2006: at
the BK herbarium in Bangkok I found a specimen labelled N. smilesii that was coming from “Dongrak Range at
Chong Bat Lak, Kantharalak”. This is a photo: pic1. It was collected in 1976 at 650 mt
altitude.
2007:
After a long lift, two buses and a total 10 hours
of travelling, from Khao Yai I arrived to
Kantharalak. It was dinner time, but I found some time to ask around if anybody
knew Chong Bat Lak. I asked a couple of people, who didn’t know anything about
that, but then an old man, owner of the Kantharalak Hotel (he was sleeping when
I disturbed him) told me ”Mmm…Chong Bat Lak? Chong Bat Kao!”. Apparently that
was the new name of this place. Being for sure Chong Bat Lak at the border with
Cambodia, and being the national
park of Khao Phra Wiharn
exactly at the border with Cambodia,
all along the district of Kantharalak (a Chong is a passage among two
mountains), I was sure that the following day at the park entrance they would
have told me where to go. With 30 bat I reached Khao Phra Wiharn and I asked
about Chong Bat Lak or Chong Bat Kao. No one knew it. There are two chong
in the area, but their names have nothing to do with my chong. After
having spoken with the staff at the entrance for about one hour (they even
found an army map to see if they could find that place) I was allowed to go for
free up to the visitor centre. All around I could see how the area was very
similar to Pha Taem, with savannah and flat rocks,
but there were no utrics, probably because the weather was really too dry. I
waited a couple of hours for the sister of the girl at the entrance to come
back from the Cambodian side together with a class of children. She asked
around together with me about Chong Bat Lak. We even asked a very old lady,
considering that maybe that name could have been a very old one, now changed in
I don’t know what. Nothing to do, it seemed the place just didn’t even exist.
With no more tracks to follow, I left and went to Trakan.
After more than one month, while I was in Surat, in the south, I
realized that on the dry specimen the latitude and longitude were given. I was
ready to admit how stupid I had been, but when I eventually found Chong Bat Lak
a few days later I realized that the coordinates were wrong anyway, probably
because the world map has changed since 1976. I looked everywhere on the
internet, and Chong Bat Lak seemed to have been visited in the past by
botanists and other scientists, because of its unique flora and fauna. But no
one was saying exactly where it was, just…”near the border with Cambodia”.
As a few other times happened, I started studying the history of the border in
the Kantharalak area, to see how it could have changed in the past 30 years.
Apparently it didn’t. So, a few days later, I decided to go to Kho Khun, a town
west of Kantharalak, with a good number of roads going south, towards the Dongrak Range,
in the area given by those latitude/longitude coordinates. Unfortunately in
fact four different maps were giving those lat/long spot in four different
places, always outside of the Kantharalak district. So the only thing to do was
going to…some place in the middle, which was Kho Khun. But I felt there was
something wrong with that, I felt I wasn’t following the right track, but as a
matter of fact there were no other tracks to follow! I arrived at Kho Khun at
16.30. I went straight to the police, to see if they could help. Never heard
about Chong Bat Lak. Then a lady came, about 40 years old. She was a teacher,
very kind, excited and always laughing (laughing, not smiling!), she had good
English and she looked quite nervous because of her anxiety to find some way to
help me, she seemed worried for me like a mom for his kid lost in the black
jungle. But for me that was just another day of my quest for impossible places.
She brought me to an internet café, owned by some friends. There we checked
again on the web, so that I could show her how the internet was in fact full of
Chong Bat Lak, that I wasn’t drunk and also that my spelling was correct. Even
the owner called some friends to ask, but they had never heard that name.
Eventually we left and because the search hadn’t given any good result, I
didn’t have to pay! We went back to the police. Finally I felt some kind of
satisfaction when I saw how she was getting nervous too, when asking to lots of
Thai people at the police station, they were always answering – with their “I’m
the smartest one in town, the one who knows” expression on their faces –
that she was probably wrong, that Chong Bat Lak just didn’t exist. Usually I
was the one receiving that kind of stupid answers, instead of a good “I don’t
know”. But this time she was the one moving desperately, shouting how she was
sure of that name, how the internet was full of links with that name. “Mmm…no,
it doesn’t exist” they kept saying. Poor lady, welcome into my world. We called
the Kantharalak police. They said they would ask around and call us later.
After twenty minutes we received one more never heard that name. The
lady was desperate, I was just wondering which other track I could follow,
where I was wrong. Nothing in Kantharalak, nothing at Khao Phra Wiharn, nothing
at Kho Khun. The only place left was Ramat Kho, another lost little town in
that same area. After Ramat Kho I could have said that I had checked a square
area of about 100 km, without any trace of Chong Bat Lak. The lady and the
policemen though confirmed how with Kho Khun and Ramat Kho I was already quite
outside the Kantharalak district. I really didn’t know what to do. The lady
brought me at the bus stop for Ramat Kho. It was 18.00 and the bus was going to
arrive at 20. They told me that in Ramat Kho there was no place to sleep at
(something they will say for any little town anyway, without actually knowing
anything about that town; these people are generally afraid of everything, and
they will always make everything much more tragic than what it is) and even if
that wasn’t really believable, I was quite tired and I accepted the idea of
sleeping there and going to Ramat Kho – MAYBE – the following day. The lady
brought me to a resort with her motorbike; the place was 2 km from the city.
Just before arriving she asked me if I was afraid. “Why?!” I said. “You are
alone, in a strange place…”. “A strange place?”. She was probably referring to Thailand in
general and to Kho Khun in particular, being not exactly like a beach of Phuket.
“My dear lady, you’ve no idea of where I’ve been and what I’ve done in the last
few weeks and years…”. At the resort I was asked 350 bat for a luxury room in
front a little lake full of mosquitoes. I thanked the lady really much, but
then I explained that I could go on by myself, having dinner there and then
deciding where to sleep, and that she could leave, and she also told me that
she was late and she had to go home and cook for her husband. In fact, even if
she was very kind, after a while I started feeling like I had to accept all her
decisions because of her kindness, with the risk of appearing rude if I didn’t.
That’s something I really don’t like. Sometimes I prefer to sleep on a chair
for free and by myself, more than having to sleep at someone’s place and being
extremely polite and thanking every time without ever knowing if I’m being rude
in any way or not. That’s terrible, I don’t really feel comfortable. Anyway, I
had dinner and while eating I was again obsessed by the idea of not being on
the right track. Yes, Ramat Kho seemed the only way left, but I was sure it
wasn’t the right one. Thinking and thinking, as tired as I was, just before
finishing my dish I decided to follow my sensitivity and not my brain. I didn’t
want to go to Ramat Kho, I was feeling like that was the wrong place, while on
the specimen the location name was Kantharalak after all, even if over there I
had no tracks to follow. I had also already been in Kantharalak, so it was more
familiar. And who cares if the latitude and longitude on the specimen were
completely out of Kantharalak. Ok, let’s go there. I paid for the rice and I
left. It had to be Kantharalak. In case I could always ask around about Roong,
a name that I had found on a Chinese website. While on all the other links the
name Chong Bat Lak was always referred to Dongrak, Kantharalak, Sisaket and Cambodia,
on this Chinese one for the first and only time I could also read this Roong in
the middle. I said that name a couple of times, but it seemed not to help the
people I was talking with. I started walking on the main road, in the complete
darkness, with my two backpacks. I walked for one kilometre. It was full of
mosquitoes and other little flying insects. When the light of Kho Khun started
appearing, I saw a young guy in a pick up, at the car park of an empty karaoke
bar. He couldn’t speak English, so I went inside the karaoke, where two girls
understood the word “Kantharalak” and asked the young man how he could help me.
I jumped on the back of the pick up and he brought me to the bus stop for
Kantharalak. The bus was going to arrive at 20. At 19.40 the young man came
back to the bus station where I was waiting. In some way he explained me that
if I wanted to, as he was also going to Kantharalak with his girlfriend, I
could have gone with them for free, staying in the back of the van. Lovely!
First we stopped at the market, where some of his friends tried as usual to
pass me someone at the phone, the one of the family “who could speak
English, the one who knows”. “You…go…Kantharalak?”, “yes”, I said.
“Ooohhh”. Then a long speech in thai followed. “No Thai”, I said.
“Oooohhhh….You…go…Kantharalak?”, “yes”, I said. And then again a long speech in
thai, where I had the impression that the girl at the phone was trying to spell
her Thai words more clearly so that I could better understand. This absurd
dialogue went on for 9 times, giving back and having back the mobile phone from
that lady at the market. At the 9th “you…go…Kantharalak?” I left and
I went to wait at the pick up. Very kind people, but they are so good at making
me nervous sometimes that I prefer to leave instead of getting angry with
someone who is just trying to be kind and helpful. Probably the girl at the
phone will remain for her whole family the only point of reference for the
English language, the one who knows. I looked at the stars from the back
of the van all the way to Kantharalak. I was really happy of being there;
probably the lift given by that guy was the way my good luck was using to tell
me how this time I was on the right way. I was going to start again the
following day with the Chong Bat Lak matter, but then I felt so positive that I
said to myself “why not, let’s ask a bit around before going to sleep”. So I
asked here and there at the bus station. No one of course knew Chong Bat Lak.
Then a Thai lady came, with her husband from Sweden.
She had good English and she tried to help me out. Just to try, after the usual
questions, I throw there the name Roong. She was like “Mmm…Rung?!”. Yeah,
whatever…” I said. “It’s Rung, if you say Roong no one will understand. Rung is
a small village on the mountains, at the border with Cambodia”.
Bingo. That was the place. I couldn’t have found a better track, my sensitivity
at Khao Kho was right. My day was done and deserved. Her usual words about a
“dangerous place” and the need of “going there with some guide” were completely
ignored by my ears. I thanked her and left. I had some soy milk and then I
stopped at the Kantharalak Hotel, where a couple of guys wrote me some simple
instructions to get to Rung. Then I went to sleep at the usual dirty hotel, in
a cleaner room this time though. What a great day, full of good results. The
following morning I took a songtew to Rung, where I arrived 20 minutes later.
There were no mountains around, and that wasn’t a good sign at all. I could
only see a few huts around with very poor people quite happy and surprised to
see me there. Some of those old people, visibly drunk, insisted to give me
something to drink and eat, but that wasn’t really the right moment. I was
trying to ask everybody there about Chong Bat Lak. They didn’t know it and this
time they really seemed too ignorant to try any kind of further explanation.
Fortunately after a few minutes the police arrived. They were also quite surprised
of my presence there, but at least they had some broken English to use. And
they knew a Chong Pet Lak. Uff, done. I mean, in 30 years the name is probably
changed, I don’t think they have both Chong Bat Lak and Chong Pet Lak in the
Rung district. And in fact they didn’t know about any Chong Bat Lak. Then they
started with the usual drivel: dangerous, soldiers, bombs etc. Then a young man
arrived, who later told me he was some kind of army officer. He brought me to
the tamboon office. The tamboon is a sub-district. This is a good
moment to explain you that: Thailand is
divided in provinces, every province has the same name of its most important
city. A province is divided in districts, every district has the same name of
its most important city. Every district is divided in sub-districts, every
sub-district has the same name of its most important village. Rung was the name
of the most important village in the sub-district called Rung. This
sub-district includes a piece of the Dongrak mountains, a piece where you find
Chong Bat Lak. At the office of the Rung sub-district I met Oon, a young girl
who had good English. I showed her how the internet was full of links related
to Chong Bat Lak, just to make her understand that I wasn’t crazy. She
confirmed that probably Chong Bat Lak was now Chong Pet Lak. I asked for some
more news and possibly a map of the area, but she just went on saying that it
was a very dangerous place. After 45 minutes spent on the internet to
understand where Rung is, she told me that maybe she had something interesting
for me. I ran to see. We went to a close building, where a big room was being
used as some kind of kinder garden, and it was in fact full of children. There
she uncovered a wonderful 3D map of the
Rung sub-district (the red line), including its mountains and, somewhere there,
Chong Bat Lak. Rung is the first village at the bottom. We cleaned the glass
cover as it was really dirty, and then I took the picture you see. “A lot of
villagers went there in the last few years, and they died because of the
bombs”, she said, “so now the border police is protecting them, they stay just
before the mountains, and won’t let anybody go there”. All the animal and plant
photographed and collected at Chong Bat Lak, whose details can be found on the
web at all those links I told you about, were in fact collected in the mid
seventies, just before the Cambodians put the bombs. Before leaving, just to
try, I asked Oon if she had ever seen the mokao moken ling. “Phu Kradung!”, she
said. She brought me with her motorbike to the main road near Rung, where I
stopped a car and reached the Kantharalak bus station. There I took the bus to
Nakhon Ratchasima.
