National Park day today – our one day tour, with boat rides, trekking through the jungle, and clambering through a cave.
Didn’t start off too well, with a tedious two hours in a minibus as we made a succession of pickups from ridiculously out of the way places, stopped for petrol, and to call the office, and all sorts of other stuff you can’t help thinking could be handled better, but when we got to the boat, things definitely took a turn for the better.
It was a lovely day, and we scudded across the reservoir, through the stunning landscape. “Very reminiscent of Ha Long,” I said to V, “but with better weather.” Great Jurassic columns of rock rearing out of the water, all thickly covered with vegetation. At one point we made a stop, where a bloke in a small skiff, dressed for some reason as Spiderman, pulled alongside to sell ice cream from the urn in his boat.
After an hour or so we got to a sort of resort-on-the-lake, where we were served a surprisingly good lunch. Not a patch on the curries we’ve been having back in town, but a big step up over the polystyrene prefabs we’ve often been offered on such expeditions.
Then off to the start of the jungle walk, which in the event proved to be much more benign than we’d been anticipating – barely more taxing than a stroll in Queen’s Wood, and certainly nothing like the kind of thing we’d been doing under our own steam back in, say, the Cameron Highlands. But it was a lovely jungle – virgin rainforest, to be strictly accurate – and an hour or so’s trek was just the thing, after our recent beach-bumming idleness.
That took us to the cave, where we fumbled and stumbled and slid and tripped and waded and at one point swam our way through something like a kilometre of tunnels and streams, sometimes 10 metres high and full of bats, with water up to your ankles, sometimes banging your head on the roof while the ground disappeared from under your feet. Ever swum in hiking boots in near-darkness? Me either. There wasn’t a lot of wildlife other than disconcertingly large spiders, but we did see ceilings covered in bats, and an impressively imperturbable frog.
All in all it was a wonderful experience, and we were on a high when we clambered into the boat for the short ride back to the jetty, where we were served a welcome if slightly bizarre ‘tea’ of unidentifiable sticky rice-wrapped-in-banana-leaves snacks, water melon, and Oreos. (Ever had one? Me either. They’re like chewing on a sugar cube.)
It was after that that things went a little pear-shaped, when we climbed back aboard our boat, only to find that we were apparently to host an entire other boatload of people for the return trip. It all looked, and felt, dangerously overloaded, and just to help matters our skipper seemed to think he was some kind of aquatic Tiger Woods. Then the wind got up.
Ramming a log that’s barely 6″ above the waterline through a choppy lake produces a hell of a lot of spray, and I rapidly discovered I was in exactly the right seat to cop most of it. So, tight packed, seriously uncomfortable, twisted round on the hard seat and unable to move, I spent the next hour or so getting thoroughly drenched, head to foot. At points there was actually water slooshing over the side of the boat. I didn’t think we would sink – ‘I’m sure they’re used to this’, I reassured myself nervously – but I have to admit I was uneasy, if not anxious. I was pretty sure there were more people on the boat than lifejackets, not to mention the fact that two or three of our passengers were toddlers.
Eventually we reached dry land, at which point I verbally laid into the skipper, who seemed genuinely surprised and affronted that anyone should object at being reduced to a soaking rag on what was supposed to be a fun trip. Bonkers. V later looked up some of the reviews online, from which it appears that far from being unusual, our experience was all too typical – indeed several left us with the impression that we’d got off pretty light. It’s not the first time since we’ve got to Thailand that we’ve got the distinct impresion that by contrast with Vietnam and Malaysia, a fair few of the people involved in the tourist industry over here – and it really does feel like an industry when you’re in the middle of these kinds of organised events – really don’t give a flying one about you, or your comfort, or your safety, or anything other than making their wedge and heading home for their tea.
Anyway, back on the bus for the return trip, which, mercifully, was at least a bit quicker. So I only had to sit in my soaking wet shorts for an hour and a half rather than two. Thanks guys.
Got back, got showered, got changed, and went down the road for another fantastic curry dinner. Headed home full and content. And that’s when things took a turn for the dramatic…
It was as I approached, filming as best I could in the near-darkness, that the man turned and said politely “Excuse me, sir, could you help me please?” Well, who can refuse a man grappling with an angry 12 foot snake. “What do you need me to do?” I asked innocently. “I need to get her into the plastic bag. I am holding her head, so she cannot harm you, but could you hold up the bag and then, gently, pick her up and get the rest of her body into the bag.” No problem. Easy peasy lemon squeazy. I do this kind of thing every day. Gulp.
The thing was thicker than my arm, thinner than my thigh, squirming like crazy, and heavy. I picked it up by the handful, and did as instructed, testing the opening of the bag to ensure I wasn’t hurting it, until eventually the last section was in and I was able to scrunch up the end. The man then opened the box he had handy, and I lifted the bag into it. It was after he’d secured the lid that he informed me that we were dealing not with a python or boa constrictor, as I’d assumed from the size, but a king cobra. “If she bite you, you dead, immediately.” You don’t say.
After a brief chat about snakes, and his academic friend who usually helps him with this kind of thing but was away – and majorly peeved, since he’s been waiting six years to see a king cobra – I went back for a sit down on our verandah, a few metres away.
Unfortunately, this proved a perfect viewpoint to witness his ongoing struggles with the beast. I could see that he was attempting a four hand job with just the one pair, so I went back over and asked if there was anything else I could do. “We need to let her out of the bag, but not out of the box. So if you can take the edge of the bag, and I will hold the lid nearly closed, then you need to pull the bag, very gently, and little by little we ease the bag away and let her stay in the box.” Two somewhat nerve-wracking minutes later, the job was done, the box was clipped closed, and the man started spraying her through holes in the box. “She licks the water off her skin.” After a minute or two, the furious heavy breathing had subsided to a gentle calm, and the snake, resigned to its fate, lay still, regarding us with a beady eye…
For a finale, the man went off looking for something to secure the crate, but came back empty handed. “I can’t find my cable ties,” he said. “I have cable ties,” I volunteered. “Big ones?” he asked. “I have some big ones.” I went back to the room and had a rummage in my useful things bag, came back and handed them over. He accepted them gratefully, and secured the crate. “Um…why you have cable ties with you?” he asked. “Well, you never know when you’re going to run into a king cobra.”