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The entire park used to be limestone mountain ranges that they flooded to create a reservoir. Our guide, who's name also happened to be Sok, was descended from one of the few hunting families that had lived in the pre-reservoir rainforest, so he was very familiar with the area. |
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Speaking of our guide Sok, here he is. The tattoo on his shoulder as well as the ones covering his other arm, hands, and back, were all done by a friend of his who gives traditional-style tattoos using a sharp piece of bamboo dipped in ink. He told us he and his friend got really drunk one night and when he woke up, he had a new tattoo on his hand that he didn't remember his friend doing. All I can say is that he must have been really super drunk. But he says that those days are behind him which his pregnant wife confirmed, and he was a really great guide for us. |
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Mark and Yee posing on the deck of their tree house. This is where we slept our first night in the area, on the outskirts of the rainforest. $12.50 for a room with a bed, mosquito net, and a private western-style toilet, which I appreciate when getting out to the more remote areas of Thailand. |
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Looking out the door of my treehouse at Mark sitting on their steps. And at the left of frame is the mosquito net hanging over my bed. |
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My wife Anne and I went out to Thailand for our friends Mark and Yee's wedding back in 2006, and I never really got around to making any tabblos about the specific areas we visited while we were there. All we had for a camera was a little Canon PowerShot, and I was only just starting to think about photography as a hobby back then, but I did find a good handful of shots to share that I'm pretty happy with. And I do like being able to format these old pictures to find new, better compositions here on Tabblo... |
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Obviously we needed a boat to get out to where we'd be camping, so we rented this one from another friend of Sok's, and got the guy's son thrown in as part of the deal to help carry stuff. That's him up front. |
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I never got tired of looking at these limestone formations. Strange to remember that they're actually the peaks of mountains that didn't used to be under water. All that used to be here was a river that cut through the base of the mountains. |
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One of my favorite shots from the boat ride. |
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To be perfectly honest, this tree is from a totally different national park in southern Thailand. I didn't get enough good shots from that trip to make a whole new Tabblo though, so I'm sticking it in here. |
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My favorite picture of me from the trip, taken by Mark while we were kayaking. I just love how incredibly tall the trees are. Maybe someone can use my tiny body there for scale and do the math to work out the height of those things. Math's never really worked out for me, so I'll just say they must be a couple miles tall. |
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So I said in the caption that the tree to the left is from a different park, but I thought I'd mention why it has the colorful strips of cloth tied around it as I remember the story. Basically, it's a lucky tree. You ask it for it's protection as you head into the jungle, and thank it for it's protection as you leave. You may be wondering, "protection from what?" So was I when we were first heading out on these trips. Well, these jungles had cobras (including King Cobras), leopards, scorpions, elephants, and even tigers in them. So as far as I'm concerned, you don't question it...you just ask the tree to protect you. |
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A pretty out-of-focus shot of where we camped the first night. Anne had already headed back to the States unfortunately, so Mark, Yee and I all slept in a little row in the one tent. Sok, his wife, and the kid all preferred sleeping in hammocks, like little wrapped up tiger treats. |
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There's the helper kid who's name I can't remember for the life of me. He was really quiet, but he smiled a lot. Anyway, just a few shots from around camp. Going back through these pictures now, it sure looks like we were huge slobs, but we cleaned up after ourselves, I swear. |
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Our campfire smoke going up through the trees. |
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We were camping right next to a clear, fat part of a stream that was full of these little carp that loved nibbling on our feet. It tickled. |
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There's a bit of the stream that the carp were in. |
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The next day, it was another boat ride to the floating raft houses we'd be staying at. I don't have a lot of pictures of stuff we did and saw at each place because I was mostly video taping it all. |
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Arriving at the raft houses. That's half of Yee's face. |
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Yee and I were only pretending to be serious here. We were all thrilled to be out where we were. In fact, shortly after this picture was taken, we were swimming in that water behind us. |
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Mark and Yee sitting by the back door of our raft house. It was basically big enough for two little matresses to be laid out on the floor. That's it. What an incredible view we had out the front and back door though. And waking up to Gibbons singing is a pretty great way to start the day too. |
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Later in the day, we went out for a boat ride to see if we could find some wildlife. We did see some monkeys, monitor lizards, sea eagles and such, but like I said before, I video taped all of that. So all you get to see is landscapes. Sorry. |
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The sun had just set there to the right of frame. |
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This is what you saw everywhere - the jutting remains of trees that were submerged when they created the reservoir. |
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The water line that shows how high the reservoir gets during the rainy season was extremely clear on the limestone. |
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More dead tree stumps |
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And even more dead tree stumps, taken from our tiny floating raft house. Visiting this park was one of my all time favorite life experiences. I plan on getting back there some day, and making it a real photography trip. |
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