A fancy brochure catches your eye. The pictures look fun and the itineray looks interesting. The hotel is more than happy to book you into the tour and take your money.
So 7500 Baht later you are packed and ready to take on a new adventure. A nice young man appears at the hotel with the appropriate T-shirt on, so you blindly jump into his car and begin a 3 hour drive across the countryside with him. Now at home we all tell our children not to take rides from strangers. SO why do we just expect this person will drive safely? Fortunately he does. He points out Pineapple plants, rubber trees, Palm Oil trees and stops at a rice field for us.
In southern Thailand the climate is quite dry compared to the north so the rice is grown in fields similar to grain at home. Harvested by hand and then put through a de-husking machine.
We discover an amazing temple in the back country with a huge Budda overlooking the valley. Really quite spectacular!!
Then we are of again. Destination the Elephant Adventure. This elephant ride was extremely nice, travelling down the river bed, thru the jungle to a small waterfall. The elephant master provides direction to the elephant from the ground, which seemed way nicer that him sitting on the elephant head, holding a huge stick. Our second elephant ride and we are duly impressed.
We reach the waterfall and are told to get off. Thinking the ride is over we start looking for the path back to the car. This was our first clue that our guide for the Safari was not as helpful as he could be. What we later discovered was that the elephant master would wait for us while we went for a swim in the waterfall. We did realize that we would get a ride back on the elephant but totally missed the swim. Cathy was able to ride back on the elephant head, while I remained in the chairlike saddle. Yes we bought the photos!!
SO far our trip was going OK. WE continued our travels to the site of our home for the evening, which was a hut on stilts. Several monkey's were leashed in the area and two were more than anxious to play and cuddle. However we soon found that the other two were not so friendly and apparently don't like women, as one chased after Cathy in attack when she got too close. A little scared, we were again reminded of how glad we were with all the bootcamp exercises we did this year. Something like the crab crawl took place.
A canoe ride down the river, dinner and then a night canoe ride finished off the day. What did we see? Two snakes and several frogs..LOL. I have to admit we were a bit nervous that we were the only ones on the adventure. Fortunatley before the night canoe ride a very friendly couple from Belguim joined the camp.
The next morning we head off to the National Park. Pay our entrance fee. Oh yes no one said we would need money. Before heading into the park we are told that the biggest flower in the world is in bloom and a government guide will take us to see it if we are interested. So why not? A trek straight up the Thailand mountain takes place and after 30 minutes we arrive at the very interesting, unusual plant. Nice.
We are now told that we won't get to see the park as there is not enought time, go back to camp and spend the next 2 1/2 hours waiting for the rest of the group to arrive. Why we didn't go to the park, is anybodies guess. A disappointment for sure.
However during our wait Cathy tried to teach me backgammon. IF I play every day for the next 2 years I might eventually beat her, but maybe not...LOL.
The best part of this adventure was arriving at the river rafts for the next night. Very quaint huts, built right over the water. Only the picutres will do the story justice.
Cathy and I bow out of the Longtail boat night right and choose to spend Wednesday morning suntanning in front of our huts. The message from the rest of the group was we made the right decision.
After lunch we board the Longtail boat and start our journey back home. We could not get there fast enough. Now we admit we were spoiled by the Gap trip, but the guide on this excursion was just awful. We never knew what was happening until he was at our door, stating "we have to leavce now". For where, for what or for how long was never shared. OF course he received No Tip.
We did arrive home safe and sound and glad that part of our adentures was over. A guide can make all the difference!! OF course we are probably a bit too trusting of a fancy brochure.
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