Homeless By Choice

Ko Pha Ngan to Kaeng Krung Park

An uneventful ferry ride and about an hour and a half later we were at the port of Sumat Thani. We rode in the back of a truck to the minibus station where things started to get interesting. Nobody understood where we wanted to go. When I finally showed the guy on a map he broke out laughing and showed our destination to the other drivers who roared with laughter. We were told we had to go to another place that was three kilometers away and took a tuk tuk for 100 baht. We had reservations at the park. We called the numbers but none of them were valid, I remembered that the numbers all started with 0 and prepended a 0 and reached a fax machine. We walked around to a hotel and found the spot where we dropped off, it was no 3km, that was just the route the tuk tuk driver took. At the hotel the woman told us the name of a city we needed to go to, we looked it up on a map and it was nowhere near our destination. She finally got hold of the park and told us to a different city to go to, which was not too far from the park, we bought a couple of tickets for 125 baht each and rode to nowhere. We had completely escaped any travellers and tourists. We finally were told this was our destination. Now what?

As I hopped out of the bus, a guy in camo approached and said he was a park ranger. Wow! That was easy. We hopped into the back of his truck and drove off to the park. Although Marek and I each had reservations for 400 baht a night,it turns out that was the rate for a cabin, not per person. The website was ambiguous, better safe than sorry.

We were shown to our cabin, dumped our stuff and were soon brought dinner. We expected a communal eating area, but … As we passed a cabin a guy was playing a guitar.

Throughout the day we were joined by the curious and continually photographed, hundreds upon hundreds of pictures of the most mundane activities, lacing boots, eating, sitting in a truck. They don’t get many guests I think and white people must be very rare.

The next day we had a short walk in the wet jungle, wading across a river, thoroughly soaking my hiking boots, the cost was 200 baht apiece which three days later are still not dry, hanging onto my backpack, I nearly just lost one. In the afternoon we rafted. That was 350 baht each, on inflatable kayaks. In the evening we were invited to join the group, two rangers with their guitars, the girl brought us a cold pomegranate and we listened to them play their guitars and sing in Thai.

We hoped to see animals the park has elephants and tigers, but the terrain is rugged with most of the slopes 30 to 80 degrees and the wildlife was scattered throughout the remote parts of the park.

We arranged for them to take us to the train station.

We had each paid 1,200 baht for three nights which works out to about $15 a night. It turns out that was the cabin fee, not per person fee. Whatever.

Additionally we paid 200 baht each for the jungle walk, 350 each for the rafting and an usual request 1,000 baht to take us to the train station. So that adds up to 1,900 baht. The total bill was 3,600 baht meaning 1,700 baht for five meals each, bottled water and cigarettes.