Phu Kradung n.p. (5)

2004: The most popular place if you’re in Thailand and you’re asking someone where you could find Nepenthes. Before leaving Italy I was expecting some kind of Nepenthes paradise, with a little bit of everything. But after my herbarium research I started suspecting that what you find here in the north of Thailand is mainly, or maybe only, N. smilesii. And thinking about the pictures previously taken by Tom Kahl on that mountain, I was now really just expecting a lot of N. smilesii. Even though those were going to be the first and only Nepenthes I would have seen in the wild since the beginning of my trip.

To save as much money as possible, I did all the way to the n.p. lift after lift. I arrived at 16:30. But that was a big mistake, as I had no idea that the park closes at 14:00. With all my surprise in fact I was told that the only way to reach the top of Phu Kradung (and the n.p. IS the top of the mountain) is on foot. It takes from 4 to 6 hours to arrive. And the park staff doesn’t want you to arrive when it gets dark. So they just close as soon as it’s too late to climb up. Same problem if you want to leave the top after that time. I had to sleep at Phu Kradung village, spending 200 bat that I could have spent with a bus to arrive there on time.

But the following day I had the whole day available. I woke up at 6:00 and ran to the park. It took me 3 hours and a half to get to the top. A record. So much was the desire to finally see my dear plants. Some infos if you go there: You’ll have to pay the usual 200 bat at the entrance. You can find tents and sleeping bags at the bottom and on the top headquarters. It’s 300 for a tent and 50 for a sleeping bag. There’s no way you can go and come back in one day, you’ll have to sleep there. Don’t go in the rainy season as even if the Nepenthes must be wonderful, I was told that during the night you can easily find your tent’s inner walls covered by leeches that are looking for a good meal. Take as much food and water as possible with you, as being impossible to get to the top by car, all the little shops along the way and on the top get their food and beverages thanks to a big amount of carriers. So, if usually you pay a bottle of water 5 bat, there you’ll pay up to 25 bat, as you pay the water and the carrier! The carriers have scaring muscles on their legs, quite spectacular!

Anyway, it’s not such a big problem to arrive to the top, as every hour or so you meet an area with small sheds where you can buy whatever you want, just in case you need. Nothing to do with Thung Non Son!! On Phu Kradung all those kind people, as soon as you arrive to any "food area", will shout you "Drink? Water? Coke? Fresh Coke? Come on sit down" while you’re sweating like a pig and hardly moving. They’re like the sirens for Ulysses, trying to take a little bit of advantage out of your exhaustion. As disgusting as I am, nevertheless, I was able to arrive to pay 10 bat for one water even when I was asked 25. But that will take a good 5 minutes to convince them how poor you are. God bless my teacher Uncle Scrooge!

When you arrive on the top, you’ll find for sure some young local tourists and maybe some farangs (You! You! You! "Farang" is the local term for "white skin tourist" or "western"). They’re all going to visit such a popular place, so full of natural beauties. And I was told that once you go down back to the lower headquarter, you should be given some kind of diploma that says "you did it, you climbed it!" Once more, go to Thung Non Son and then tell me who deserves a diploma…

The top of Phu Kradung is something incredible. This mountain is 1300 meters high. It hosts lots of different animals, including big dears and elephants. The dears are often going around, especially by night, to catch some free food near the garbage bins, the tourist tents or the shops. I understand them, considering the prices. Thank God the elephants don’t have the same habit.

If you like carnivorous plants you’ll soon realize that this is a perfect place for them. It looks just like a Tepui. Completely flat. But on its top you’ll find a wonderful pineland that could even host Sarracenias. So that’s a really good mix. The soil is mainly sharp, white sand. But also some peat, leaf litter and sphagnum can be found (by the way, there’s only D. burmanni here, no Utricularia). I think Thung Non Son must look quite like this place. And probably wherever in Thailand you can find these very strange sandy, mountain pinelands, there you’ll find N. smilesii.

Once you get on the top (the last part of your climbing will end with a vertical ladder, at the end of which you’ll realize indeed that you are now on the flat top) you’ll see some signs. They tell you that the head quarter is on the right. That’s right, but now I’m telling you, dear cp enthusiast, that if you want the Nepenthes area it’s just 5 meters in front of you. Watching the sign that says "Welcome on Phu Kradung", you’ll find the plants all along the edge of the mountain on your right, on the road that brings to all the cliffs. All along that road, especially on your right side, you’ll find hundreds of wonderful N. smilesii looking for a sunbath. They climb on the low shrubs up to 2 meters. The biggest upper pitchers are about 25 cm long.

Unfortunately most of the plants will be dead if you don’t go over there in the rainy season. But that’s up to you. And they are not exactly dead. Many plants, the youngest rosettes, are still visible on the ground. And the bigger ones, ok, some of them are completely dry, but many of them, as you’ll see if you look carefully, are just sleeping. Most of the leaves are dry but all along the stem and on the top you’ll find new small green shoots that are just starting to grow, as they can smell the rainy season is coming. The soil is usually covered by pine needles or leaves, which are making that sand very acid I think. The plants grow in full sun or sometimes partially shaded by the low vegetation. The day average temperature is 28 C. N. smilesii is easily recognizable in cultivation because it forms this big rootstock that helps the plant during the dry periods, when the soil can become really quite dry, just like a beach. But a dry dormancy period is not required in cultivation, not even for flowering.

Now I know where the Nepenthes are, but at that time I didn’t, so I went to the headquarter on the right. Along the way I found just one big Nepenthes, which is probably used by the park staff to take cuttings, as the stems were cut here and there. And at the headquarter they have many little plant beds, where many examples of the local flora are growing, including a lot of small mokao moken lin. At the headquarter I also took pictures of all the Nepenthes pictures they had. A good pictures archive helps a lot if you have to do with Nepenthes taxonomy. Then I was told by some staff people that the mokao could be found on the southern edge of the mountain, from Makdook cliff to Dang cliff. A lady at the office also told me that I could have found it at the Anodard pond as well, but as, again, other people told me "no Anodard pond, only south cliffs", I went to the cliffs. Even though you can read in the introduction to this website that apparently the mokao is growing somewhere else, up here. Maybe it grows in less visited places, as I could see on my map that only the southern side of the top is covered by roads, while the northern part, a lot bigger, looks much less accessible. What is hiding over there…? Well, probably just some more N. smilesii. You can find some plants even on the road that brings from the headquarter to the cliffs.

That night I was very happy. I didn’t rent a tent. I thought that if I could sleep on a table in Thung Salaeng Luang, then I could have been able to sleep on the ground here, in a warm 50 bat sleeping bag. And so I did. The stars were amazing that night. It was quite cold, about 10 C. Not too bad, just the right temperature for a good sleep, while a few dears were eating the grass all around me…

The following morning I woke up at 6:00, I ran down to the lowlands (very easy compared to the way up), I bought once again just enough food to survive and I took the bus. I was really good at saving considering that, after those three days, I found myself at the Phitsanulok bus station with exactly 3 bat left in my pocket. If I had bought some more water on Phu Kradung I would be still there, as there are no bancomats (atm) at Phu Kradung village, and for many other kilometers from there.

By the way, if you read these pages and you’re trying to grow N. smilesii, don’t get impressed by the description of its habitat. It’s as highland as N. khasiana is! It will grow in any soil, temperature and humidity condition, it’s probably the easiest species I’ve ever grown.

Phu Kradung: pic1

Pics I took at the headquarter: pic1, pic2, pic3, pic4

Pics I took on the mountain: pic1, pic2, pic3, pic4

Pics by Tom Kahl: pic1, pic2, pic3, pic4, pic5, pic6

Pics by Heiko Rischer: pic1, pic2, pic3

2004: At the BKF in Bangkok I found a specimen labelled "N. smilesii" from a locality called “Huai Wang Klang, Wang Saphung, Loei”.

2006: I’ve been to Wang Saphung town, in the Wang Saphung district. It was on January the 24^th. My friend Gabriele had just left me. We arrived the previous night and walked a lot around before we could find a room at a decent price. The problem with small towns here is that you would expect small, cheap hotels to sleep. On the contrary, as not many tourists dare to visit these places, there are usually just one or two big hotels for business men, at very high prices. Anyway, in the morning I saw my friend for the last time, as he decided to go back to Italy to look after his many little problems, his new girlfriend above all. I felt quite lost and depressed, with a whole new day in front of me to look for an unknown place asking to people who don’t speak my language and just laugh. Incredibly I found enough power to wake up, to leave my room, to look at the muddy hole in front of my guesthouse (an old pool?) where U. aurea was growing on one side, and with my two backpacks I went to ask the owner is she knew a place called Huai Wang Klang. She gave a negative answer. So I walked a good 30 minutes back to downtown, heading to the bus station. Here I asked to some policemen, to the well informed owners of some bus-ticket shops and to the staff of the bus station. No one had ever heard that name. The closer national park is just the terminal tip of Phu Ruea. Maybe this place was over there. On my map I could see that there are many Wang and Klang in this area, but they’re never together in the same name! I had no way to go on, no track to follow, and I was all alone and too depressed to find the enthusiasm to run and follow some crazy idea as usual. So I just took the first bus to Sakon Nakhon, hoping for some better luck.

2007: The target was again Huay Wang Klang. I spent the night in Loei, the capital of the Loei province. Maybe here they knew something more than in the little town of Wang Saphung. The following morning I went looking for the main Tourist Office. I didn’t find it, but I found the Office of Culture. Better than nothing. I spoke with the staff and they did all they could to help me, trying to find old and new maps of the Wang Saphung district. They even called some people by phone, but of course no one had ever heard about Huay Wang Klang. Eventually Mrs. Sun became the main person involved in this matter, and after one hour and a half of tentatives, also looking at the photo of the dry specimen from the BKF, we arrived at the following conclusions: the specimen was collected 50 years ago; at that time the three district of Phu Kradung, Wang Saphung and Nong Hin were just one, the much larger district of Wang Saphung; all the staff there seemed to make some kind of confusion between “klang” and “kwang” and Sun told me how that was probably the main problem, as in their pronounce those two letters can be mixed, trying to write a Thai word into English letters (it’s very interesting to see how the person who wrote the label on the specimen seems to have done the same mistake!); a huay is a small river, a stream. So we were now looking for the river Wang Kwang. Sun called a friend to ask how to reach Wang Kwang and then she came back to me with a map of the Nong Hin district. I took the bus to Nong Hin, where I had lunch with some delicious grilled chicken. I went to ask the police about Wang Kwang, they didn’t know it, so I told them to call Mrs. Sun and ask. After ten minutes at the phone with her, they told me that I had to go to Pha Huay. They brought me to the spot where I was supposed to wait two hours for the songtew directed to Pha Huay. I used some 30 minutes of that time to write my notes, but exactly while I was writing the line that you’re now reading, another two policemen arrived with their pick up. They insisted to bring me to Pha Huay, as there was no songtew going there. They also said that from Pha Huay to Wang Kwang is 25 km, walking or renting a motorbike, no way to go by car. My curiosity about the exact location of Huay Wang Kwang was becoming spasmodic, where the hell I was going to get?! We arrived to Pha Huay, that is not a mountain as I expected, but a very little village on the mountains. We got out of the van and they said I could speak with someone who speaks English, right there. We went down a slope walking on a line of steps made in the ground and we reached a small but nice villa. They called someone in Thai, and a very old man appeared at the front entrance. “Ehm…do you speak English?” I said, without expecting too much from that old, Kung Fu teacher-like character. “I’m trying to” he answered with a perfect American accent. I felt a little bit like an idiot for my underestimation and I started explaining my situation in the best English I could. He tried to find Wang Kwang on my maps, but then he said they were not detailed enough (“you’ve the whole damn world here” were actually the words he used in that Florida accent). He didn’t know where my huay was exactly, but he knew that for sure it was near Phu Kradung, so he couldn’t understand why I had been sent over there, where I had to walk for 25 km to reach the same place. My spasmodic inner questioning was getting worse and worse. The old man told me that I could spend the night there, but at that point I was too full of adrenaline to end my day on that mountain. While I was waiting for a songtew to go back to Nong Hin, the old man said ”Tell me the truth, what did you think when you saw I could speak English so well? How can this bloody monkey have such good English? Don’t you, uh?”. He seemed a character of an American war movie. He just missed the cigar. The songtew ran to Nong Hin, where I took the first bus to Phu Kradung village. At Phu Kradung I was ready for the worse, including the obvious “Wang Kwang? Never heard! It doesn’t exist”. There were lots of people around, it was market day. In front of a dvd shop I found a couple of young girls who could speak some broken English. I explained my problem and without letting them think too much (the risk was of being sent to some other place where they thought Wang Kwang could be!) I told them to call my friend Mrs. Sun. They spent 15 minutes at the phone, I made a drawing of Phu Kradung to make things easier and…uff, the bright light of the Truth eventually shone over my face and soul. What the young girl said and drew will finally put an end to the tragicomic quest for that bloody place.

Wang Kwang is a small huay that begins on the top of Phu Kradung, at the Nam Tok Wang Kwang (Wang Kwang waterfalls). From there it goes down along the mountain, on the opposite side compared to Phu Kradung village, flowing through an area that is also called Wang Kwang, as well as the area at the base of the mountain where the river reaches the lowlands. Fifty years ago that place was in fact in the Wang Saphung district, not in the Phu Kradung district, and the mountain was not so popular to be taken as the main point of reference. Going there is not easy, as you’re supposed to go to Phu Kradung to reach the top through the usual way, from Phu Kradung village, not from the back of the mountain! Sun was very good, as she probably gave me all the indications to reach the mountain from the other side. I didn’t even try to go to Wang Kwang, as all my questions finally had had an answer. But dear Mrs. Sun, are you sure that walking for 25 km from Pha Huay is easier than going to Phu Kradung village and then all around the mountain up to the opposite side? I was told that to reach Wang Kwang I had to go to Ban Pong-Ni, at the opposite side of the mountain, and from there I had to walk for 6 km. The sun was going down, and once again I had my day done, served and deserved. The mountain of Phu Kradung, symbol of all the Nepenthes of Thailand, was straight in front of me, as to remind me how many things on this planet are still too big, too hidden, unreachable and mysterious to be explored, even by a crazy farang like me. I was back in Loei for dinner.