Since we informed our kind hostess that apart from me everyone prefers a vegetarian breakfast, the one we were served on the second day was lacking meats, but even grander in any other respect. We took leave of Ooy Le House, and headed towards our rendezvous with the dolphins. On the dirt road leading to the pier, I suddenly recognized a green vine along the road as a green tree snake – Ahaetulla nasuta. I stopped the car, ran back and verified, to my relief, that it managed to crawl away and I didn’t run over it. The lady from the day before was there, and introduced us to someone who apparently was our boatman and guide for the tour. He didn’t speak a word of English, but guided us to his boat with hand gestures and some Thai. With the help of several of his fishermen peers – for it seemed the dolphin tours were a moonlighting operation for the local fishermen community – he managed to get the boat out of the low tide’s mudflats and into the bay, and we were on our way.
We searched far and wide for the pink dolphins, going as far north as Donsak and Surat Thani, but neither we, nor any of the dozen or so other boats, slow and fast, that we encountered along the trip, seemed to have any luck locating them that day. We did, however, enjoy a close look at the beautiful little islands along the shore, with stone cliffs rising directly from the water and dense vegetation all over. Some of the cliffs had interesting undulating lava formations in cross section. From time to time little fish jumped out of the water for considerable distances, and a couple of times we had to rescue one that landed on our deck. In one of the straits between the islands there were mangroves, where we spotted some herons, and among them a couple of shacks and boats belonging apparently to local fishermen. A Brahaminy Kite hovering above us with was a beautiful sight with its reddish-brown background color and pure white chest and neck.
We came back to the pier after two and a half hours, and our guide promised us another tour for free if we return the next day. With the help of a translator and pointing at the calendar on the phone, we told him that we may be back within three days, though we knew the chances that we would make the stop again were not high. Around eleven and a half we set out to retrieve our cellular router from the ferry pier in Surat Thani. Several minutes away from our destination, google maps insisted on taking us through some blocked section of the road (Waze, by the way, proved even less reliable). Our attempt to bypass the blockage were met with insistent demands by the navigation software to go back there, so we ignored it and went in the general direction of the pier, through some back alleys. After a few minutes, google relented and offered us a new route not going back to the same point. But it did go off the road and onto some dirt road, and then through some gate and into an area that looked rather industrial. In fact, we turned out to be driving through the grounds of the Thai Bitumen Company.
We found the Lomprayah offices near the pier, and a nice girl told me that everyone is out for lunch, so we should come back in 30 minutes or so. Since we saw a large restaurant just around the corner, we decided to take a lunch break too. The restaurant was located in a huge wooden shed, and had enough room to host a regimen. Only one other table was occupied at the moment, so we received the full attention of the plump young waitress. As befitting the location, it was a seafood restaurant, and we were hard pressed to find dishes that the kids would like. We ended up ordering fried tofu for Tamar, and for Daniel something that was described as deep fried fish. We tried to verify that this meant fish nuggets, which he liked on previous occasions, asking if it were made in small pieces. 
After lunch, our cellular router was retrieved, to the evident relief of the clerk, who apparently didn’t know what he should do with that strange package. I gave hime 60 Baht and asked him to send them to their Koh Phangan office, and he promised to do so, though he clearly had no idea what this was all about. We navigated back to the main road through the bitumen company, but our way out – the gate we had entered through previously – turned out to be closed. Close inspection discovered that the gate was locked with a heavy metal chain and a large lock, but the chain was secured to one side of the gate with… straw! We untied the security apparatus, tied it again behind us, and hurried on our way. We saw on the National parks site that there was vacancy in the bungalows inside the Khao Luang park, but the park closes at 16:00, and our estimated arrival time was by now 15:59. We made a couple of hurried nature stops along the way, which cost us a few minutes, but nevertheless got to the ticket office a the edge of the park, near the Kha Rom waterfall, almost ten minutes before closing time. What a relief!
Unfortunately, the ranger at the ticket counter had no idea what bungalows we were talking about, and referred us to the nearby Kharom resort, just outside the park. When we insisted that there should be bungalows in the park, she made a phone call, and after a few minutes a girl of about 20 appeared on a motorbike, to help with the translation. In the meantime, I brought up the park website on my phone (hurrah to the cellular hotspot!), and showed them the reference to the bungalows. It turned out that the bungalows are in the northern part of the park, which cannot be accessed from this entrance, and are about 90 minutes drive away. Looks like we would have to find a different place to sleep tonight.
We walked in the direction of the Kharom resort, but at the point the dark and narrow path sloping down from the main road passed by a couple of very shabby huts, we decided we better drive back to the seemingly new hotel we saw on a hillside just a few minutes drive away. So we drove back to that hotel, which consisted of several wooden bungalows scattered on the hillside, above a central building with a restaurant and a large balcony. It was indeed very new, partly still in construction, and also very empty. It had beautiful scenery in the direction of the park, but it was also right above the highway, and the constant noise coming from it was annoying. And so, relying on the availability of online maps and recommendations, we decided to look on for better accommodation.
What followed was an hour and a half of search in the surrounding towns and villages for an open hotel, guesthouse or B&B. Every place we found was closed and deserted, with the exception of a few temples, which did seem quite lively. We considered asking for shelter in one of those, but eventually decided to try one last place, that looked rather cute in the photos on google maps. Indeed, this place was open! It also had the lovely colors depicted in the photos. But that was the only cute thing about it. It was location was basically a parking lot by the highway, on which stood a row of four or five colorful, tiny, miserable, mobile homes, each with a queen-size bed meant for slim Siamese queens. Furthermore, the nice lady selling drinks by the highway at the entrance to the compound, who turned out to also be the proprietor, or equivalent thereof, told us that only the two units closest to the highway were available for us. Desperate as we were at this point, we almost took these, but our good senses returned at the last moment, and we decided to return to the first hotel we saw.
The only problem was that by now we had no idea where exactly that hotel was located. We tried to look for it on the map, but couldn’t find it, so I decided to drive back there by memory. Lo and behold, after 15 minutes of brilliant navigation we found ourselves after about 15 minutes at the entrance to the park again – the gods seemed to destine us to sleep at the dreaded Kharom resort. So we made our way through the steep, narrow and dark descent, passed the shabby huts, and merely 50 meters further down the road found ourselves in a clearing within the rainforest, or rather a spacious orchard, where several nice looking little houses were scattered. The Thai girl who served as our translator a couple of hours earlier was playing softball with an American boy at the end of the orchard. The boy approached us, and when he learned that we were looking for accommodation, showed us the room that he thought was the better one, which was clean, spacious, and had a huge balcony overlooking the orchard and the rainforest beyond it. We immediately said we would take it, and he said said the girls’ parents were running the place, and he would call them. As a word of parting, he warned us that we may hear some Durian fruits falling during the night, but probably not too many.
The girl’s parents arrived, and the father, who saw may with the camera, showed us a path going up the orchard and by a couple of little ponds. We checked it out and encountered a Frog , many geckos and an interesting large cockroach. On our way back to the room, we met both parents sitting on a bench beneath one of the trees peeling Durian. They offered us some Durian, fresh off the tree, and I couldn’t resist the temptation to try it. Durian, known as “the king of fruit”, is notorious for also being the world’s foulest smelling fruit. And indeed, the ripe fruit exuded a rather nauseating aroma that hung heavily in the evening air. It is said that when grilled or baked, it loses the stench, but we were not lucky enough to try it in that form. Here was the real thing – smell and all. The texture actually matched the smell quite remarkably – very soft, and resembling more than anything else layers upon thick layers of milk skin. The taste was very rich and interesting – not much like any other fruit I had ever tasted. Definitely an acquired taste, but enjoyable in a perverse way. I ate the big section they cut for me while Lilach mustered all her willpower not to gag on the tiny bite she took.
But Durian was no substitute for Dinner, so now that we all took showers we headed in the direction of a restaurant we saw on the way that looked nice. We set on the balcony, and were the only guests in the establishment, but the dinner was very good and the service very friendly, with the young cook coming out of the kitchen to help us choose the dishes, since her English was better than that of the waiters and waitresses. But the highlight of the dinner experience happened outside the restaurant, when Lilach and Daniel saw a big shadow gliding between the trees behind my back. I had a guess as to its identity, so we ran to the car and returned with headlights and cameras, and indeed spotted a Colugo – the world’s largest and most proficient gliding mammal. And not just that – it was a mother with a cub hanging to her fur! We looked at the beautiful creatures until they climbed high up on the tree before resuming our meal and returning to our room extremely satisfied.
Family Trips 