Bung (25)
2006: at the BK herbarium in
2007: while being in Trakan, I realized that the
Ubon region is full of places called Bung. In particular, two of these Bung are
near the border, close to Kemmarat. Their position was more promising than Ban
Amnat, as on the same border line you also find Pha Taem,
with some more N. smilesii. I went to check those two Bung with Niky, we asked around but no one had ever seen Nepenthes
in the area. Not too bad actually, because my mind wasn’t too concentrated on
finding the plants, but on finding the right place. Going from one Bung to the
other, asking about the mokao, was not the right way to proceed. So I began
looking for a place called Bung at 1100 mt altitude, something more specific.
We went to Ubon, at the Tourist Office, where WE realized (the office staff
wasn’t even aware of the fact that there are some places called Bung in their
Province!) what the main problem was: in the whole Ubon province the highest
peak is 750 mt. I started thinking about some old Bung, on the border
mountains, a Bung that in 1924 was in Thailand but that maybe now was inside
the Cambodian territory. I really needed an antique map of Thailand. The
problem with all these lost places (Chong Bat Lak, Kao Kuap,
Bung, all on some mountains near the border) could in fact be due to the change
of the Thai borders in the last decades. I left the problem as it was and I
went on with my trip for a couple of weeks. Then it was the time of my great brainwave, about which you can
read in the blue lines of the Kanchanadit
chapter. Thanks to the brainwave I was now looking for a Bung at a much more
realistic altitude of about 100 metres. I checked on the web and I found out
with a lot of surprise that Trakan is already at 124 mt altitude (that’s why
Pha Taem, even if it looks like a flat place, is said to be at 200 mt
altitude). The two Bung near the border lie at about 140 mt altitude. Ban Amnat
(ex Bung) is at 113 mt altitude. The most matching altitude and the most
matching name, as Ban Amnat was called in the past just Bung, and not Bung something like the other two. When after
two more weeks I went back to Trakan, together with Niky we reached Ban Amnat
by car. We asked the police and even a small plant nursery. They had never seen
any pitcher plant in the area a part from those at Pha Taem. And they had never
seen flat rocks (usually present in the habitat of N. smilesii) if not at Pha
Taem and near Kemmarat. We went back to Trakan, where on the internet I managed
to find out where Kerr had been exactly the day before going to Bung. He had
been at Buntarik. The distance Ubon-Buntarik is the same of Ubon-Ban Amnat, but
one place is on the opposite side of the other, the first being south
direction, the second being north direction. I asked myself: “If today I was at
Buntarik, where would I go tomorrow?”. When you don’t know anymore which track
you can follow, your questions go desperately towards the edge with madness.
Later on my map I realized one more interesting thing: I don’t know if Kerr was
also the person who found the specimen on the damn road
2050, but the central part of that road – where the pitcher plants are
supposed to grow – is once again at the same distance of Ubon-Buntarik and of
Ubon-Ban Amnat, but this time being east direction. Was Kerr doing the same
that I also used to do during my earlier experiences in Thailand? Was he just
picking up the main city, then moving each day and for the whole day in a
different direction, to be able to cover as much as possible the most diverse
habitats of the whole province? If that’s what he was doing, there are some
more good reasons to think that Ban Amnat is the Bung we are looking for.
