Phu Khieo n.p. (9)

2004: I found some dry specimens of N. smilesii at the BKF herbarium in Bangkok. They were coming from Thung Kramang, a place at 800 meters altitude, near the city of Chayaphum.

2006: I went there and only when I reached Chayaphum I found out that Thung Kramang was actually the name of a large area on the flat top of the Phu Khieo National Park. I had just left Nan and I arrived in Phitsanulok around midnight. The Versaille Mansion, where I had spent 2 months in 2004, was still there, but the owner was different and the prices were higher. At first I wanted to spend a couple of days in town, but because of this first bad impression given by higher prices and lack of familiar faces (together with the usual rats, dirt and cockroaches, so common in very big cities), I decided to spend just one night in a cheaper place and leave the following day to Chayaphum. And that’s where I arrived, at 4 o’clock, the following afternoon.

On the bus a guy with a good English asked where I was heading, I told him about Thung Kramang and he explained me how to reach it. The place was quite famous and very well known by the people around us, including the bus driver, who were listening carefully. At Chayaphum the guy showed me a hotel, where the owner saw my farang face and immediately told me that the only available room was the one for 500 bat. When I left the place with a smile, the same person after a few seconds followed me and told me that there could be one for 250. I refused and took the first bus to Chumpae, the last town before Phu Khieo, where I arrived at 6 pm and I found a bed for 200 bat. The following morning I went to the national park.

The songtaew took more than one hour to arrive. At the np check point I was told that inside the park there’s no food or cars, so that I had to buy my own food before entering and there was no way to know if some park police car could bring me back on the same afternoon or the following day. No problem, I bought some food at the nearest market and I waited at the check point. The park police pickup arrived and after 25 minutes I reached Thung Kramang, together with another lonely Japanese tourist who was with me in the back of the car. At the visitor centre I found a very nice 3D map (here is a pic) that showed me how there was no difference between this place and Phu Kradung, Thung Saleng Luang and probably many other places in Thailand (and the Tepuis in Venezuela!).

It’s an enormous area anyway, and I had no idea about where to go. I didn’t want to spend a week over there looking for mokao. As usual the only way was to ask the local people. Just knowing exactly which area of the park was called Thung Kramang was an exhausting job, but fortunately a thai tourist helped me to ask a woman from the staff about that matter, and stopped her from going all around the visitor centre shouting and laughing in thai for half an hour (she was probably just trying to find someone who could speak my language, but you know, you just make a question and then you see her shouting, laughing and speaking in thai with everybody there, ignoring you for 30 minutes – because they are shy, they say – that can easily make you nervous). Anyway, I started walking around looking for someone who knew where the mokao was growing, and after 5 minutes I met a couple of men who looked “wild” enough to be frequent visitors of that place. One of them told me that the mokao grows in 3-4 areas, very far one from the others.

When I reached the nearest one of these, which was close to a lake, 10 minutes from there, I tried to find some mokao but there was no way to find anything, behind, around or in front of the lake. A very nice and evocative place though (here is a pic).

I went back to the visitor centre where in the mean time the crazy lady had found someone for me, a young guy who knew where the mokao was growing. I jumped on the back of his motorbike and we went again in front of the lake. Here we walked down the rightside of the road to a hidden bog, where I found myself covered with red mud up to my knees. Then the red ants on the briars started to do the rest, so that very soon I realized that the place was too wet for nepenthes, and we went back. The little guy was more surprised than me, and he promised me that he would go ask his brother - the one who had told him about that mokao location – if he could bring us to the right place. It was only around 3 pm that the big brother, together with a friend and an 8 years old kid, came to me as volunteers to bring me to the wild, lost site which hosted the mokao moken lin.

Actually the place wasn’t very far, just 20 minutes from there. But if you don’t know exactly where to go, you could go around for ages before finding it. We followed a road behind the visitor centre and we found ourselves in front of some kind of long lake, similar to a small river, so that we could easily see the opposite side of it, but it was impossible to see where it was coming from and where it was heading to. The guys started looking around the lake, among the low vegetation, that to my opinion was a little bit too dense to host nepenthes. We went looking in different directions. Suddenly one of them shouted something in thai. I shouted “what?!”. And he said “mokao!! Mokao!!!”. I started running. “I’m not sure…maybe ….” he said. I was already checking. I took one leaf of this small plant growing in the middle of a bush, almost completely shaded. I checked the leaf tip. And there it was a nice, broken pitcher. “Yes!”, I said. And the guys started shouting with happiness. We went looking all around the place. The soil was clay, grey and muddy, and the nepenthes were growing in the driest areas. Not many pines around, while usually they are a good sign if you’re looking for the mokao.

Strangely most of the plants were growing in very shady areas, and they looked quite unhappy, greenish and fragile, with not many pitchers and just a couple of flowers. In the following weeks I realized that this is an adaptation that many thai nepenthes followed in their evolution. They grow in the shade because it’s the only way to survive the dry, hot period, when it doesn’t rain for months. They prefer to grow unhealthy in the shade than “dying healthy” under the hot sun. Maybe in other areas of the park, where you can also find the mokao, the plants are growing in better habitats and they look healthier. But I was told that these other sites were really too far. Here a couple of nice pitchers: pic1, pic2. The more sun the plants could take, with the right amount of water, and the more beautiful pitchers they had, of course. I was so excited, looking everywhere for nice pitchers and seeds, that I really didn’t care about anything that was hurting my body, red ants and briars, many briars, through which I was rapidly walking.

Eventually I took off my broken t-shirt and my chest looked like I had just received 300 lashes. But I was happy. We walked back and I felt some fresh feeling on my foot. That’s because I was loosing blood. Then I realized that someone had seen – or better smelled – my blood sooner than me. I took off from my foot a couple of leeches who were trying to take some advantage out of my absent-minded enthusiasm. No problem, too happy to feel anything. I went back to the visitor centre, I washed my feet and disinfected everything I had to disinfect. I had a cigarette and, after thanking my trip mates, I went on the main road that brings out of the park and I waited for a lift. After half an hour, it was about 5 pm, a minivan stopped. One of the five or six rich looking people inside told me that it would have been a pleasure to bring me to some place where I could spend the night.

We went out of the park, then through a golf club, and then we reached a beautiful residential area. Some kind of hotel for rich people, but more similar to a little village for rockfellers. The rooms were too expensive for my pockets, and the man - I’ll call him “the boss”, a term that better describes the person - told me he would have paid for everything. I just had enough time to prepare for dinner, as he was waiting for me together with all his friends, men and women. The owner of the residence was a friend of the boss since their school time, he sat together with us but didn’t say much. While every kind of food, including very good chicken and spicy fish, was moving from the table directly to my mouth (when after some very hard time you have some very good time, make the most of the opportunity!), the boss told me how thanks to his accounting consultancy company he managed to make his first money, that he spent trying to help all his friends, who were just asking and asking and asking… After having realized that all these people were just asking, without making anything productive with all that money (I’ve been told by many thai people that this seems to be sadly common in this Country), he started keeping the money for himself and became what in the rest of the world we would call a millionaire, but that in Thailand is much more.

Can you imagine what you can do in Thailand if you have millions of dollars?! After some Italian red wine I declared myself too tired to proceed with whisky, cigar, poker etc and I left that table where all the women were sitting on one side, without saying a word, and all the men – including me – were enjoying the discussion on the other side. And the boss at the end of the table. He also gave me his visiting card and he told me that if I had any problem on the way back to Italy, at the custom for example, I just had to call him, as his wife is a general colonel of the royal army. Jesus. After a hot shower I lied on the bed of my luxury room, thinking about how easy it can be to pass from the leeches to the stars. And wondering what the hell could have happened to me the following day, considering how good I am to find myself in the strangest situations. The following morning I had my English breakfast paid by the boss, while far on the horizon I could clearly see Phu Kradung. We took the minivan and went back to Chumpae. Here the boss left me at the bus stop, I thanked him as much as I could, I said goodbye and I started thinking about my next destination, Phu Wiang.