Thailand day 3: Khao Yai

Tuesday, December 18th

This was definitely one of my favorite days. I had balked at the 1300 Baht fee ($43) for the day trip to Khao Yai National Park, especially given normal costs in Thailand (most of my amazing meals cost $1-2). I was pleasantly surprised that the trip exceeded my expectations and was a bargain for how great it was.

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After a breakfast of Pad Thai (hey, I was going to use every opportunity to eat great Thai food), we left for the tour from the hostel at 8:15am. There were two guides, myself, a Dutch couple (not the one that argued), and a Belgian couple. Later we were joined by another car with a Swedish family of 6 traveling for 6 months in Southeast Asia! Quite a family. The Dutch couple and Belgian couples were nice as well.

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The tour guides had eagle eyes. It started with seeing a lizard on a tree. They also spotted various birds (including Hornbills, Woodpeckers, and Kingfishers), snakes, a wild boar, as well as gibbons and macaque monkeys.

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The guides were also very knowledgeable and had fantastic telescopes which they not only set up for us to see the more distant birds, but also used to take pictures with our cameras. It was really a fantastic, magical day. The only disappointment was that we were unable to see elephants in the wild. They are common in the park and the evidence was seen (and smelled) throughout the day. Apparently, they see elephants about 50% of the tours. Oh well, you can't win them all. We also went swimming at a gorgeous waterfall that was used as the setting for the Leonardo DiCaprio film, The Beach.

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We got back from the tour around 8pm, I had more yummy Thai food and finally got a decent night's sleep.