY paid for tomorrow!!” More discussion in the huddle. “Tomorrow night is 800 Baht because it is Friday. So you come back and pay 800.” “I'm not paying 800 Baht for that room,” I said, “the hot water on the shower doesn't work, the tap on the sink is broken, and there's a hole in the floor that you've just stuck a brick on top of to cover up.””800 Baht” I was finally at breaking point now, so I rather tersely told them to just give me tomorrow night's money back and I would only stay for tonight because I was sick of them.
About 2km up the road from the HQ is a watch-tower overlooking a stretch of grassland, a water hole and a salt-lick. Because most of the morning had been wasted in the visitor centre I thought I would just go to the tower and sit up there until midday, go back to the HQ for lunch, and then go off on one of the trails for the afternoon. In 2006 all the grass here was as high as an elephant's eye because it was the rainy season, and the walk from the road to the tower was through a narrow tunnel of grass where you couldn't see anything. Now in the dry season the park management had burned off all the old grass to let the new grass come in, so the whole area was just empty and blackened. No animals. I sat up in the tower anyway just in case something came to the water hole but nothing did. Chris turned up too and we spent the morning talking about cactus and Euphorbias (he's a plant man).
After lunch I went back to Trail 6. I still wanted to see Siamese fireback pheasants. The trail was quiet, hardly any birds. I didn't even go as far as the day before, only a few kilometres, before I heard elephants rumbling again. I stopped and tried to tell where it was coming from. Rumble rumble rumble, then a sudden enormously loud trumpeting. I just about jumped out of my skin! There was the sound of trees crashing. I'm deaf in one ear so I literally cannot tell which direction sounds are coming from, even something as loud as elephant trumpeting, so I was at a bit of a loss right now. There was also a good chance the elephants were on the same trail I was standing on, in which case whichever direction I took there would be a 50/50 chance of running straight into them. I could hear the rumbling plain as day, more crashing, another trumpeting. I walked very calmly (yeah, right!) back down the trail, paying close attention to everything ahead of me. It's not often I'm scared out of a jungle, but this did it! I really don't even know what to do if confronted by an elephant. I know how to deal with most animal attacks because I am very well read. For example, if attacked by an orangutan there is the Frank Buck technique of knocking it out cold with one punch. In case of leopard attack one can use the Willard Price technique of jamming your fist down its throat until it suffocates. And according to one book I read on the World's Most Dangerous Animals, if attacked by a tiger you just wait until it pounces and then step sideways out of the way. Easy-peasy. But for elephants the only defences I have read about are to shoot it with a great big elephant gun, or to run in zigzags because apparently elephants are stupid. I hadn't gone far down the trail before I heard more crashing close by off to the side. Not “elephants leaving” crashing, but “elephants feeding” crashing. I saw some trees shaking and rattling about. I really wanted to just sneak over there and see them, it wouldn't have been more than a hundred metres, but there was nowhere to go if it turned out they didn't like me so I chose the more sensible option and kept going along the trail away from them. It may have been the better thing to do: Chris saw what was probably the same group the next morning from a safer vantage point and said there were six or seven of them and they had a little baby. I kind of think an elephant herd with a baby is going to be more protective than otherwise, especially if some clown just comes stumbling out of the undergrowth right on top of them. To make things right, Trail 6 comes out on the Nature Trail and unexpectedly I saw a whole flock (three pairs plus another male) of Siamese fireback pheasants on there.
I was going to do my own spot-lighting again the next night, but while I was sitting outside the restaurant area waiting for full dark and watching great eared nightjars zooming around the trees (I recognised those ones because they're much bigger than the other species at Khao Yai), I thought I'd give the Night Safari another go. I didn't even bother with the reception, I just found a few people and asked if I could join in their trip because the reception would only sell me a 500 Baht ticket, and they said sure no problem. I wasn't sure what to expect from the drive, given that there are so many trucks going over the exact same route only minutes apart, basically chasing each others' tails, and it turned out to be a fairly rubbish experience although we did see some animals I liked (so I'm half and half on the Night Safari). Firstly the truck just drove at a constant pace, not speedily but not slowly either, and the person on the spotlight had no clue how to do it properly, just flicking it all over the place at random with not a single pause anywhere. I'm surprised they see anything at all really. Secondly, they barely stopped for anything which was seen, and there was almost no attempt at identification for the visitors or even telling them they had seen something – if you weren't watching the spot-light you stood a good chance of missing out! The first animals were the sambar and muntjac of course, and as the truck sailed past I thought they weren't bothering with them because they were so ubiquitous during the day, although too bad if the other people in the truck hadn't seen them during the day. But it was the same all along: we came across an elephant on an area of grass near the forest line – a freakin' elephant and they came to a complete stop for less than thirty seconds!! It took a bit before I realised what this was all about. There are so many trucks (due to the reception selling rides per person or couple) that if any one truck pauses for too long the next truck catches up, and then the next one, and thus there is a back-log formed on the road. The elephant was the first good animal seen (only sambar and muntjac before that), then a pair of crested porcupines very far off followed a bit further on by another pair right on the roadside, and then the last animal of the night (the best one of all) a large Indian civet by the road, heading up into the forest. Ooh, did we stop for the civet? No. Fortunately I had my binoculars so I got a good look at it as we approached. By the time we got back to HQ our truck was at the front of a little convoy of other trucks which had backed up behind one another. There is just a totally crappy organisation of everything at Khai Yai!!
Next morning was my last at the park. Chris had offered to take me all the way to Pak Chong on his bike at midday so that was good. Before I left I wanted to try one last time for white-handed gibbons which had still eluded me, although they could be heard calling most of the time. I went on Trail 5 which is where I had seen gibbons in 2006. Then the trail was a right mess and involved a lot of scrambling and crawling to negotiate fallen trees and vine tangles. This time it was much clearer, but although I saw a scaly-breasted partridge, an orange-headed thrush and verditer flycatchers no gibbons showed themselves.
BIRDS:
423) Swinhoe's minivet Pericrocotus cantonensis
424) Asian fairy bluebird Irena puella
425) Green imperial pigeon Ducula aenea
426) Red junglefowl Gallus gallus
427) White-rumped shama Copsychus malabaricus
428) Puff-throated bulbul Alophoixus pallidus
429) Abbott's babbler Malacocincla abbotti
430) Green-billed malkoha Phaenicophaeus tristis
431) Blue pitta Pitta cyanea
432) White-crested laughing thrush Garrulax leucolophos
433) Black-winged cuckoo-shrike Coracina melaschistos
434) Asian emerald cuckoo Chrysococcyx maculatus
435) Orange-breasted trogon Harpactes oreskios
436) Oriental pied hornbill Anthracoceros albirostris
437) Lineated barbet Megalaima lineata
438) Blue-winged leafbird Chloropsis cochinchinensis
439) White-throated rock thrush Monticola gularis
440) Grey bushchat Saxicola ferrea
441) Thick-billed green pigeon Treron curvirostra
442) Green-eared barbet Megalaima faiostricta
443) Siamese fireback pheasant Lophura diardi
444) Hill mynah Gracula religiosa
445) Great eared nightjar Eurostopodus macrotis
446) Scaly-breasted partridge Arborophila chloropus
447) Orange-headed thrush Zoothera citrina
MAMMALS:
58) Northern pig-tailed macaque Macaca leonina
59) Common muntjac Muntiacus muntjak
60) Malayan crested porcupine Hystrix brachyura
61) Variable squirrel Callosciurus finlaysonii
62) Asian elephant Elephas maximus
63) Large Indian civet Viverra zibetha
