Kaeng Tana n.p. (13)

2004: I found some specimens labelled “N. mirabilis” at the BKF that were from this park, from the Tad Ton waterfall.

2006: I went there. It was about lunch time and I had just left the Pha Taem np checkpoint, as with my usual good luck a car had stopped that was going right to Kaeng Tana. They left me at the check point, where I showed my letter in thai language that was explaining the purpose of my visit. Even this time I managed not to pay the 200 bat fee. I walked for about one kilometre and reached the visitor centre. Here I showed again my letter, without expecting anyone to understand my words, but I knew that showing the letter and saying the word “Tad Ton” would have been enough. Unfortunately no one was going there at the moment, so I took it as a fate sign and decided to have my lunch and wait in peace. I couldn’t eat anything from the stalls as everything was covered with flies. No problem, I took some bread with honey from my backpack, I bought an ice-cream from a kind fellow who was sleeping in front of his little ice-cream wheelbarrow and I took a coke from the fridge. This kind of food can make you walk around for another 25 km without feeling tired. When I finished my lunch another young guy with a smart and nice expression on his face arrived together with some park guards. I a few minutes I became, as usual, the centre of everybody’s attentions. I explained the thin guy, who had decent English, why I wanted to go to the Tad Ton waterfall, I put all my maps on the table and I looked at the ten people around me while they looked so interested at my material. The guy in particular was very interested and he seemed to already have a passion for carnivorous plants.

He showed me a book with some drawings of Nepenthes, Heliamphora, Sarracenia and Dionaea. I told him I knew about those other plants and I explained him how they worked and in which areas of the world they were growing. That was enough; he took his motorbike and brought me to Tad Ton, on the other side of the national park. On the way he told me that no one from the park staff in many years had ever seen the mokao growing at Kaeng Tana. I was quite sure about my knowledge this time, as my reference was the herbarium material. But this shows us how the information we get from the parks staff can be completely wrong and how difficult and long this research will be.

In particular, I realized again during these months that here in Thailand, most of the time if not always, when people haven’t seen something or don’t know something, they will always just deny its existence as much as they can, they will never use the words “I don’t know”. Or, even worse, they will say “yes” just to make you happy, even if the answer should be again “I don’t know”. An example: “Is there a bus that goes from here to Bangkok?”, “No, no, no Bangkok! No bus!”, with a worried expression on his face. Probably in 20 minutes you’ll see a bus that goes to Bangkok. The reason? That man just DIDN’T KNOW about that bus. A good trick? Whatever you need to know, always ask to as many people as possible to have a good “average” answer. The last nice example, even if that happened just 3-4 times: you ask where Tana road is. They tell you to go straight. You ask another 4 times, you walk for 3 km. They always tell you to go straight. Then you ask someone who checks a map and tells you that Tana road is exactly 3 km in the opposite direction. How the hell was that possible? Simple, they see you walking in one direction, they don’t know where the place you ask is, so they just guess that you have to walk again in that same direction! Anyway, going back to the kind guy who brought me to Tad Ton, I told him that this time he had finally some good chances to find out that the mokao is actually growing there.

We reached the nice, shallow, slow Tad Ton waterfall, and on the slow moving river side I could see a large U. aurea colony. There were no other carnivorous plants around, even if the habitat looked very good for them. In the mean time the guy went to the waterfall check-point to ask, and he was told that the mokao was growing right in front of the office, among the trees, before the river. I ran and found N. mirabilis growing in half shade, with a lot of leaves but not many pitchers, and those few were quite small. Strange that it was growing there and not in the nearby sandy fields. The tallest plants were 3 meters high and there were no flowers. The soil was sand covered with humus. Here a couple of pictures: pic1, pic2. Being both quite happy about the result, while I still wonder how comes that in one office they knew about the mokao while at the other office they were so doubtful about its existence, the kind guy brought me to the nearest bus station, he told me which bus I had to wait for and he left, after receiving all my deepest thanks. With that bus I reached Trakan and then with a last lift I reached my dear resort.

Here I spent a very nice dinner time with my friend, the resort owner. After some whisky and cigarettes, and after having heard about my adventures and targets, he promised to lend me his mountain bike for the following day. In fact I had to finish my work with the road 2050, as the previous day I was only able to check the first 12 km of the total 60 km to Kemmarat. With a bike I had the possibility to do make my work faster and easier. See the note n.8 in the north-east.