39. Kui Buri National Park

After a long debate yesterday, we decided to go and visit the Kui Buri National Park to hopefully spot some elephants!
Michael wanted to charge us alot of money to arrange someone to drive us there and back. We didn't really fancy this option and James was happy to drive the moped steadily there, which was a good 90 minutes. It was really fun and such a nice feeling being on the open roads with all the beautiful scenery on offer. We stopped off at Bun Nok temple along the way, we spotted how incredible it looked from a distance, so we just had to have a look.
We had an hour wait at the national park entrance before we caught the safari jeep into the park, we sat in the shade and bought some drinks as the sun was blaring at this stage.
We had a private jeep with a guide to take us about 8 km into the national park to spot some elephants. We were only 15 miles away from the Burmese border! We had so many questions to ask, so we communicated with the guide using Google translate.
Unfortunately, there is still quite a lot of conflict between the locals and elephants. The elephants often leave the boundaries of the national park and ruin all the surrounding crops, not good news for local farmers. The local people formed a support group to help improve the conflict and decided to set up the safari for tourists and visitors - which provides an income for the locals and softens the negative affects of having these huge wild animals roaming their back gardens.
After about 20 minutes of driving into the park, we suddenly turned around and drove back on ourselves as there was a reported sighting. We pulled up next to about 10 other jeeps with our binoculars and sat and watched. Eventually, we spotted this elephant in the distance behind some trees. We watched him walk to the water hole before he dissapeared into the trees again. It was an incredible sight.
We stopped off at two other view points and managed to spot some hornbills in the trees very far in the distance. They are huge!
Our driver quickly hurried us back into the jeep to another reported sighting. It was quite comical driving to the next point, all the drivers compete to get to the next spot quickest, they take it so seriously. Even more lucky at the next view point, as we saw a mother and young baby together. It was so special, but people started getting noisy and the elephants soon left. Which was a real shame.
One last stop on our way back and there were another two elephants in the distance. We sat on the bank and just watched them for ages, it didn't feel real.
After such a spectacular day, we had to brace our 90 min moped drive back home. 3 hours in total on a moped today, covering about 80 miles - which got quite uncomfortable towards the end. James did so well again and we managed to get home before dark. We saw a pack of puppies on the way home, which were just adorable, we were a bit worried as we couldn't find the mum though.
Poor James was exhausted after all the driving, so we grabbed some food from the local night market to enjoy. There was a stall selling insects, so we thought we would brave it and give them a try.
We had a very entertaining evening challenging ourselves to eat one of each insect. They were pretty awful to be honest. Really concentrated earthy, nutty taste.
They all tasted the same, but some just tasted stronger than others.Read more