Tales of Traveling through Thailand: Part I.2

Departing the Islands we made our way first to Khao Sok National Park about a 5 hour bus ride away from where the ferry landed. However we accidently took the wrong bus and we were dropped off on the side of the highway with the semi understanding that another bus should picked us up. About 30 minutes later while we stood in the rain it did! We stayed on the edge of the national park with a very nice thai family who rented us cheap bungalows for only 100 baht (about$3!).They said usually their place is full this type of season but due to the heavy rains it was almost empty. In the jungle now we encountered various animals that made there way into our rooms including birds, bats, mouse, and giant centipedes. The following day it was still raining but we decided to rent tubes and look at the goregous vine covered cliffs and jungle as we floated down the river. After rafting we wanted to hike to the waterfalls for a little exercise after being coop up by the rain. With our ponchos on we headed out to the jungle. To make a long story short after 15 minutes into our hike we all realized we were being attacked by leeches!! I was wearing my meesh water/hiking shoes which made it easy for the leeches to crawl through and bite me. The hike turned into the ending of a scary movie with everybody running back on the trails while trying to pull leeches off of them. If we stood still we could see the leeches detect us and start inches their way towards us. I got attacked the most (no surprise there!). My foot was covered in blood dripping from the bites since leeches inject a blood thinner. Lucky the family we were staying with knew what to do and gave me a wad of tabacco to press against my bites to stop bleeding. After this episode I think we were all ready to get the heck out of the jungle.

The following day we took an elephant trek up a river, literally the elephants stomped there way through the river. With the rain still not stopping and hearing tid bits from the news that the south of Thailand was flooding with tourist already getting evacuated off some of the island we decided we should probably start heading up north. We gathered our backpacks and went to the side of the road to hopefully catch a bus to the city where they run buses to bangkok. After sitting along the road for 3 hours we came to the consenses that no bus would be coming due to the floods and were lucky that a thai man offered us a ride in a songtao the same price as the bus. About 2 minutes after being crammed in the back of a pickup truck we see the bus we'd been waiting for so long follow us, and even pass us!!

That was the least of our troubles for the day. Forty minutes into our ride we come to a halt, traffic has completely stopped and people are getting out of their cars. Our driver also gets out and reports to us "Mai di, mai di" (He can not go). The floods that we had been seeing the past few weeks where now in front of us with the road being completely washed out and under a few feet of water. Now we are in the middle of nowhere with no place to put are things or sleep. Someone jokingly spots a huge military truck and says, "Yea we just need one of those things!". Being a group of white people we are easily spotted by the police who come over inquiring what we are doing. Within the next few minutes the Thai miliary is waving us over in a hurry to jump in their Cargo vessel to go through the flood. Awesome! Inside the truck we are huddled together with other Thai people who were caught in a hard place. The military truck goes straight through the flood which looks exactly what we'd been seeing on the TVs.

We made it through and our minds quickly turn to our next problem. Are the buses running to bangkok? Are we going to be stuck in another city that has no hotels or guesthouses? In the truck with us was a Thai lady who spoke really good english and being how generous Thai people are she quickly offered all 6 of us (who she only a few minutes early met) to stay at her house if the buses weren't running. I wish I could say someone in the US would have done the same thing. We arrive at the bus station and run to the ticket office to see 1) if the buses are going to bangkok 2) if there are any tickets left due to all the tourist being evcuated off the islands. To our luck, we got tickets for a night bus departing at 8pm and arriving around 5 am. For the next few hours we camp out in the bus station with everybody else waiting to get out of the flood.