Our Pan isn't a pan-pipe-playing satyr - he's a 20-something park ranger in leech socks who has worked at Khao Yai ("cow y-eye", rhymes with "my") National Park for about 7 years and he loves the place. Our 8 km hike starts off well-marked and with only one path, but as we walk deeper into the forest, the path gets more and more tangled with animal trails. It could be tricky to figure out, which is why we've hired him for the afternoon. Pan never stops at a fork in the road and thinks "this way or that way?" He's walked these trails so many times that when faced with more than one choice he chooses the right one with as little hesitation as a schoolkid at the mall who knows which escalator is the quickest route to Gap.
The trail is deserted and we don't run into anyone, which was the plan. Our guesthouse/"resort" specializes in group tours of the park - they go from 8:30 am to 8:30 pm, and include views of wild elephants at salt licks, and a sunset view of millions of bats leaving their cave and heading out to the woods for dinner. And a 4 km hike.
The idea of a 4 km hike offends Pierre ("I didn't come all this way to do a 4km hike. That's like an hour at most, unless you're with slow people...") as does the fact that our resort is aggressive in it's sales pitch. The Internet is 80 baht an hour, but it's free for guests that take a tour. You're not taking a tour? Well, then the "free" ride we gave you from the bus station is 200 baht. Not taking a tour? Why not why not why not?
Confrontation in Thailand is a big no-no - a cultural minefield and all the guidebook tips say to keep polite and smile. So I use friendly confusion as my weapon of choice: "Oh no, thank you, we're fine on our own, but thank you for offering again - that's so nice of you." The thank you and the genuine smile are key - ingrained politeness triggers a "you're welcome" and a smile, and the sales pitch is dropped for the moment.
Internally, however, we regress into stubborn kids. We're second-class guests without the tour? Then we won't spend any money here except rent. So we buy our breakfast at 7-11 (bread, jam and yoghurt), take dinners at a restaurant across the road (the lovely Gecko Bar), find alternate ways in and out of town, and give up Internet for a few days.
The decision not to take the tour also means that we have to find our own wheels which requires a bus ride to town (20 minutes away; about a 40 baht/$1.10 fare, flagged down for us courtesy of some friendly security guards down the road) followed by several hours of walking the main strip of Pak Chong searching for a scooter rental. In spite of the confusing helpfulness and redirections of the people we meet (including a few officers at the police station who try to help us out) we don't locate the rental place until after closing.
On the ride home and over dinner at the Gecko Bar, we debate whether we'll be reduced to taking the group tour with the resort or if we'll just skip the park and leave the next day. By fluke, the waitress has a boyfriend (a teacher from Chicago) who has a scooter he's willing to rent us, and our transportation problems are solved.
Like most mountains in Thailand that we've seen, Khao Yai rises up out of the flat landscape suddenly, without the preamble of foothills. Though I have experience driving a scooter (automatic), and so am voted today's driver, the scooter we have today is a standard and gearshifting involves a bit of a learning curve. While chugging up one particularly steep and curvy hill (about 45 degrees) I accidentally learn how to pop a wheelie at 10 km per hour: Gear down to 1st gear without taking your hand fully off the gas, and make sure you have a heavy weight (ie. Pierre) behind you on the seat. Pierre's elbow and my ass take the brunt of it, and we bang up the tail light (which we feel very bad about), but a nice ranger patches Pierre up and the rest of the trip goes smoothly.
This nice ranger is one of about 110 rangers in the park, if I understand Pan correctly. Most days, about 70 of them are out and about in the park , living in lookouts and walking trails keeping an eye out for poachers. Another 40 stay in the centre of the park doing other work, including being available for hire for hikes, which is how we meet Pan.
The pace at first is slow, and I feel bad for Pierre, who's hoping for more than a stroll through the woods. But by the end of the trail (3.5 hours) Pan's saunter feels pretty brisk. The forest changes every kilometer or so, from flat an sparse to steep and dense, from deciduous trees to bamboo and back again.
Along the trail Pan points out evidence of Thai and Cambodian tree poachers, who chip away at the trunks of a certain type of tree (probably Aquilaria) used in perfume and incense. Park rangers catch poachers from time to time, either bringing the suspect (and the woodchips) back to the headquarters for charges, or burning the poached goods if the culprit runs away. We pass one of these poach-fires, which consists of a melted green tent, a plastic carrying bag like the sacks used for bulk rice, and handfuls of charred woodchips. Pan figures it's about a month old.
Pan points out the sound of gibbons singing in the distance, places where elephants have been eating the rattan vines and climbing steep hills, where animals have been scratching themselves against trees, termite nests...
...as well as the bodhi, cinnamon and rubber trees that line the trail.
(A cinnamon stump:)
(a Bodhi tree, I think:)
I hadn't expected that elephants could maneouver in such a hilly and heavily forested place but apparently they're pretty agile.
We're not so lucky with other animals on the trail, except for monkeys. Monkeys are less rare, and pretty cheeky. At the trail's end is the Nam Tok Haew Suwat waterfall, most famous for it's appearance in The Beach:
The parking lot is peppered with monkeys climbing on parked vehicles and picking through garbage cans. A few swing by us as we sit next to the road, waiting to hitch a ride back to park headquarters, and Pan shoos them away. (No monkey pics this time, sorry.)
The ride back to the park headquarters is in the open back of a pickup truck courtesy of other visitors at the park. (Our guide fee apparently includes Pan's ride-hitching thumb.) The ladies who are driving pass back bottled water and prawn-flavoured chips for us to snack on during the ride. Pierre and Pan spot a bear sleeping up a tree and we see a few tiny barking deer eating along the roadside in places where it's grassy and open.
At HQ, we say goodbye to Pan and grab a bite to eat. On our drive back to the resort, we slalom through the inevitable troupes of monkeys lounging on the roads, and trigger a bit of a feeding frenzy at one rest stop when Pierre rustles a plastic bag while opening a snack for himself: a troupe of monkeys come running from 30 feet away like housecats that have just heard an electric can opener. They eventually realize that our arm waving and footstamping mean "no", get bored and decide to go try their luck with some cars that have just pulled into the parking lot.
Further down the road, a group of cars has stopped to watch some wild elephants walk through a ravine below, but the animals are gone by the time we park and walk over. We're not too concerned about seeing elephants (or not seeing them) so we head off home to beat the dusk, weaving our way through lazy monkeys and elephant droppings along the way.
photo credits: all P
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