Ah Thailand  - sea, sun, beach and massage on the beach given by local girls  - the landing of the airplane woke me up. Chiang Mai :  No beach but five days of jungle travelling was waiting for us.  Jungle travelling :hiking and on the back of an elephant – elephant trekking they call it .  Is it comfortable this elephant , is there any air co and what about the mosquito’s and the black malaria?  By the way who’s idea was it to organise this ?  But I convince myself :  this will be fun end we will travel trough  a tropic mountain rain forest . This will be a unique experience for city people.

First day we rest and receive guidelines about clothing eating drinking jungle bio-degradable soap and elephants. We stay in a guest house near the national park of Khao Sok Jungle and the food is delicious. Don’t know how many people live in Thailand what is the political situation and economic challenge. Here in the jungle it is irrelevant.

We meet your local guides and we start travelling by vehicle up the mountain to the cloud forest above 2000 meters.  We receive  a lunch with  sandwiches, fruit, snacks and water in our small day pack for a first warming up 3 hour hike through the forest and jungle. The  guides point out all the wild plants, animals, birds and flowers to us. Some of the animals spotted on the trail are civet, sorow goat  and deer. This is the home of the Green Tailed Sunbird, which is found no other place in the world and a common resident . The rest of our journey is more of that and only two hours on an elephant  (and that was enough for me – although I like these animals very much).

It's useless to describe the beauty of the place ... the sounds ... the smells ... the exotic language ... the lost people weaving cotton on the mountains, the waterfall experience ....  you better go and experience it  for yourself.

16-03-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door Pieter-Jan Van Haeverbeke