Thung Saleng Luang n.p. (4)

2-3-4 Feb 2004. My God, the closest experience to death that I ever had! Everything started on January the 22. I arrived to this n.p. and I was quite happy when I saw a few carnivorous plants pics at the headquarter office. There was N. smilesii, U. delphinioides and D. burmanni. I went for a walk but couldn't find anything. At the end I had a long conversation with the park guards. They said the Nepenthes and other cp are only growing in Thung Non Son, a sandy bog in the center of the park. Unfortunately in the dry season (the present one) that area is closed. I asked why, but all they could say in their poor english was "no flower now, dangerous, please, no go, big stones fallen, big trees fallen, dangerous animals!" and always finding out worse and worse dangers the more I was showing interest in that place. Eventually I left, as they didn't even want to tell me which was the way to go there. And apparently there wasn't even a way anymore. To go back to Phitsanulok I jumped on a jeep owned by the kind Tawon, who lives a few minutes from the park. He offered me a coffee and when I told him that I was looking for the Mokhao Moken Lin, he told me how 19 years before (!), going around in the jungle, he found the mokao in a place not too far from there. Guess! That's right, Thung Non Son. I told him that the park guards told me the same thing and Tawon proposed to bring me there 10 days later, just the time to find a guide.

Ten days later (2, 3 and 4 of February, only one day after the Phu Ruea/Phu Luang trip) I went there but the guide that Tawon had found started with the same litany. "No flower now, dangerous, please, no go, big stones fallen, big trees fallen, dangerous animals!" arriving up to "big fires, tree touch and big fires, people die, you need guide to find the plants, bad snakes, government close it with a new law". I was quite angry but I just said "thank you" to Tawon and I left smiling. I tried to find some way to reach Thung Non Son from the western side of the park, but couldn't find any.

The following day I went back there. Now that was a personal thing. Lots of rare cp just there and I can't reach them because of strange, not quite sure reasons...that's crazy. I took a bag of lyophilized noodles, two bottles of water, 2 teabags and I went to the southern park entrance, where I arrived at 17: 00. I had dinner at 17: 30 with the noodles and then I slept on a table until 1: 00. There was nobody around, in the offices and kitchens, just a couple of kids playing. Some people, who probably live inside the park, were leaving and coming with their motorbikes. During the night a drunk guy insisted to make me sleep in his hut. He was very kind even if he had a lot of noisy nightmares because of the hangover. I woke up at 7: 30, I had a cup of tea, and I took a bike for rent and left for Thung Non Son. The entrance to the unpaved road that crosses the Park, bringing to Thung Non Son and to other places, was preceded by a roadblock, but the guard smiled at me when I said that I was going to the village just 10 minutes from there.

I rode until 10: 30. Up and down on the mountain. I had no idea that Thung Non Son was so far. I heard a lot of strange noises from the jungle around me, but most of the times they were birds. And yes, two or three big trees had fallen right on the road, so that I had to climb them up throwing the bike on the other side. Once I heard something like a dog barking three times and suddenly, 3 meters in front of me, a big wild boar ran out from the left side of the jungle, crossed the road and entered on the right side. All in 2 seconds. I just saw a lot of yellow small stars in front of my eyes, I suppose because of the fright. Mosquitoes were quite bad even during the day. But what really kills you are those roads going down and down and then you hope you're arrived but...no, still up and up walking beside your bike...for 3 hours without any kind of food since 17: 30 of the previous day. Thank God I arrived, at 10: 30, at the entrance of the secondary road that brings directly to Thung Non Son. Oh Dear, a "road"... it was on the left side of the main road, it was just some kind of way in the deep, dark jungle, a way 25 cm large, with less leaves and plants on the ground than on its sides, that's all. 25 cm. After 5 meters in the jungle you could easily loose the way, also because it had been changed many times because of a lot of fallen trees. Just before the entrance to this 25 cm large road, a fallen and broken old sign was saying "on your left, after a 5-6 hours walk, you'll be able to find a place with flora and fauna that you couldn't find anywhere else in this park". Bloody hell, 5-6 hours inside there with a bike and no food??? I tried, believe me, I tried. For one hour, until 11: 30 I went with my bike in that jungle trying to follow that road. But then I had to decide: or the cp or me. I couldn't arrive alive at Thung Non Son after 24 hours without food, and even if I could, I couldn't spend the night there sleeping on the ground, and even if I could, I couldn't stay another 24 until the following afternoon without eating, especially before and after such a dreadful physical activity. So I renounced and went back. On the way back I tried to find some kind of tropical fruit but there was nothing. Being afraid of passing out and remain there until death, I started looking for ginger roots, that are very energetic and full of sugar. I ate the stolons of something that I believed to be a ginger plant. It wasn't. But fortunately not only the flavor and the smell but also the sugar presence was the same, and it made me survive. But it could have been poisonous and now I would be dead. I'm sure I pronounced at least twice, all alone on that mountain, the word "pizza". And I was dreaming about a coke while now and then I had to stop simply because my muscles were shaking and refused to work again. I arrived at the rent bike place at 4: 30, after 23 hours without food and the last 30 minutes completely without water (2 bottles in 24 hours). I was trembling, starving, covered with scratches and walking in a funny way because of the blisters. I put my right hand in my mouth saying "food" and the bike owner kindly gave me some rice with a ...spicy stuff that burned completely what was left of my poor throat. What surprised me is that I didn't have to pay the 300 bat for the bike, the food was free and he also gave me a floppydisk with a few pictures of the mokhao moken lin he had taken with a few friends. Probably I was really looking bad!!

When I left Thung Saleng Luang I bought a bottle of coke. And on the way back, every now and then, I was looking at it as if it was one of the most precious jewels human kind could ever have…

So, Thung Non Son is a sandy and grassy pineland at 800 mt. of altitude. In the dry season it really gets dry and it seems that fires can easily happen. And also because of the long way to arrive and because of the fallen trees on the way, you can go there only if you have a car or a motorbike, in the rainy season, when all the plants are in full bloom, the road is cleared, you can find a guide and... You’re not in Thailand for sure!!! Come on, who's so crazy to go there in the wet season just to be covered by leeches, mud and rain...? Anyway, the temperature by night can be around 5-10 °C. But 25-30 °C during the day. A part from N. smilesii you can find D. burmanni and D. indica, U. delphinioides with hundreds of quite large light blue flowers (but at the headquarter office and on the leaflet pics they're purple), and another 4-5 utric species. I've seen the pics but I'm not sure about their identity, I think U. uliginosa, scandens and/or bifida and some others. I was told by the bike man that nobody goes there actually, just him together with a few friends who live inside and around the park. I think that cp colony is safe!

pics given to me at the headquarter in a floppydisk: pic1, pic2, pic3, pic4

pics I took at the two headquarters: pic1, pic2, pic3