Pictures!

These are some pictures of me from a downhill race in Chainat a few weeks ago, a cross country race in Tak and the snorkeling pictures that didn't fit in the last post.

Bike trip to Ko Samet

Last weekend was the first weekend in a while where there was no bike race and I had nothing planned to go do with friends. While just laying around in bed all weekend sounded kind of nice, I decided I should go on an adventure instead. Ko Samet is an island in Rayong and a popular tourist destination and is also only around 80km from my house. Since I had not been to the beach in a while I decided to ride my bike there. This picture is taken from the southern tip of Ko Samet. The mountain you see between the two rocks is Khao Chamao. My house is just on the other side.

Just north of Ko Samet is the 1750 foot high mountain with a 7km road climbing up it that I rode up a few months ago. I decided it would be silly to be so close to the biggest climb in the area without hitting it up. The island in the picture is Ko Samet. The far right end of it is where I spent the night and hung out.

After climbing up the mountain I headed over to the boat that goes to Ko Samet. The boats are small and hold only people so I had to pay extra to get my bike over. It turns out the roads on Ko Samet are all four wheel drive roads filled with ruts, rocks, steep hills, broken concrete and are in general pretty awesome for mountain biking. It’s pretty satisfying flying down a road passing by a motorcycle or even climbing up a hill past a truck.

I road my bike to the end of the island where there is an area for camping. I set my hammock up, grabbed a shower and went off to a nearby resort to get dinner. Upon returning I found a ridiculous wind had picked up that seemed like it was about to blow my hammock away. This was rather annoying because the place that I had found to put my hammock up was so awesome. Regardless I packed it up and started heading off to find somewhere else to set it up. On the way I passed by a house where the people working at a nearby resort stayed. They had been watching me struggle with my hammock and yelled at me to go eat with them. I was still pretty hungry so it seemed like a good idea. After eating, they told me they had an extra room in the house where I could stay, which sounded way better than potentially getting blown into the sea while trying to sleep in my hammock.

I woke up the next morning to hear the Thais from the night before banging on my door and yelling my name at about 5:30 am. I stumbled out of bed, put my flip flops on and we walked out to watch a pretty incredible sun rise. The end of Ko Samet has two long ridges of rock that go down into the water and a small island off further out to sea.

After the sun rose we walked along the shore looking for crabs and occasionally trying some fishing which was never terribly successful. We walked a long a lot of coral reefs though most of it not in particularly good condition. They said this was because of increasing water temperatures which is certainly true, but there are probably issues with industrial pollutions coming from all of the factories in Rayong as well. Still there were lots of cool fish and hermit crabs and other cool things moving around.

We went back and had breakfast then went off to “Dop nam” I think is what they said. I did not understand the phrase, so they told me it was similar to “Wai nam” which means swimming. It turns out this means snorkeling, which is awesome since I’ve never done it before. We started out on the windy side of the island where it was rather challenging to not get raked up against the coral or pushed into a sea urchin. We then moved to the other side of the island which had some more healthy looking reefs than the areas before and much calmer water. It probably still wasn’t the best snorkeling ever, but I’d never even seen coral reef before so it was pretty amazing.

So after snorkeling I packed my things, jumped back on my bike and rode up the island to the ferry involving more than one close call with oncoming motorcycles. The staying on the left side of the road rule is not used as much when the left side of the road is sometimes a giant rut filled with large rocks. After taking the ferry back across I road my bike up to meet Maggie, a Peace Corps Volunteer who lives about 15 km away, ate lunch and had some delicious ice cream. I left at about 3:30 in the afternoon for an 80 or so km bike ride back home and got back at just before 7pm before it was completely dark. I woke up this morning feeling somewhat sun burnt, tired, sore and really happy the previous weekend’s adventure.

-I want to put up more pictures but it seems maybe I reached a maximum size per post limit or something? I will put up another post.

Backpacking and Caving in Northern Thailand

Last thursday was mother's day in thailand, which I suppose is a bigger deal here than in the US as they get a day off for it. Actually, since it fell on a thursday (the queen of Thailand's birthday) the government decided to declare Friday a holiday as well to give everyone a four day weekend. So some other volunteers, Kale, Ryan, Melissa and I headed to Khon Kaen to meet up, and found a bus the next day to Nam Nao National Park in Petchabun province, which we had heard good things about.

Here we are starting our hike into the forest. The forest is very different here, lots of tall grass with pine forests in places but best of all, far less leeches. We saw 2 the entire time we were there.
We set up camp at this viewpoint that looked across Nam Nao National Park to the East. Off on the other edge there are rolling agricultural lands with actually more corn than anything else. Rice does not grow very well on the side of a hill as it turns out. Anyway, it was a pretty epic spot to hang up my hammock. I could easily see out underneath the tarp at to the view.






Here is Melissa cutting some vegetables at sunset. We cooked pasta with fresh cut vegetables and some spices in it, which was pretty good considering that the pasta got way over cooked and turned into a kind of mush.

After that and some Hong Thong (cheap Thai whiskey) we went to bed.






It rained a little overnight and we woke up in a misty jungle. It was even a little bit chilly (by which I mean probably down to 70 degrees.) We packed up our camp and hiked around the forest for a little while, before we decided that the area of the national park we were in was too small to spend the next night in. We found out that there was a cave kind of near by, and the people at the ranger station said we would have no problem hitching there. On our way out we ran into a group of students planting trees for mother's day. They were really excited about meeting farangs (non-thais) that spoke english, and one of the teachers in charge had worked with a Peace Corps volunteer three years before. We helped plant the trees, and the teacher offered to give us a ride to a main intersection near the park so that we could easily hitch a ride to the cave.

When we got to the intersection, a truck that had been behind us pulled off the road to pick up some snacks from a little outdoor shop on the side. These people were in fact driving right past the cave which was 60km away up a curvy road. They let us load up into the back of their truck and then before leaving, bought us several bags of chip and some drinks for the ride. They were really nice, and even went into the park to see the cave with us when we got there.
At the park we were met by a ranger who showed us into the cave and around. He also showed us where we could camp, a nice open spot down in the forest just away from the cave and next to where a clear cool watered stream poured straight out of the side of the mountain. We asked the ranger if there were any hiking trails in the area, and he offered to take us to another cave that was a 3km hike away. He seemed really excited to meet people that weren't just coming to the cave to see it for 15 minutes then load up and drive away, which seems to be the typical Thai style of visiting National Parks. Actually its fairly typical of many Americans as well I suppose. We walked off through a beautiful jungle up a slippery muddy trail to a large open cave that climbed up into the side of the mountain.
We returned to camp at around 4 in the afternoon. After a snack, we were curious about the stream that flowed straight out of the rock, and decided to see if we could follow it into a cave.

Sure enough, after ducking under some boulders a fairly large limestone passage opened up with the clear blue water running through it. We waded and even swam a little bit up the passage. My new camera has some issues taking pictures when its dark out, or maybe I just haven't figured out how to do it well yet.
It was often pretty awkward hiking up the stream as the bottom was incredibly inconsistent, but the water was two deep to see to the bottom in the dark.

It was probably even more awkward for Melissa as she decided to where her Pasin in. A Pasin is a long tube of cloth that women in Thailand use as a towel, for bathing, or sometimes as a skirt.


The stream eventually opened up into a larger room and stopped. I am not entirely sure what happened at this point. Perhaps the water from the stream seeped in from the walls in this room and long corridor before it. Or, it also seemed that the water may have gone under the rock at this point and come from in front of us where the rock overhung the water. However, we could not really see well under the water, and didn't really feel like blindly swimming under a rock in the middle of a cave. The room at the end did make for some kind of fun climbing, although the rock was kind of sharp and broke a lot, the water was seven or eight feet deep, so it didn't matter if the rock broke off and I fell backwards back in. And yes, I have an absurd tan line. Its generally inappropriate to walk around with your shirt off in Thailand, so I'm not sure what to do about it.

The next day we explored the caves some more, then made our way back to Khon Kaen, a fairly big city where we got a hotel room and went out to eat sushi and then to a club to hang out with some of Ryan's Thai friends. I'm reminded again that this was not what I expected Peace Corps to be like, but I think I'm enjoying it.

Backpacking at Khao Yai

So the last weekend was a 4 day weekend for Thailand. It was the end of Buddhist lint, which means we got Monday and Tuesday off. I met up with Mike West, another Peace Corps volunteer who is from the group that came to Thailand a year before ours. We decided to go backpacking at Thailand's largest national park, Khao Yai.

People in Thailand don't really go backpacking, so there are no designated sites. Actually we weren't sure if it was against the rules of the park or not, but considering that most of the trails are not marked well and split off to the point that they are essentially impossible to follow, we figured no one would have any idea what we were doing. Camping in hammocks seems to be the way to go in the jungle so we went with that. There aren't good places to set up tents, and you don't get nearly as hot in a hammock.
The first day we spent trying to follow trails to Manao Falls 8km off of the road in the forest. We hiked way more than that, but perhaps never really even got close to the waterfall. There were lots of large trees down that blocked the trail, and then animal paths cutting off in different directions, not to mention unmarked and confusing directions. We camped along one of these trails that night and headed out to try something else. Perhaps something with less leeches, as the forest we were walking through was filled with them.

The next trail we hiked down similarly died out after a few hundred yards. However we knew it followed one creek down to a confluence with another which was supposed to have lots of waterfalls. So we started bushwhacking through the woods to get down there. Bushwhacking is really hard in rain forests. There are lots of plants with thorns, and vines, and fallen trees everywhere. Eventually we made it to a confluence with a smaller stream, which we were pretty sure we could hike up to get back out to the road. So we set up camp at the confluence so we could hike further down towards the waterfalls without our packs, that way we could swim and walk through the creek without worrying about everything getting wet. Way more fun than bushwhacking through spiky plants and picking up leeches.
Pretty soon we came to a series of two 40-50 foot waterfalls. We went into the woods and hiked down around them, thinking that those waterfalls must have made up a good amount of the gradient of the river and that we would soon get to the confluence with the larger river. This was wrong. The picture to the left is above another series of 5 or more waterfalls all at least 40 feet, some significantly more. It was getting too late to walk around, so we gave up on getting to the confluence. We also figured the larger river might have too much water and would perhaps be dangerous. Some day I want to go back and check that out, because that river hits even more topo lines on the map, and must have some epically huge waterfalls.

So we camped out along the stream that night, ate kanoms (Thai snacks) which make surprisingly awesome hiking food. We also had a huge bag of cashew nuts I picked up from my community before I left, as we have a group that grows cashew trees there.
The next morning we woke up and walked/waded/climbed up the smaller stream we had camped next to. It was a very pretty little stream, lots of small waterfalls, and green vegetation on the sides.

It was now Monday, out last day in the woods as Tuesday was reserved for traveling. We decided to hitch hike around the park and check out the more visited areas of the park.






This is Heo Narok Falls. There were a lot of people there, but for good reason, it was definitely a beauitful spot.

















This is Paa Diao Daai, which means something like a cliff that is easily passed over. Its off the road through the woods perhaps half a kilometer, which is more than the distance an average Thai person would consider walking, so that's probably why it would be easy to miss.

We continued to Huai Sawat Falls which is probably the most popular destination of the park. There were hundreds of people there. We then hiked a kilometer downstream to another very pretty waterfall, and there was no one there at all. I feel like this same thing happens in the States, but I was surprised to find that it is actually worse in Thailand.

Anyway, we hitched a ride out of the park and found a pretty delicious steak restaurant that was only slightly overpriced and was playing bluegrass (awesome!) We caught another ride who said they would take us to Pak Chong where we would get a hotel and a bus ride out the next morning, but they dropped us off 10km away, by which point it was dark out. This of course left us in a worse situation before because no one wants to pick up hitch hikers in the dark, even in Thailand.

This is kind of a cultural thing that Thai people like to do called Greng-Jai. Basically it means they don't want to help you out, or perhaps can't, but they try to anyway because it gives them good karma. So like, if you ask a Thai person directions, they will absolutely give you an answer, even if they have no idea where you want to go, because they want to be helpful. It doesn't really make sense, but it happens, and its frustrating. Fortunately after hiking a few km someone picked us up and gave us a ride into town.

I guess I'll leave you with this: one of the little guys that was plaguing us throughout our trip, though mostly on the first day. They inject anticoagulants when they bite you so that you bleed a lot after you take them off.

The Thai word is taak. They can actually bite through your socks too it turns out.

Hey blog, what's up?

So I haven't been posting on here, probably for a variety of reasons. First of all a lack of motivation to do really anything. I'm not really sure where it comes from, or I would stop it. Like when I was like, I'm going tide my bike a lot every day and get things done at my site and learn how to do things like cook Thai food. Okay, so I learned how to make sticky rice, but now that I'm eating fruit and sticky rice on a regular basis, I feel like I just did that because you can eat it with your hands and so I have thus eliminated the need to do dishes.

Also, mainly the reason I write this is to show pictures right? I can't imagine what I write being that terribly interesting or useful, but pictures of things I'm doing in Thailand are cool right? And the people following are all my friends and stuff anyway, so you can just talk to me, which is way better anyway. The whole Peace Corps rule about my blog being protected does make it seem kind of useless. Where was I going with this? Oh yeah, I lost my camera.

So a few weeks ago I woke up at 7am in the morning, cause damn it I was going to go hiking. Somewhere new as well. The trail up Khao Chamao, the big mountain next to my site has a trail going off of the back side. During a conversation with someone who lives at the base of that trail, he suggested that it may go to the National Park on the other side. So I was going to hike to that National Park. And, since I don't have a car or friends to go with or anyway to set up a one way hike, I was going to then hike back over the mountain. Which is why I woke up at 7am in the morning.

Its about a 12 or 13 km bike ride from my house to the trail. I probably got 3 or 4km before it started pouring rain. This however was the weekend before a 2 week long meeting where I went to central thailand to listen to people talk at me from 8am to 5pm 6 days a week. So I wasn't going to let a little bet of torrential downpour (pa-yu in Thai) stop me. Fortunately by the time I got to the trail it had stopped raining. In fact, it hadn't rained there at all. I locked my bike to a tree, geared up, and started hiking.

It probably took about half an hour of hiking before I could hear rain up above. This lasted for an incredibly long amount of time before I felt any rain. Lots of large leaves up above hang onto the rain for a while apparently. Eventually it did start raining, but I've hiked in the rain lots before. Its kind of refreshing when its 95 degrees outside. So on I went, probably 2/3rds up the km high peak of Khao Chamao.

Which is when my knee felt kind of pinchy or itchy or something. I scratched through my pants, but felt something weird. So I pulled my pants down in the middle of the trail (no worries, Thai people don't hike.) Interestingly enough there were two leeches sucking on my knee. While back home we think of leeches as aquatic, Thailand has terrestrial leeches. I knew this, but hadn't really given it much thought until I saw two of them on me. I shrugged, and put my hand down pulling the first one off. It immediately turned its head around latching itself to my thumb. I flicked my hand around but it was already on there really well, and the only way I managed to get it off was flicking it with my other hand really hard. For the next one I grabbed a leaf off of a nearby tree and jerked it off after 3 or 4 tries. They do not let go easily. These things varied in size, but were mostly probably about as thick around as an average worm,a nd maybe half as long.

Having removed these two, I checked around for more, and seemed to be clear of them. No big deal, they didn't really hurt, even if it was a little gross. I tucked my pants into my socks to keep more from getting up in my pants, and started hiking again. About 30 minutes later I stopped to find 3 of the things crawling up my pants. Slightly annoyed, I grabbed a leaf and proceeded to jerk them off of me. In another 30 minutes, I looked down to check my pants again. I was somewhat horrified. There were 10 to 15 on them for each leg. All of the crawling upwards, looking a lot like inch worms. I looked on the ground and could see 5 or 6 more crawling across wet leaves coming for me. I climbed up on a small rock grabbing leaves to begin jerking the things off of me. Considering how hard they hang on, by the time some were off more had found there way to my rock. Eventually, after probably fifteen minutes or more of pulling leaches on me. But, it would probably be good to give one more check. This is when I discovered that one had gotten up under my shirt and was sucking away just below my belly button. Also, there was another one on the back of my leg inside of my pants. I have no idea how it got there. I quickly realized that leg hair makes leeches way harder to get off.

At this point I had had enough. I took off down the trail (running) despite it being very steep (4-5 km, 1000m) and covered in wet leaves mud, and lots of leeches which I can't imagine help very much with traction. Soon I realized that in my haste to get off the mountain and away from leeches, I had lost the trail. I was pretty sure I knew how to get back to it, but to my left I saw a rocky drainage that began heading off of the ridge. The leaches like hanging out on wet leaves, apparently rocks not so much. I made a (probably poor) decision to head down this way to avoid more leaches.

Getting to where there were lots of rocks, I began removing leeches again. This time they had figured out how to get in between my pant legs and my socks and there were a cluster of 6 of them on my right ankle, and other 2 that had gotten up onto my leg. There were also 3 on my back and another crawling around on my backpack, not to mention countless ones of them on my pants. I hastily began jerking them off with leaves again, until finally I felt I was leech free. Oh, also there was one way up on my left hip. Whatever events in my life led up to me wearing boxer briefs instead of boxers, I am thankful for them.

So I began making my way down the rocky drainage, thankful for not seeing leaches. It sometimes got overgrown with lots of thorns and branches, where I would try and find my way through. Eventually it turned into a little bed rock stream, and I could just lay down flat and slide underneath them. There were some fairly large waterfalls, 20 to 30 feet in succession, though not much water, that I climbed down with the help of some fortunately very strong routes and vines. After what seemed like forever of descending this drainage, it flattened out. The stream eventually disappeared. Apparently it is intermittent, and I had passed the run off from the rain event which had died down a little.

The stream turned into a sandy bed that curved back and forth. Apparently wasps of some sort like to live in these stream beds. I don't know if they were pissed off, because they realized they built their home in a stupid place that was about to get flooded, or if I stepped on their nests or what, but I got attacked. I wasn't sure what happened at first, and kind of just stood there like, "What the hell is wrong with my chest and why does it hurt so bad?" Then I got stung two more times and it became apparent why my chest hurt, because there was a small angry wasp stinging me.

I ran down the stream away getting them off of me. Then finally made it out of the woods after walking along the stream banks through more thorns rather than risk finding another wasp nest.

I eventually came out to a road, fairly certain I knew which direction the trailhead was, I started walking down the road. It started pouring rain again, and I had 3 bee stings, was soaking wet, had lost plenty of blood from leeches, falling on rocks, and thorns, and I was not happy. After walking for I think around 5 km a person I know from my village drove by and asked me if I needed a ride somewhere. I happily jumped in the back of his truck and he drove me to my bicycle. Funny, that guy never asked me what I was doing walking down the road in a rainstorm covered in mud, branches, and bleeding in spots. I'm kind of glad, I definitely didn't feel like trying to explain it in Thai.

Oh yeah, and in the course of that my camera came out of my pack. I don't even know how to find where I was hiking again, so its pretty lost. I bought another one in bangkok last weekend, so hopefully more pictures soon. Maybe of some leeches sucking on me?

Anyway, people are yelling at me to "Gin Kao" or eat rice. They have to yell it at me at least 15 times a day, even if I'm obviously going there already. At least we eat outside and I don't have to listen to the same playlist of Thai songs in the office. There's seriously only 20 songs on it, and they just play it over and over again. It motivates me to get out and try to do things in the afternoons though. But doing things in Thailand is hard for community development, because Thailand is already pretty developed, and people don't think I know how to do things like cook food, or wash my clothes, so I can't imagine they actually believe I know what I'm talking about with the environment.

Bike Race and Koh Chang

So its been a while since I have posted on here. Sorry about that, I'm kind of lazy. Anyway, I guess it was 3 weeks ago I went to a bike race in Rayong, one province over. I didn't do particularly well or anything, fell on the downhill and racing my heavy trail bike cross country when its 100 degrees was a little rough. And I'm out of shape as far as racing bikes up hills goes. Regardless, it was a lot of fun, great to meet people who like to ride bikes and hang out, even if the whole language thing was still an issue sometimes.

Apparently there is pretty big series of bike races. Unfortunately the next one in Phuket I can't make it to because there is a Peace Corps , meeting, but I plan on trying to go to several of these races. The Rayong Mountain Bike club has offered to give me rides so why not?

Oh and I never ever thought I would be doing bike races during Peace Corps. I suppose Thailand is far different now than in 1962 when Peace Corps first went there


Last weekend I headed over to Koh Chang, the second biggest island of Thailand to hang out with some friends. Lots of rain kept us from backpacking like we had planned, but it did make the waterfalls particularly pretty. The beach was also beautiful, white sand and very clear water.














This is me with Melissa and Kale, who live up in Surin in Eissan (the north east section of Thailand.) There was some excellent swimming here, just jumping in at the bottom of the waterfall and letting the current carry us down. Fortunately we got there early enough before ridiculous amounts of tourists started showing up.






So the last day Kale and Melissa had already left since they have a longer trip back to site. We had been trying to find trails that trekking companies on Koh Chang guide on. This was way harder than we thought, and it turns out they keep the trails secret so you have to pay them to take you.

Looking at their brochure, I realized that from white sand beach I could see one of the mountains they hiked up. So, I figured if I could see it, I could probably hike there. I started out by walking along the road through town until I found a creek going under the road. So I climbed over the bridge into the creek, gathering some strange looks from other people around, and proceeded to hike up the creek. It started out a trash filled wash, but after maybe half a mile the trash was gone and it began to turn into a series of beautiful waterfalls and pools that I would swim/wade through and climb up. After maybe 15 or more falls this died out and I began to bushwack up towards the mountains (bushwacking is particularly difficult in a rain forest.) However soon enough came across the trekking company's trail which took me up to the top and some beautiful views of the island. I ran back down the trail, intent on getting back to my hotel room in time for a shower before checkout at noon. The trail as it turned out came out several miles up the mountain in the back of someone's fruit orchard and then right next to their house. The people were very friendly though, and kindly pointed me the way back to the main road, which I quickly walked down back to my hotel.

Oh, and the trekking company says this trip takes them 7-8 hours. I did it in 4, with no trail on the way up, an a good hour of walking on roads. I'm pretty sure my way was more fun than paying 1000 baht to wait for some middle aged out of shape tourist to go up the mountain and stop every 5 seconds, probably to complain.

Monkeys!

Saturday I was remembering the first time I came to visit my site 2 months or so ago, and remembered these small but really steep cliffed out mountains that I saw on the way in. So I decided to go ride my bike to check them out more, which turned out to be an awesome decision.

After discovering that a lot of the cliffs I had seen were up against a quarry that was being mined for gravel, I continued to ride my bike around the little range of mountains. I started to see little caves into the rock.

Around the next corner I came to a bunch of old abandoned temple buildings, a small shop, lots of Bhudda statues, caves, and monkeys everywhere. I think these are called gibbons. Anyway, I went into the shop and talked to the lady running it, who told my I should "kun khao" or climb up the mountain. She offered to watch my bike for me, so off I went, slowly walking past the monkeys to the set of stairs ascending the mountain.




The monkeys mostly got out of my way, walking up the concrete path in front of me as I took pictures of them and the scenery. This is probably one of the coolest places I have ever been. There were huge Bhudda statues everywhere, caves heading back into the mountain that I decided best not to explore alone, and crazy buildings and pathways built into the side of the rocks.

The scenery was also epic. In between this Bhudda and the rock, you can see Khao Kitchakut, 1500 meters high, the biggest mountain in Chanthaburi. In the other direction the horizon was the ocean.
This bridge went from one little peak on the side of the mountain over to the main portion. There were lots of monkeys on it, probably took me about 15 minutes to get across because one of the monkeys did not want to move. Eventually he went over to the side and let me past.









This is looking up to the north. The hills you can see to the left is Khao Wong, which are cliffed out and filled with caves on the other side. My house is about 15 km back behind them.



Anyways, things are still good in Thailand, meeting lots of people, my Thai keeps getting better, and I may be doing a mountain bike race this weekend.