Rainforest and Waterfalls

May 5th, 2006

Since it is the weekend, I can’t really do anything to contact Canon Asia for video camera tech support. And this Monday is a holiday (I think it’s the King’s birthday), so I won’t be able to do anything then as well. We have decide to go to Bangkok this Tuesday so we won’t have to ship my camera off, and maybe I can just buy a new one while I am there.
Elisabeth and I decided to go explore the island today. I had been reading about the rainforest area up in the Northeastern part of the island, so I rented us a motorbike and we headed up there to check it out.



Unless we are on a major highway, we never really know what street we are on. They do have a lot of big signs in English and Thai that point you in the direction of the area you want to go, such as beaches or cities, but I have yet to see a sign with a street name on it in English.
We stopped off at a gasoline fill up booth along a steep mountainside road to refuel, but we couldn’t find anyone to pay for it. Then we noticed a young boy was sleeping behind the counter. Elisabeth and I shouted “sawatdee kup” (“hello” in Thai) at the boy for a good while, but he just wouldn’t wake up. I finally had to go behind the counter and tap his arm to wake him up. We had a good laugh and then he filled up our motorbike and we got on our way.
After driving a good ways north not knowing if we are traveling the right way, I decided to stop off and ask for directions. I pulled off the highway and approached a mother and her two daughters in a small shop. The mother was at the front counter area, while the two young girls ironed clothes a few feet away. I knew when I approached that these three would probably speak little to no English, and I was right. After about 15 minutes of talking slowly to each other, repeating loudly, drawing roads on paper, and trying to communicate to each other through hand movements, we somehow got directions out of the woman.

We only know how to say hello, goodbye, and thank you in Thai so far. This woman only knew about 4 or 5 English words. Throughout our conversation she kept looking over at her daughters, like they might understand what the heck I was trying to say. We all got a good laugh out of the language barrier though, and it is very satisfying after you finally get your message across. All of the Thai people I have tried to talk to so far love it when you say (or try to say) something in Thai to them.

We finally arrived in the rainforest area, and decided to check out several waterfalls that we knew were in the area. The first was Ton Sai Falls.



We ate a nice large lunch here for about 60 baht ($2). Weird because the meal was $2, but then the woman charged me $2 for my pepsi as well. Shenanigans. Afterwards Elisabeth went to the bathroom, and after she came out she told me (with a smile on her face) that I should go use the bathroom as well. Luckily I didn’t have to go #2, because I really don’t like their “toilet paper.”



The falls were beautiful, and after looking around one area, we realized that the falls were much larger then we thought. Not far off was another part of the waterfall.



We left Ton Sai on our motorbike and went about 7km south to another called Bang Pae Falls. These falls were much larger than Ton Sai, and it had a nice long hike through dense jungle before you got to the main waterfall area.





On our way home from Bang Pae Falls, we spotted some elephants not far from the street. Once I got closer I could tell these were the elephants used for riding safaris for tourists. They were chained to the trees and they had a mark on their backs where the saddle goes. Too bad. I would love to see wild elephants, but slim chance of that on a resort island like this.