Day 23

21/09/12

Another early start to see if the missing bag had actually arrived at the police station. Praise the gods – it was there! So, how much stuff had been pilfered? Amazingly, nothing! I was surprised and happy. Despite the time and money spent waiting for it to reappear – re-buying everything would have been a huge hassle and expensive. Phew! I said my thanks and goodbyes to the tourist police.

The tourist police office

Arron steals the Big Bosses desk

Live ammo target practice results, wouldn’t want to mess with this shooter!

Arron gave me a lift to the bus station and made sure I had the right mini bus. We said our goodbyes – I felt lucky to have met such a nice guy when the sticks were down! I was now off to Khao Sok, a jungle national park towards the west coast. The journey was a few hours and started off passing through massive rubber plantations, which are rows of rubber trees with little black cups attached to the truck. The bark is scored and the white sap runs into the cup. The scenery became quite spectacular with big limestone formations and cliffs sprouting out of the jungle, showing white where they weren’t covered in trees.

From the bus

I was dropped at the road leading to the national park entrance, which is a few km long and lined with lodges, restaurants and mini marts. I got a taxi to Khao Sak Valley Lodge. Mark had recommended it as the owner, Mr. Bau, speaks English and knows a lot about the park. Mark used to live at Khao Sok so he should know! Unfortunately Mr. Bau was out leading a tour but his wife arrived to advise me. She would try and get me a tour to the big lake the following day. I dumped my stuff in the raised wooden bungalow (most accommodation is on stilts out here), and set off for a quick walk into the park.

From the road I could see jungle hills with mist rising from them.  In ten minutes I was at the entrance where I wasn’t charged as it was so late in the day, about 4pm. I took one of the clearly marked paths, which used to be a vehicle track before they were banned some years ago. It immediately went under the trees and my world became darker. I passed small tour groups and some Thai youths coming back, clearly from swimming. The weather was hot, humid and damp.

Into the bamboo

I didn’t have to walk long past the bamboo and jungle noises before coming across a troupe of grey monkeys in the trees, long tailed macaques. They were moving around and quite close. They didn’t seem bothered about my presence and must be used to people. Unfortunately the light was terrible for photos.

Spot the monkey

Further up the path, I was happily surprised to see some wild boar running across the path, one after the other. There were about five of them. As I passed where they’d been, I could hear them rustling and oinking in the undergrowth nearby. As I walked butterflies were fluttering around, some as big as my hand. I followed a narrow side-path which went off into the jungle, signposted for a waterfall. I ducked under vines and carefully navigated the slippy path, clambering down rocks to get to the river. It was flowing very fast. A wide stream led to the river with sandbars and fish swam around in it. I couldn’t see a waterfall though, just rapids. I found another path which followed the river and saw some more monkeys swinging in the trees nearby, but not close enough to get a good look. At a beachy area I still couldn’t see a waterfall so I headed back for home, it was getting dark.

Spotted this big lizard. Never would have seen him if he hadn’t moved. Good camo.

I’d prepared for this by bringing my headtorch, as it slowly turned pitch black save for patches of moonlight through the trees I was glad I’d brought it! As dusk came the animal activity rose. Birds flew around and chirped, cicadas started to make a deafening other-wordly call like an air raid siren. As I was walking under the trees, big bats would hurtle along flying inches from me, and smaller ones could be seen flitting around above the canopy.

In the pitch black I heard the pigs off to the side and suddenly wondered if the males could be aggressive. I could be in trouble if they got scared or defensive and charged from the undergrowth, being unable to see a thing and with a broken shoulder! But I passed without incident. I later learned that they are scaredy-pigs and a loud noise is enough to frighten them away. Of course the pigs then reminded me about the picture of a tiger I’d seen on the book about Khao Sok. Would they venture this close to civilization? If so, I was a pretty easy target. Oh well, at least I’d die in an exciting way if a tiger decided some tasty Alan flesh was on the menu. But I got back around 7pm un-munched. Mrs Bao told me unfortunately she couldn’t find me a group tour to join tomorrow, so I decided to do a trek myself – I could speak to Mr. Bao tomorrow afternoon when he returned to see if he could arrange something for the lake later. I spent the evening reading about the Khao Sok park in the very informative book “Waterfalls and Gibbon Calls”.

Day 22

21/09/12

Headed to the tourist police station early hoping my bag had arrived. There was only one guy in and he said it should come at 9am so I went to get some breakfast at an outdoor restaurant, pointing at the curry I wanted. When I got back there was still no bag, it should have been here by now. Balls. The policeman on duty didn’t speak much English so he put me onto the main tourist police on the phone. The police chief (or just “Boss” as I call him), arrived. He told me to wait for Arron to come to work and started to make calls. Meanwhile more police arrived at the office and we chatted away. The guys were intent on embarrassing the intern girls working there and trying to set me up with them. Everyone in Thailand wants to get me a girl! The tourist police aren’t too busy with it being the low season, so a bunch of us were joking around. I caught up on some more diary entries too using their free wi-fi.

Arron arrived and explained that there had been a failure with the bus connections. Despite him telling the travel agents to put my bag on the Surat Thani bus, instead some idiot had sent it on a bus to Bangkok bus station. I groaned wondering how long it could survive there without getting raided. He had to sort this all out at 6am when they called him to inform him. He told them in no uncertain terms to get the bag on the next Surat bus. Unfortunately that wasn’t till tomorrow, so I’d need to stay another day in Surat Thani. Damn. Big Boss took us for breakfast mark II, I tried some sweet rice.

By now my clothes were getting a bit scummy (all the rest being in my missing bag!) so Arron said he’d lend me some for the day. Top chap. I continued taking advantage of the police wi-fi and then went to my hotel to book for another night. Back at the station I changed into clothes Arron lent me and he offered to take me shopping, as I needed a new bag. My shoulder bag was falling apart which I keep my tripod and all my valuables in when they need to be stored and when I’m changing site. He drove me to the nearby Tesco Lotus, which is like Tesco at home but with a bigger emphasis on clothes and household stuff. There were loads of fancy cars and trucks in the car park compared to your normal Thai transportation, and the shoppers inside seemed quite well-to-do. I found a bag but decided to shop around elsewhere tomorrow to find a better deal.

Arron drove us out to his sister’s house on the outskirts of town to collect a letter which he delivered to the nearby university where she works. The university was big with impressively well-kept grounds, full of flower-lined roads and big pictures of the royal family. Lots of uniformed students were going around on motorbikes and in buses. Then he offered to drive me up to a local viewpoint. It was in a national park up a forested hill. The car park in the jungle was filled with noise, cicadas and birds chirping away. The viewpoint overlooked Surat Thani city and to the sea beyond. The land was really flat and suddenly turned to jungle-covered hills in the far distance. Surat Thani sprawled below. Unfortunately I’d left my camera at the police station, not realising I’d come anywhere with a view!

I mentioned I hadn’t seen any animals walking around (aside from a guy peeing in the jungle!) and Arron led me down a path to some cages where monkeys swung around inside. When we approached one a gibbon, white with dark eye patches, swung down to meet us. He came down to eye level and he was sucking his thumb with one hand, and putting his other arm through the gaps, letting us shake hands with him and stroke him. He stared at us with very human eyes and I felt sorry for him, animals like this in the wild can have territories of over 50km, but his territory was about 5 meters – yet the freedom of the jungle was just outside. When we moved around the cage he followed us. We saw other types of monkeys in other cages, some afraid, some curious and some indifferent. A baby macaque grabbed my finger and pulled it towards its mouth. It may look like a sausage mate, but it’s not for eating!

In other cages were peacocks and a wild boar who was oinking away at us. I commented that at christmas we sometimes ate boar as a treat. That shut him up. We drove back to Surat Thani passing a bad road accident where a pickup had flipped upside-down off the road. The windscreen was smashed in on the drivers side and it looked like he probably wasn’t wearing a seatbelt. The police were already on the scene. Another example of the deadly driving over here!

I parted ways with Arron and caught up on some blogging at the hotel to rest. In the evening I caught a songthaew into the town centre. For some reason in the back was an old .50 calibre machine gun ammo box. I didn’t ask. I went around shops and department stores in the town center bag-hunting, but not buying anything. Then I went to the night food market which was really busy. Rows and rows of stalls offering foods of all kinds. From grilled meat to fried potato cakes, noodles to rice, sweet cakes to jellies, fruitshakes to iced coffee, the full range of Thai street food was here. I got a bit over-enthusiastic and bought 5 bags of different foods. Back at the hotel I got through three and was stuffed. Heroically I managed to finish it all off though, giving myself indigestion that night. What a fatty!

Day 21

20/09

I rose early to try and get to the tourist information office when it opened, hauling all my things in case my missing backpack turned up. The hotel desk girl gave me poor directions and after half an hour I couldn’t find it. I decided to try a motorbike taxi, the guys at the stop didn’t have a clue what I was saying, so I just got on the back and pointed in the direction I wanted to go! We cruised up the long road where the tourist information was supposed to be but at the end we hadn’t found it so I got off and caught a songthaew going the other way. Again the driver spoke no English and didn’t know where we were going! After some discussion from his colleagues he dropped me off ten minutes later. I still couldn’t see it but the street number was correct. After trying a few official-looking buildings I eventually found an English speaker who gave me the correct directions.

Inside the Tourist Information were some trainee girls and fortunately a chap who spoke decent English. He helped me with my broken phone and discovered the SIM card had been locked which I must have done by accident. I explained the situation with my backpack and he phoned the tourist police for me. 15 minutes later they showed up, all Thai, one guy called Arron who spoke pretty good English and two other uniformed and armed policemen who didn’t speak much. I explained the situation and had to fill out a incident form. Then they drove me in a police car to the bus office which now was open.

Arron talked with the lady inside for a long time and started making lots of phone calls. He asked me details about the incident. After a while we drove off to another travel office in town, this one I recognised as people bound for Bangkok had got off the bus here. The staff at the desk answered Arron’s questions and the lady spoke English, I described what had happened and she said knew the drivers and the bus – looks like we were getting somewhere. She explained the bus had stopped at three places and they weren’t sure which one the bag might have been dropped at. The police started looking through CCTV footage from outside this office from yesterday. The woman told me they thought they’d found the bag. Great! After more waiting and many phone calls from Arron, it was back into the car to the first travel office again.

The police who helped me, Arron is on the left

After more discussion and calls, it seemed the travel agents were sending us around in circles blaming each other. Arron took a call and explained to me that the bag may have ended up on a bus to Bangkok. Uhoh. Back to the second travel agents. Here they looked through CCTV again and called me over. Sure enough on the CCTV you could see my bag had been unloaded with a pile of others and then left alone outside the office. About 20 minutes later on the footage a woman who is obviously a tourist is pointing at the bag and discussing with someone off screen, and she picks it up and takes it away. They say she’s loaded it onto a bus bound for Bangkok. Clearly she’s well-meaning but not exactly what I needed!

The travel agents phoned Bangkok and found out my bag was there at their office. Phew. Well at least we’d found it, whether it had anything of value left inside remained to be seen (padlocks are easily broken). The buses on that route are notorious for theft.

Arron arranged for the travel agency to put my bag on the next bus back to Surat Thani, which arrived at 6am the next day. They had to drop it at the tourist police office so I could check the contents with an officer. Sounded good. Now I had to spend another night here. It was past midday so I offered to get Arron and the other policemen some lunch for helping me. On the way we stopped at a phone shop and Arron got them to unlock my phone for free. Fantastic. We drove to a local restaurant and had lunch where I met the friendly tourist police chief.

Afterwards we drove to the tourist police station on the edge of town and I took a hotel close by. Arron kindly offered to take me out in the evening after work. I spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on my diary in the hotel, and I met Arron at dusk. We were going to a fitness center outside of town. I still was wearing the same clothes from yesterday, thankfully I still had my walking shoes. The fitness center had a big running track and around it various sports were being played – basketball, football, boules and handball, which is pretty popular over here. There was a small stadium and an outdoor aerobics class in full swing. The place was busy with lots of people on the track. We walked for a few loops and lots of people were looking at the farang (foreigner) exercising at their place! We jogged for a bit and on the way some ladies appeared who Arron knew, and joined us for a few loops. One of the ladies works for the car tax office,  Arron sells second hand cars for another source of income and works with her sometimes. He was trying to set me up with the other girl because she was single! Both ladies looked amazingly young for their age, just like Arron. Healthy people I suppose!

After the fitness center we drove to a small gym, where we used the steam room and some outdoor hot pools. It was great after a busy and stressful day! Back in town the  police chief joined us for dinner. We scoffed a variety of tasty dishes including spicy shellfish, a kind of cabbage in gravy, fried fish and Tom Yam spicy seafood soup. We had a good laugh chatting and learning about each other’s lives.

There’s around 10 tourist police officers for the whole province plus superiors, who are all based in the city tourist police station. Arron’s been in the tourist police for 5 years and before that was local police. He has a degree in political science and taught English for a short while. The police chief has been in the job for 2 years and was a normal police officer before that. Arron lives alone in the city center – owning his own house, the price seemed comparable to back home for the location. I was curious about the big restaurant culture here. Arron told me generally people might eat out 3 or 4 times a week because it’s so cheap, although he doesn’t like cooking so he eats out all the time!

Arron dropped me at the hotel and I thanked him for a good night. He and the other police had really taken care of me, making me feel at home and going way above the call of duty to welcome me. I was a lucky guy!