Coffee Crappers

Just one hours' drive north of the center is the beautiful Khao Sok National Park where Derek, Sarah and I spent last Saturday. After breakfast, we followed a rough map on their website through Takuapa and managed to find ourselves without any road signs. We pulled over and asked a local how to get to Route 401, and the old woman responded with a heavy dose of directions in Thai. I nodded along (I told her I didn't speak it, but that didn't stop her) and remembered the hand motions...we figured, at least we could round the corner and speak to someone in English without offending her. She followed us right back into the car, speaking through the doorway. We drove, and somehow, we found the right road, following only the memory of her vague hand gestures.

Khaosok is the oldest evergreen rain forest in the world. This park is home to some very unique animals, like the clouded leopard, the Malaysian tapir and sun bear, and the mouse deer. We parked the car and paid our 200 THB fee (about $7) to enter the park. We crossed on foot to the entrance of the first of three possible sight seeing places. Many areas were roped off due to the dangerous rivers that worsen with the rainy season. We looked at the horrendously overpriced list of tourist activities and snubbed it - we were doing this one ourselves (to be fair, we usually do them ourselves).

We started up one trail to see a "panoramic" view of the jungle. We climbed many steep stairs that were in disrepair and quickly stopped pulling off to the side to read the barely legible, rusted signs in Thai. We saw an army of massive ants, with big black bodies and big red heads. We think they were giant fire ants, and they were at least a half inch long. They were all over the hand rails and when you looked at them, they reared up and tried to check you out to. *Shudder*...disgusting.

We wandered over a suspension bridge with boards missing and broken support cables. It was like in the movies, where they walk over this nothing of a bridge, and at a key moment, the rotting boards break out from under them. Yep. It was like that.

We got to what seemed like then end of the trail, but we could see nothing like a panoramic view, so we kept going. I mentioned at least twice that I was pretty sure we weren't on a path anymore, but Derek and Sarah were determined. I peeked at the ground around the time they began agreeing with me about us having gone too far, and saw a worm moving like a slinky. When we got back to the trail, I looked down and saw the worm stuck to my ankle. I slapped it, and the back end came off, but it held tight. I smacked it again, and still another chunk broke off, but it was resilient. Finally, the third strike broke the sucker off. I wasn't bleeding, but I was hysterical, and Sarah took my hand and walked me down the path, telling me that it was probably nothing. But, I knew it was a leech. I had gotten them on the bottoms of my feet in Wash Park, Colorado while playing in a stream. And they're on my ultimate hate list. Derek had one on his sock, but it was brushed away easily. And Sarah was clean...we thought.

On our way to lunch, Sarah took one of her shoes off. Something that looked like a rock rolled out. But, it wasn't a rock. It was a fat leech which had just filled itself to the brim and had detached itself from her toes. It struggled to move its overfilled body along the ground, and while we filmed it, Sarah dared to check her other foot. Low and behold, another was stuck fast to her big toe, and a first attempt at removal failed (they're slippery buggers). She pulled it free and Derek squished them both into oblivion on the pavement, squirting Sarah's blood on my shoes...don't worry, she promised me she was free of any blood borne diseases ;-)

We ate at the only restaurant we could find, and they gave Sarah napkins to stop the bleeding. When we were done, she walked to the side to adjust her makeshift bandage, and two women from Ireland came to the rescue with "plasters" (bandages) and water. We thanked them and took off for our second hike, because Sarah's a trooper, and we wanted our money's worth on the park. The latter half of the hike was quite easy as the dirt path was more like a road. We walked along without seeing anything of consequence while Derek looked in vain for the Malaysian Tapir and elephants he was sure were just out of eyesight. To navigate a particularly skinny pathway, I led the way. As we came around the bend, we saw a Civet cross the road just up ahead. We rushed excitedly to the spot where it ascended into the trees to see it climb out of sight. Just then, a Thai guide and two farangs came up, asking what we had seen. We told him. The guide smiled at our naivety and told us it was a monkey. Stupid guide...like we haven't seen a hundred monkeys and we're hallucinating from blood loss.

I have never seen a civet before, even in pictures, but Derek's spent WAY too much of his life learning otherwise useless facts about very "irrelevant" animals that one could never hope to even see...except this ONE time, when it came in handy. I described the animal to him and he determined what it was, and I affirmed this when we got back and looked it up online. They are very difficult animals to track down, and it's a miracle if you see one at all...it was pretty cool. We didn't take this picture - the animal was much too quick. Civets are known for producing the most expensive coffee in the world (watch The Bucket List), called Kopi Luwak. The stuff sells for $100-600 per pound! It is made from coffee cherries that have been eaten by the animal, partially digested, and are then harvested from its feces. Mmmm, GOOD! 

We detoured down to a swimming hole, but none of us were interested in getting in the lake after the leech attacks, and none of us have ever watched the ground so carefully as we did now. It started to rain, but we moved on to see a very beautiful river filled with smooth, giant boulders. It was very peaceful, and we were all in awe that we were here, in the middle of this massive rain forest in Thailand by ourselves. We felt pretty grown up...that, and we just bought our first car insurance policy  ;-)

We hiked further to see the waterfall, and you might say we were disappointed by their definition. This was no waterfall...it was a rock with some river "water falling" over it. But, it was pretty and the walk back was pleasant.