On-the-Road Tales

Wow – 100 – that sounds like a lotta days but does not feel so long since i left… Went to check out a national park today with a 7 tiered waterfall. I was assuming a big high drop and I could relax in a nice pool at the bottom but no, nothing is easy. It was made up of cascading pools where I had to climb 1300 meter up through the woods, over stones and up ladders to check out the various levels. I was as usual dripping with sweat by the end and wished I was the type to stay at the bottom and picnic instead having to see what is at the top. God forbid I miss out on something. Bonus was there were scads of butterflies. So at times you were walking through a sea of white fluttering wings, that alone might have been worth the effort. I got back to the bottom and was no sooner in the pond to enjoy the refreshing water, than I hopped back out again. There were some sort of strange fish that were knocking themselves into me. While they obviously were not harmful since everyone else was swimming around… in all the world over, I have never had fish purposely ram into me and I was not liking it.

I hoped that animal nibbling trend would not carry onto my next destination, Tiger Temple. The monastery beacme a refuge after the monks took in an orphaned tiger cub. Today it is full of ild animals form boars and water buffalo to antelope and peacocks and is in the process of building a vet hospital. There was a canyon full of beautiful, orange striped tigers and with a handler holding me at all times, I got to pet them lying around!!! They are magnificent animals and being so close to such fierce power was exhilarating. Some of the others were sure the cats were drugged because they were so calm. Not sure but I can say it probably was not an altogether safe thing to do if one of them decided to cause trouble in the restricted rock canyon.

All my new friends left that day back to Bangkok but there was a new batch back at the lodge. An English father, son and an israeli girl. We sat around and chatted for the night and had a grand time. They have been travelling through SE Asia extensively and had some great stories. The young bloke had done some Muy Thai the wicked form of boxing they have here and gotten fairly beaten up, brave lad!

Tags: Travel

This entry was posted on Monday, April 30th, 2007 at 8:46 pm and is filed under Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.