Gibbon
Travelled from Bagkok to a place called Pak Chong becsuse it was near the Khao Yai National Park. This park was Thailand's first National Park and the largest.
We spent half a day and visited a cave used by monks for meditation. It had scorpion spiders, and a resident cat, that tormented the centipedes in the cave, as well as a few bats.
In the evening we waited for the sun to set and observed a cave high in the hills. About 2 million bats left the cave on mass- quite a sight. There were a few kites (birds) and eagles waiting for the bats too and attacked them as they flew off looking for food.
Bats leaving the cave at sunset.
Later we swam in a spring in the dark.
The nest day we were up early with a guide to go on a trek for wildlife. We saw gibbons, macaques (monkeys), two kinds of hornbills, samba deer, barking deer, a python, and some wild elephants but no tigers! We had to wear calico socks on our legs as there were hundreds of leeches and ticks in the leaf litter! One girl had them climb to her stomach and attch themselves!
There was no way we could have trekked in the monsoon jungle without a guide. I kept hoping he wouldn't die on the trail with us as we would never have found our way out again and who knows- maybe the tigers would have found us!
Flying lizard.
