Jungle Boogie

[New photos are up...but no recent ones at the time of writing. Watch this space.] We finally managed to tear ourselves away from Ko Pha Ngan (no thanks to Koi & Beat at the Silvery Moon Bungalow, who supplied us with the best food, beach and hospitality we could ask for) and made our way to Nahkon Si Thammarat, a southern town near the east coast. We don't have long left in Thailand before we have the long-awaited meet-up with Oonagh, Bernie, Sam and Ed, who decided to buy a ticket out here because we're such good fun. This means, then, that we're leaving Nahkon tomorrow after a fairly action-packed two days. Yesterday we saw the most famous temple in south Thailand (it was all right) and then went to a shadow puppet museum, which was great. We had the place all to ourselves, but they still put on a show for us and showed us how they make the puppets. A brief but lovely experience.



Today we went a little out of town to the Khao Luang National Park, which is HU-UGE. We know it was huge because we spent the entire day looking at one waterfall. You'd need a year to explore it all. We climbed the hill up the waterfall, occasionally stepping onto the rocks or having a little swim. The jungle here is real, hardcore jungle. The trees go up so high you have to walk away from them a little bit to look at them, and the paths aren't really paths, they're just masses of tree roots and rocks that vaguely resemble steps. Needless to say, my shirt was drenched in sweat before long. We went as far up as we could before the path stopped altogether and we just got lost in some very thick jungle. On the way down we fell over a couple of times, because it's so darn steep. We didn't see any tigers, but that's probably for the best. We saw a leech. It was on Tom's foot.





Nahkon Si Thammarat is a pretty nice place - barely any tourists, which is nice after the craziness of Bangkok and the British Colony feel of Ko Pha Ngan. Tomorrow we hopefully go to Krabi (the other side), back to the beach and the possibility of rock climbing. We're not entirely sure how to get there, but I'm sure it'll be fine. Vague plans are forming for the aforementioned meet-up, possibly on an island off the west coast of Malaysia, but bringing together people from different corners of the globe at the same time is just as hard as it sounds.