Khao Yai National Park

In July Thailand’s best-known national park joined the list of the 800+ World Heritage sites. This honor, given by UNESCO, goes to “cultural and natural heritage around the world considered to be of outstanding value to humanity.” The U.S. claims about twenty World Heritage sites, including a dozen of the most famous national parks and the Statue of Liberty.

During Greg’s visit he and I figured we’d better have a look at Khao Yai to see why it was in the same league as Yellowstone and Olympic. We got there by sky train, motorcycle, bus, songthaew, and pickup truck, in that order.

All we knew before arriving was that hikers were encouraged to wear special socks to keep the leeches off. Nobody told us about the massive spiders that like to build their webs across the paths. Or about the pileated gibbons.

Luckily, we caught a ride on the last leg of our journey with a researcher who a) knew quite a lot about the pileated gibbons, b) was free to have dinner with us, and c) didn’t mind driving us to the trailhead the next morning.

Before the day was over we knew why Khao Yai is considered so special. We heard the songs of the gibbons as dawn broke. We trekked past some seriously big trees. Just as we thought the trail was taking us through yet another jungle habitat to the land of despair, we emerged at a gorgeous grassland, where the park has set up a wildlife watching tower.

Now that he is back in Seattle, Greg has posted pictures of this trip to the Internet. Click here to see how we looked on our travels, as well as several shots of our fancy apartment in Bangkok.