Khao Yai (Big Mountain)

Candace and I love the mountains.  We grew up by them and have really missed them since we moved to Texas and then Thailand.  I was told by some co-workers that we ought to visit Khao Yai (meaning “Big Mountain”)…so after our day trip to Ayutthaya, we drove North East and arrived in the evening at our local hotel.

As luck would have it, our hotel presents Thai music and dancing every Friday night, so while we ate our great Thai dinner, we were treated to all sorts of Thai dancing, fire dancing, and flower necklaces to boot.  It was a great welcome to the National Park:

You know it was a fun night if our teenager got up to dance and smiled!

The next day we had a great breakfast and then went to the National Park.  We showed my Thai’s driver’s license and got the local price (tourists are charged 400 baht / person, locals are 40 baht!).  Within 5 minutes of going into the park, we saw 2 hornbills flying between the mountains and these guys on the street…how cool!

We stopped at a viewpoint and then had our first hike of the day in the grasslands hoping to catch some wild elephants at a salt lick.  No luck, but we did enjoy the hike and occasional cool breeze:

We next drove to the headquarters and had a nice hike through the jungle.  It’s been an especially dry season, so the waterfalls were either gone or quite small.  We did see all sorts of crazy ants, mushrooms, spiders, and vegetation:

OK, these ants were AMAZING.  It was like watching rush hour traffic in Bangkok…1000s of them all in single file lines, side by side, rushing along.  If you pushed a leaf in front of them, they piled up like a bunch of crazy drivers.

Watch your head!

After our hike, we had a nice picnic lunch and quickly discovered there were TONS of monkeys all around our eating area.  It was a lot of fun to watch them swing, jump, and even chase people who got too close to them:

Our last hike was to a beautiful waterfall (albeit MUCH smaller than normal due to the drought).  The kids had a blast playing parkour on the rocks (as they called it) and playing with their Uncle Ryan – he definitely made a great impression on the kids!

I love this panorama shot I got of the falls:

With Aunt Janelle and Uncle Ryan leaving tomorrow, this was a great way to show them the beauties of Thai nature, spend some good time with them, and wish them well before their sendoff.  We’ll miss you!