Khao Yai is meant to be one of the best places to spot wildlife in Thailand, although possibly not with the King’s birthday long weekend crowds!  We enjoyed the jungle though with walking and kayaking on the lake.  Then it was time to return to public transport and visit the ruined temples of Ayutthaya, the old capital of Thailand – before the Burmese attacked and burned it…

Day 102 – Khao Yai National Park

We set an alarm today to get up and get into the park early.  As we had nothing we’d asked the lovely ladies at the resort to make us some breakfast.  It turned out to be the rice soup thing we’d seen in places with a buffet breakfast.  The locals often have this but we’re normally keen to avoid rice in the morning so give it a miss.  It was not great.  Rice in stock with lots of pepper and some pork mince.  Too peppery for me.  We forced enough down to quiet our stomachs as we have a lot to do this morning!

The drive round to the park entrance was easy.  We grumbled at the price to enter the park being 10x that of the locals (!!) at £35 for our family and car to enter.  The park is the usual forested hills so the road wove up and down.  We passed loads of cyclists, all in lycra and looking rather serious about this.  Some seemed to be in a team with a support car, but there were no numbers so not an event?  Not something I’d fancy doing up and down these hills!

We stopped at the first falls and parked in the busy car park.  It was chilly in the hills at 8am so we were glad we had the jackets in the boot. 

The concrete trail to the falls was pleasant enough, if a little busy, following along the river until the steep steps down the side of the waterfall for a view from the bottom. 

Back in the car we had to overtake all the cyclists again before arriving at the reservoir.  It was heaving, and there were no spaces at the visitor centre!  What was going on – it was a Thursday!  Seemingly it was the King’s birthday, so a long weekend for the locals.  They had come in their droves to the park to camp for the long weekend or just picnic and enjoy the outside.  Our chances of seeing wildlife were significantly reduced – many people see things along the road sides here and it’s meant to be one of the best Thai parks for seeing animals.  Not this trip though! 

After getting over my disappointment we tried to get some advice from the visitor centre about where to go to see animals when it was busy etc, but they weren’t able to offer much.  ‘All over’ is the best place to see birds apparently…

We did find out that the Southern entrance closes at 6pm so we had to be out by then.  Nooo – this means that we cannot do any of the night tours, or hang around the campsites after dusk to wait for porcupines and civets ☹.  Planning fail. 

We did see a few groups of tourists presumably on the booked tours that most people use – they were all wearing leech socks… did we need some of those?  We hoped not!

We decided to launch off on a nearby trail meant to be good for spotting gibbons.  When we pulled up beside the reservoir there was a Sambar Deer right in the bushes at the side!  They don’t seem to care about all the people! 

The trail itself (#4) was enjoyable, proper trail through the jungle which was not paved or heavily assisted.  The going was steep and difficult in places, there were vines everywhere and at times the path was a little feint. 

Just what we were after 😊, especially when we found a tree with some odd scrapes on it.  After much discussion, we concluded that they were where a Sun Bear had climbed up the tree.  The kids loved this!

We did get a bit lost at one point when we arrived at this massive tree and stopped to play for a bit before moving on, not realising that there was another trail leading off (which was not on the map ☹). 

We had signal though, so although we could not initially work out how we could be on the correct path but going the wrong way, we did eventually figure it out.  The kids love being semi lost!  When one trail dies and you have to backtrack to look for another (where trees fall and the path has moved usually) they think it’s great fun!

We didn’t see much wildlife, barely any birds, but we did spot a Barking Deer through the trees. 

The path emerges back at the visitor centre and the ‘food hall’ where it was lunch time (as if someone is planning this 😊).  It took us a few minutes to figure out the deal, but seemingly there were 3 or 4 stalls, all with a selection of dishes on offer laid out.  You get rice and then point to your toppings, and are then charged according to what you took.  No prices or indications.  It was pretty cheap though, and nice, particularly the Thai Red Curry (at least that’s what I think it was).  Sitting by the river on a bench (as it was packed and there were no tables) we could see another two Sambar Deer just down the bank.  Clearly these guys don’t mind people!

As we’d been informed that the trails around the campsites may be quieter we headed that way, to find the campsites were heaving!  Luckily there were only people on the first half km of the trail, swimming in the river.  After that we were alone.  The trail was similar to the last, but followed the river and was through bamboo forest.  Soon there were signs about the dangers of crocodiles so we kept a look out!  Did I mention that there are Tigers in these forests too?  Not that we were likely to see either!

We did see a Lar Gibbon in the trees, although he scarpered before we could get too close, and a giant millipede.

Generally we just enjoyed trekking through the jungle, looking for crocs. 

The trail ends in a car park at the second campsite, and from here there is a trail for a couple of hundred more metres down to a waterfall (which featured in the film ‘The Beach’).  This place was packed again, and the waterfall not that impressive in the dry season.  We didn’t linger for long.

Given that we had to be out of the park in around 2 hours, and the trail had taken us nearly that to walk down, we decided to walk up the road back as it should be quicker, and try our luck at hitch hiking.  The kids were really excited by this idea but it’s not something either of us had done before. 

It took only three cars and about 30 seconds for a lovely Thai family to pull up in their pickup and offer us a lift.  We climbed into the back and whizzed back along the road.  Success!

There were Long-tailed Macaques in the trees at the super busy campsite car park!

There were Northern Pig Tailed Macaques on the road out, so not such a bad day’s spotting after all.

We headed down to Tesco and 7/11 to grab bits for breakfast for the next few days – there was no way we were having that rice breakfast for the next two days!  Bread, tuna and porridge oats secured we headed back to the resort to enjoy sandwiches and a film. 

Day 103 – How a day of failure can be fun!

There were some crazy winds overnight, so we didn’t sleep well.  Chris and I didn’t anyway, the kids slept the sleep of the knackered after 11km of fairly hard trails and noticed nothing!  After the crowds of yesterday, and having watched the people piling into the campsite as we left, there was no way the park was going to be quieter today.  The wind was still blowing strongly too, which would make spotting any birds a lot harder. 

We decided to save the £35 and do some local exploration instead. 

There are nice gardens outside, with trees, ponds and a view across to the hills of the park.  A perfect, if slightly breezy, place to enjoy a leisurely porridge breakfast, with some free papaya they brought out for us.  Papaya is odd.  The initial taste is ok, but then you get a really strong taste of smelly socks.  Not great!

We sat around and chilled until nearly lunchtime before walking out down the road to the Wang Mueang waterfalls.  The road is basically empty as it only goes here, the majority of the walk was rather easy.  At the end there’s a concrete path heading up steps in the direction we wanted so we followed it.  It was fairly overgrown and covered in leaves, but that could just be the wind from the night before right?  After half a km or so of following the river the path ended.  No more concrete. 

We could see on Maps.Me that we were close so we tried finding the trail for a while, no luck.  We even tried again from the bottom but could not find another path.  Ah well.  That was all a bit pointless!  Time for lunch at the restaurant on the way back.

The restaurant is on Google Maps, with an English name and some reviews so seemed like a safe bet, but as we arrived we weren’t so sure… There were some tables, but was this just a house?  After some people turned up in a car and sat at a table we did head down the drive, but no-one looked up. It was like we weren’t there!  Perhaps these were just friends come over for lunch?  We moved on – there must be somewhere to eat on the way to the reservoir right?

We got straight in the car and drove out to the reservoir, looking for restaurants the whole way.  But it’s so confusing here – many people and shops seem to have tables outside (even the printing shop) but does this mean that they serve food here?  Nothing showing up as a restaurant on Google Maps looked like it was serving food.  There were a couple of places with more than one table outside, but they were empty.  We decided to try at the reservoir, where there were food stalls. 

After getting someone to pay some attention to us, we asked about food.  The owner spoke some English and started to list some things he could cook for us, but then we saw the dish of food inside the place, or at least we assumed it was food – there were so many flies on it we couldn’t see!  One of the rules of street food is to go with your gut and neither of us felt good about eating here. 

We declined and went for our only remaining option (it was 3.30 by now and way past lunchtime!) and ate 3 bags of crisps.  An epic lunching fail!  At least the view was nice!

We hired kayaks on the reservoir for a nice cheap price and went to hunt for the waterfalls which supposedly fall into the lake.  We could only find one, and it was the smallest trickle possible (enough to get Aiden wet when I steered under it though!).  I guess it’s too dry right now – another waterfall fail!  Luckily, we just loved being out on the kayaks in general.  We paddled the whole length of the lake, exploring coves, stalking birds, winding through gaps in rocks and branches (getting fully stuck on an underwater one in Aiden and I’s case – we were starting to think we’d have to jump out to get it off ☹) and generally chasing each other around.  Super fun 😊. 

We needed some proper dinner so stopped at the expensive café close to our hotel.  Now we know why it’s always busy when we drive past – there’s no-where else to eat around here!  Luckily, the food was lovely and the setting was great.  The kids did some writing whilst we watched the sunset (which was a bit of a let down really) and enjoyed the evening together.  Until the mossies came for us and we had to head back to our rooms!

Day 104 – Moving on to Ayutthaya by car, train and a scenic boat

The car was going back today, so we had to get up and get on the road for the two hour drive back to Bangkok.  It was mostly straightforward, but we had to fill the tank up on the way and as soon as we decided we were close enough the petrol stations were all on the other side of the road, requiring some back and forthing up the road doing u turns to get there.  We ploughed on for one that was on our side, except we accidentally ended up on the flyover and pretty much drove over it! 

There are more in the airport so we headed for one, missed the tiny entrance into the airport service areas which did not look like it was for the public and had to go further on.  This whole area is really confusing to navigate!  After filling up we had to get back to the terminal, which meant driving around in the service areas and around the car parks.  There were some signs here to follow around the loops and turns, but we had a mad moment and went to departures instead of arrivals and had to go around all over again!  Not really an issue as they didn’t charge us for returning the car late, but I could see why Chris may have had some issues driving around here on his own!

With the car back we headed to the airport railway station.  I don’t know what I was expecting but it was something a little bigger than this!  At least they stopped you from crossing the tracks when a train was coming…

The train was busy so we had to stand; luckily it was only a 35 minute ride and not hot.  The kids entertained themselves with rock, paper, scissors on the floor.

At the station we got in a taxi to the hostel where he allowed us to check in early without issue.  The hostel is not too bad, with nice shady outdoor spaces and rooms opposite each other.  The beds are solid though ☹. 

As we’d been informed by the online community, there were signs up for the evening boat trip, which is one of the standard things to do on a trip here.  It’s not too expensive so we booked it for tonight, giving us a few hours to get lunch and chill out before it left. 

We wandered south towards the river, expecting to pass some restaurants on the way according to Google.  The first one was shut (despite the opening hours on the door suggesting it should be open) so we carried on.  Finding places to eat does not seem to be as easy here as in Myanmar… 

Eventually, we found a cafe which seemed to be open and could prepare some fried rice for us.  Done.  It was a nice, quirky place, with toys displayed and a mural on the wall which all the Asian tourists (?) seemed to need to have a picture with.

Back at the hostel we sat outside and chilled for a couple of hours before our tuk tuk was due.  Except it didn’t arrive!  15 minutes and a few calls later, the hostel owner assured us he was coming and that the boat would wait!  It was a hair-raising ride to the boat, our driver obviously knew we were late and was weaving through the traffic like a crazy man.  It was fun though and we arrived in one piece, only 3 minutes late!  Everyone else was just boarding. 

We’d expected a larger boat, but it was a larger version of the longboats, sitting three abreast.  To our surprise we were on the boat with four other Brits (and a Spanish couple)! 

Our tour down the river was pleasant, looking at the mix of houses on the bank, the wooden boats and the huge barges being pulled down the river by tug boats.  Many carried soil or sand, but others were covered.  Carrying rice perhaps? 

Ayutthaya is mainly on an island surrounded by a river.  We had three stops at wats along the journey on the far bank.  The first was Wat Phanan Choeng Worawihan, and included a large buddha statue and this very Chinese inspired temple on the side. 

There were also huge fish in the river which people were feeding from the shore. 

The second one, Wat Phutthai Sawan, was our favourite, and we needed longer than the allotted 20 minutes to wander around it.  There’s quite a large white temple, lined with many gold clad buddhas, with a central praya containing this very old looking statue and a whole load of large bats!

Around the back, there are the remains of temples.  In one, hiding behind a wall, is a reclining buddha. 

We arrived at the final temple, Wat Chai Watthanaram, as the sun was setting. 

Ayutthaya was once the capital of Bangkok.  When the Burmese invaded in the 1700’s, many of these temples and the town were destroyed so the temples here are in a pretty significant state of disrepair.  Most of the buildings in many of the old temples, like this one, have fallen, although the prangs (Thailand’s stupas) have largely remained.  The Buddha heads here have mostly been lost, some severed by the conquering army, others failing to stand the test of time. 

We chatted to the Brits on the way back.  They were in Bangkok during the King’s birthday festivities and saw the back of his head when they paraded down the street.  He was on foot apparently.  Fair play!

We had thought about eating at the night market here when we got off the boat, but our free tuk tuk driver was already waiting, so we got in for a more chilled drive back to the hostel where we dined on leftover bread and dried fruit. 

Day 105 – Exploring Ayutthaya’s ruined temples on foot

Despite planning to get up early, we’d not slept that well and ended up dozing till 7.30.  After a standard breakfast of fried egg, white toast and chicken sausages we headed out to try to beat the crowds. 

Many people hire bikes here, but after our issues finding a bike which Aiden could ride, and after Evie’s wobbly biking the other day, we decided against taking the kids out on the busy roads here.   It’s quite a walk around, but we didn’t plan to visit every temple, and we had all day. 

Our first stop was the Wat Maha That.  Possibly one of the most famous ones here, it has the Buddha head in the branches.  The head of the large buddha here was cut off and left where it fell.  Over many years a tree has grown up under it and over the walls, picking it up and enclosing it.  Really quite an odd sight!

We passed by the tall prang of Wat Ratchaburana, but decided not to pay the 100 bhat to enter this site.

As we walked we told the kids about the war here, which got us on to talking about war in general, and politics and all sorts of things.  We were having some pretty philosophical discussions wandering the streets of Ayutthaya!  It’s nice to have the time to be able to spend hours talking to them both, and they were fascinated, asking many questions.  Worldschooling and child led learning at its best 😊.

Wat Thammikarat was pretty empty when we arrived and had many more of the rooster statues that we’d seen the night before.  People bring them as offerings (and you can buy them here) as there is an ancient legend about a bet between the prince of Ayutthaya and a prince of Burma in a cock fight.  The Ayutthayan Prince’s rooster won the fight, causing the Burmese Prince’s humiliation, so now people buy rooster statues to honour him!?

We liked this wat for the animal statues and the massive hall which once stood here. 

As a bit of a break we’d decided to call in at the Million Toy Museum as we passed.  The timing was good as there’s a café here (decorated in old Coca Cola memorabilia) and we were getting hot and in need of refreshments and a sit down.  After some cold drinks we wandered into this quirky museum.  It’s basically a collection of toys from many years, mixed in with old ceramics and Thai knick knacks. 

Some of the toys were really old, and had the soldered joins of the hollow metal toys. Others were clearly from the last few years.   Can you spot the odd one out in the second picture?

We all enjoyed wandering around, peering into the cabinets to find some interesting toys, particularly ones we have, or looking at the really old ones – things have changed!

There was also the opportunity for some silliness with the larger models…

By the time we left it was pretty much lunchtime, so went back into the café for some Tom Yum soup, which was delicious.

Then it was on down to Wat Lokayasutharam, a large reclining Buddha whose housing has fallen.  The Buddha endures.  At many of the buddhas, locals place donations and offerings.  In particular there was a large pile of eggs here.  We wondered what happens to them… 

Our final destination was the Wat Phra Si Samphet, but our route took us through a market and then past the pretty impressive Wihan Phra Mongkhon Bophit on the way which were both worth a diversion. 

The market was colourful and had lots of things mainly aimed at the many tourists.  Plenty of snacks too.  We picked up a couple of small wooden toys so we can have something to give the kids on Christmas day and some strange stuff which the lady allowed us to try.  A bit like Turkish delight.  Chris and Aiden were not impressed, but Evie and I quite liked it so we grabbed some.  I think Evie was more interested in playing with it as she walked, squishing it between her hands through the wrapper. 

The Mongkhon Bophit is a very modern looking and active temple.  But the large bronze buddha inside is very old (over 400 years).  During the fall of Ayutthaya in the 1700’s the roof was burned and the buddha damaged by fire, but was restored in 1956. Since then it has been covered in gold leaf and had the housing revamped.

Si Samphet was the Royal Temple, and the three large prangs house the ashes of three dead kings.  It’s probably the most beautiful of all the temples we saw, the three prangs are made of paler stone and are well preserved.

We turned around and Aiden was helping some guy water the grass.  Not sure how that happened!

To the left side we found the remains of a large seated buddha made of bricks and some monks taking selfies! 

We walked back through the park and then down the main night market street where local traders were busy setting up.  We grabbed some pineapple and decided to head back later for dinner. 

All of us enjoyed our walk through Ayutthaya, wandering the streets and seeing local houses and shops.  It’s a little like Bagan in that there are temples dotted around, and although there are main temples which you head to, you pass others on the way and stop to look at the interesting ones.  Much of the area on the island is a large park containing ruins and we had a pleasant wander across the top of the park on the way to the museum and then back through it past the waterways to get home.  Such a high density of birds here – no need to go to a national park!  There were also at least 12 massive Asian Water Monitor lizards basking on the banks here.  At nearly 2m long they look like crocodiles, but are not dangerous.

We arrived back at the hostel after nearly 10km of wandering and chilled for a couple of hours before walking back out to the Bang Ian Night Market which we’d wandered through earlier and which had been favourably commented about on a blog I’d read. 

I’m not really sure what we expected, but it was not especially exciting.  Initially we passed a few ‘pop up’ restaurants with menus and tables and chairs set up in the road, at which at least half the clientele were foreigners.  We were hoping to sample some street food so moved on to the stalls which is where the locals were.  Most were selling foods of various types.  The main fun here was picking some to try and trying to figure out what everything was.  I had issues buying anything though as it all comes in plastic tubs, polystyrene cups or plastic bags.  We did try to get them to put things into our used pots where we could but this backfired a little when we only got half a portion of the fruit salad.  Avoiding plastic here is so hard!

We passed on the insects, salads and many of the shaped meats on sticks, instead going for some sweetcorn and fruit salad (at Aiden’s request), battered balls filled with cheese, shrimp and bacon, (for Evie and Chris), savoury coconut pancakes (my choice) and some fish thing wrapped in a leaf as it looked like a proper sort of meal.  Generally, we tried to go for things that we could see being cooked so we knew they hadn’t sat around for ages, and which should be properly cooked (the fish was the exception). 

Then we headed back to the restaurants and ordered a plate of pad thai to share.  The coconut pancakes were delicious, the battered balls pretty good, and the fish thing so ridiculously spicy that we could hardly eat a mouthful.  The texture of the fish also seemed rather uncooked (although we couldn’t see that well in the dark) so we left it.  You win some you lose some.  The pad thai was delicious and barely more expensive than the stall options.  In the end we concluded that it’s probably cheaper to eat at the restaurants!  So much for street food being the super cheap option, each thing was around 50p to £1, so yes it was cheaper than England but you’d struggle to get a ‘dinner’ for £1 each these days as we’d read online. 

On the way back to our hostel a woman came trotting up behind us and took Evie’s hand!  Although we were initially a little wary, she seemed to just want to touch Evie and, after saying some things in Thai to her, dropped back again.  Evie barely batted an eyelid; she’s used to this now! 

Back to the hard beds when we returned to the hostel.  Yay.

Day 106 – 10 hours on a train to Chiang Mai

After breakfast and a tuk tuk to the station we picked up our tickets from the parcel room.  We’d bought them through the 12goAsia website as this is meant to be the easiest way to get train tickets.  It was easy, but we were rather disappointed to find that the receipt included a 250bhat per ticket extra fee which was added into the total price.  At 30% extra on the ticket price this was a bit steep and had we known about it we’d have just booked the tickets at the station ourselves when we arrived two days ago!  It was super easy at least so we settled down to wait for the train. 

The train was delayed by an hour, which initially seemed like a pain, as we won’t get in to Chiang Mai until after 8 now, but then some locals starting setting up some stools right next to us and hung a sign about free haircuts.  That was too good an offer to miss so we sent Aiden in and I joined him soon after.  Aiden was not impressed as he hates haircuts, and asked if they were going to dye it black.  Haha!  That’s a couple of jobs off the list and some of the awful wisps from my horrendous New Zealand haircut removed 😊.

We caused quite a scene and a fair bit of excitement, Aiden and I sat on our stools.  Randoms asked for photos and one man, who seemed to be vaguely in charge, lined some of the cutters up around me and said something using the pictures (or video?) for the TV!?!  Spent the rest of the spare time chatting to some other travellers from the Netherlands. 

The train itself was not too bad, comfy leather reclining seats, a fair amount of leg room and some drinks and a bun bought round as soon as we boarded.  10 hours of this should be ok 😊.  Except that I have a fairly bad stomach ache this morning…

The countryside we passed early on was what we’ve come to expect, flat with small collections of hills in the distance, mostly rice paddies.  On the rocky outcrops there were occasional large Buddha statues or heads out in the open.  The Thai Buddhists feel that the Buddha’s should be visible to all from everywhere so often do not enclose the Buddha statues. 

There is a new railway under construction between Kunming (China) and Bangkok, scheduled to be finished in 2023.  Much of this line will be elevated so it’s a big project, and we could see evidence of the construction on this part of the track before it splits off to head for Vientiane in Laos. 

As we got within the last few hours it finally changed up as we passed through some national parks.  Hilly forests were the last thing we saw before the sun set.

After arriving at the station an hour and a half late and grabbing some breakfast supplies (eggs, bread and milk as there is very little cereal available here) from the 7/11 we looked for a taxi.  He wanted 200THB, but the Grab Taxi App showed we could get one for 86 THB.  He wasn’t interested in haggling and moved on to the next group of people who agreed to his high prices so we ordered the Grab. 

Our place had received rather mixed reviews so we were a little nervous, but it was fine.  A little one bed apartment with the kids on a pull out bed in the ‘lounge’.  It’s nice to have our own space and be self catering. 

After such a strenuous day (?) we were all knackered so hit the hay.

Carry on with us to Chiang Mai, or read back through our adventures in Kanchanaburi – the site of the Bridge over the River Kwai.