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I'm too tired to write an entry right now; overnight train last night, not much sleep, playing in a river all day and tubing down it (ringos for those not familiar :)) and monkey watching. Well all but the last was tiring.
I'm in Khao Sok National Park and it's stunning and peaceful and full of strange creatures. It's a big rainforest park with huge limestone mountains - looks a bit like the Three Gorges in China - and it is similar to the blog picture. We all arrived this morning from Bangkok and our group changed a bit. Al went home to England, Nick and Anton are not technically on the tour but are shadowing us, we'll meet up in Ko Samui, and we gained a new guy from Cumbria.
We're staying in little treehut bungalows in the forest by a river with ropeswings and monkeys, so as you can probably tell I'm pretty happy! Today we played in the river and then there was a huge rainstorm, you could see the rain coming down the river, so we kept swinging of the rocks. When it stopped the river was really high so tubing was great. The rapids were pretty fast and we spent hours trying to tip each other out. I'm covered in grazes because as with anything else waterborne I crash a lot :). Then we had a meal and watched the monkeys on the side of the river.
Oh yeah I've completely missed out a lot. I'll do it later! Allright after Chaing Mai we went by a horrible stuffy bus to a little village called Tha Ton. This was next to the border with Burma and you could see the soldiers on the mountaintops. We visited a really weird temple full of strange statues (people bursting from each others stomachs and such.) and visited a monastery to see how monks in Thailand live. It's so strict they can't eat after midday. Then we had Mekong River catfish for dinner and it was tasty. Next day we went in a pickup truck to Chaing Rai. We did a longtail boat ride to Laos, the neighbouring country. Laos was weird, there was a asiatic bear wandering around a very flimsy enclosure with a monkey and some very strange creatures in bottles of whisky.
In Chaing Rai we got drunk at the Tee Pee bar, another Rasta bar which our guide, Sam, loves. Sam got drunk and fell asleep singing "tuk tuk take me home", and the rest of us followed. Next day I just wondered around town, there wasn't much to do in Chaing Rai itself.
Then we took a bus back to Chaing Mai and a train to Bangkok. The train was old and really humid for some reason but you could stick you're body right out the window so I enjoyed that (minding trees and poles of course). In Bangkok I changed my flight so I now am spending a while in Ko Tao to do a PADI scuba diving course. Then I bought stuff and watched a weird Thai movie with Anton and Nick. Then was Khao Sok which I've covered in this terribly organised entry.
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