Oh my, I’m glad I haven’t had many nights like last night. I felt like I was sleeping on a brick with a tissue on top of it, the bed was so hard. I was up at 3:30 am with my back and leg hurting. At 4 am the people in the next room came back singing and playing the harmonica. I’m sure I fell asleep between then and 6 am when I was up for the day but it was a rough night.
By 7:45 am we are in a 12-passenger van with an eager group of people to the Phang Nga elephant trek and white-water rafting adventure. Our 90-minute drive north into the hills and forests of Thailand was beautiful with dense trees and vegetation. Windy roads lead us up the hills to our first stop, Monkey Cave. We didn’t go into any caves to see monkeys as they are scurrying all over the place. The macaque monkeys are different sizes and ages. I asked Andy to crouch down for a good picture of him with so many monkeys hanging around but before I could snap the picture a monkey growled and ran toward Andy. Andy stood up so fast, turned around and growled right back at that monkey. Fortunately, the monkey was frightened and backed away. Andy’s response, “I’ll never trust a monkey again.” Me, I never did trust a monkey, never will trust a monkey.
Our next stop was Ton Pariwat Waterfall. It’s a twenty-minute drive and a steep walk down to the lagoon and waterfall. Andy and I were the first ones in the cold but refreshing water. We swam to the fall itself and you had to swim strongly to get to it and under it. I’m barely balancing on a rock to stay in the falls as the water is battering me. Some younger people are joining us as we leave to swim back to shallow water. I get out, dry off and enjoy the fact that I’m in the Thailand forest. While I’m there a guy from Iran wanted to know how old I was because I am old and yet “so fit and strong”. It was a nice compliment and I’m feeling pretty good about it. All in all, we’re there for roughly 40 minutes.
We make our way up to the van to drive north 30 minutes to the Phang Nga Elephant Park. It’s a family-run park that gave us a chance to get up-close, ride and enjoy these magnificent animals in a natural and hassle-free environment. We go up the steps to a platform where an elephant saunters up and stops. Clearly, he has done this hundred of times, that’s okay, it’s a first for me. I get into the seat on top of Kanun first. Kanun is a 30-year-old Asian elephant. He carefully and deliberately goes just where our guide tells him to go. We’re on the trail for about five minutes when our guide asks Andy if he would like to sit directly on Kanun. Of course. Our guide slips off the neck of Kanun to walk in front while Andy gets out of the basket and onto Kanun. It really was an incredible experience to go through the jungle, up and down the steep paths, through the stream and be swayed back and forth, back and forth. The best 40-minutes ever. Afterward, we fed Kanun some bunches of small bananas.
Our next adventure included life-jackets and helmets. We had a quick lesson on rowing forward, backward and listen to our guides for left, right, stop. We’re on the water of the Song Phraek river. The river is very narrow, very rocky and will become very deep when the dam is opened. This white water is created by a dam upstream being opened and swelling the banks of the river. It will be a fast, wild ride. Besides our two guides and ourselves, we have two undercover drug policemen from the United Arab Emirates. Both Lieutenants for the Interior of Defense on holiday and first-time whitewater rafting. The water shoves us down the river as we do what our guides tell us to do to get down safely without flipping over or getting stuck on rocks. Very fun but just too short of a ride. We went for a swim in the cold, deep water. Luckily there are some rocks near-by so I can pull myself back into the raft.
The tour ends with a smorgasbord of food; white rice with chicken cashew, fried chicken, mixed vegetables, tempura vegetables, omelet, prawn and squid soup, watermelon and pineapple. Back home 90-minutes later.
Eating when traveling has been a challenge and tonight was no different. The restaurant we find has no pictures on the menu and only Thai is spoken. Fortunately for us, we sat at a table with a taxi cab driver and he helped us order, actually he ordered for us. Andy had what the cabbie had, soup with noodles, vegetables and chicken and I had “zero stars” white rice with chicken. Mine was very good while Andy’s was a little bland. I think I like bland.
The night market topped off the day; being with local people, seeing new things, sampling fried dough balls (10 baht, 30 cents), chicken skewers (10 baht, 30 cents) a coconut drink and ladyfinger bananas for tomorrow.
Have you ever had that feeling that someone is staring at you? Then they whisper to each other. It makes you uncomfortable and you want to get out of the situation as soon as possible. That happened tonight at the night market and Andy had enough. We leave, watch the closing of the Beijing Olympics on the On-On hotel porch before booking a snorkeling trip for tomorrow (100 baht, $3) Good night grand day!
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