Thursday saw Juls and I head for breakfast at Vietnamese Food. We had the rolls and coffee and it was a great way to start the day. There was also no rain which is a huge bonus at this time of year.
We headed off down Highway 3, on the way to Trat. Phliu is about 14 kilometres from Chanthaburi and it was a pretty easy trip on the bike. To get in to the National Park costs 200 baht (roughly GBP£4 / AUD$6.70) unless you have a work permit (or presumably are a Thai national) in which case it costs 40 baht (£1 / $1.30). Quite a difference. As Juls had her work permit with her we tried the old "I've left mine at home" routine but, quite rightly, they weren't having any of it.
There's quite a bit of walking involved so it's really not within Mr John's abilities at the moment. We took it pretty slowly as I'm still getting over the cuts and bruises of last week. You also need to be careful near the waterfalls as the ground gets very slippery. The best thing, we found, was to take our shoes off - nothing grips like bare feet!
The pools are full of fish and we did wonder if there was some sort of hierarchy amongst them, you know, women and children in pool three type thing. What I couldn't believe was that these fish eat runner beans. I know! There are shops where you can buy them and feed them to the fish. We saw a few people do this and the fish get a tiny bit aggressive when there's food coming. You can swim in the pools or put your feet in for a paddle. The fish nibble at your feet. I really didn't like the look of this though, it reminded me of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds - only obviously a fish version.
Having wandered as far as I dared, we enjoyed an ice-cream and a chin wag when I noticed the colour of the sky. Rain was definitely heading our way and by the look of the sky was going to set in, so no point waiting until it had passed. So we called it a day and headed back the way we came. The heavens just opened and riding the bike, it was like being hit by a rain of pins. To add insult to injury, a truck went past me and dumped a load of water on me.
About ten minutes into the ride the rain stopped but, by the time we got home, we were soaked through even though we both had rain ponchos on. About ten minutes after getting home the heavens opened here and it carried on raining pretty much all night. It didn't matter though as we stuck our feet up, had some peanut butter on toast and watched James Bond - Daniel Craig (and yes ladies it was the sea shot). Fabulous day.
PLEASE NOTE, FROM 2015 NATIONAL PARKS IN THAILAND CHARGE c400 BAHT TO VISIT. A WORK PERMIT SHOULD MEAN YOU PAY THAI NATIONAL RATE OF 40 BAHT BUT WE KNOW OF TEACHERS WHO HAVE BEEN CHARGED TOURIST RATES
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