5 Day Andaman road trip: LEECH, LEECH!

Time has come to climb back in the saddle, time is right to hit the road on my two-wheeled friend again. The tires of our rented motorbike should spin around an estimated 700,000 times along 1000km of asphalt and dirt, taking us to two different National Parks in the Andaman Coastal area.
Our intention is to leave Phuket at the crack of dawn with feather light backpacks carrying the bare minimum required for a 5 day trip. The rest of our luggage we’ll leave at the hotel to be collected on our return.

At around 8am we come to the conclusion this bare minimum seems to be around 90% of our entire luggage stack, and never ever will fit on our bike.
At around 9am I convince Immy she does not need 3 dresses, 3 pair of shoes and an extensive set of cosmetics.
At around 10am Immy convinces me the laptop has to go… this hurts.
Eventually the bags fit and off we go!

Road Runners Ready for a Rock ‘n Roll Ride.

Day one’s target is Kao Sok National Park. The roads in Thailand compared to Vietnam are very good and well organized. The ride is a piece of cake with wealthy views which remind me of the trip with Su last month.
 
Kao Sok National Park

We arrive at Kao Lak National Park later than anticipated (not that I took any wrong turns of course, ahem). The bungalow we booked is straight from a fairytale right beside a river stream. The sound of the streaming water and other mysterious jungle sounds make this a memorable stay. Funnily enough we both conclude that the cheaper small scaled places are so much nicer to stay at than the bigger hotels. This place costs us 8 euro per night and floats our boat big time.

Sunset at our riverside bungalow

Talking of jungle sounds… There was one in particular that draws attention.
The Cicada is little sort of bug, a bit like a cricket, which makes such an immense noise that we were convinced initially this was somehow coming from loudspeakers hidden in the jungle (don't ask). It sounds something like when you are vacuum cleaning and then a ball of socks would get stuck in the hoover-pipe: a high hissing sound indicating something is terribly wrong and about to blow up. Got it? So take that sound at roughly 90 decibel for 15 minutes non-stop.
We later learn that the Cicada has only 2 weeks to live and makes this noise from his belly to attract females to do ‘boom boom’ (boom boom is the international term for hanky panky, just as broadly used and understood as the writing sign you make when asking for the bill). In short: we can’t blame the Cicada for making that noise, we would do the same if we could. And anyway they always stop around 7pm (international boom boom time as you know).

After a nights sleep we go on an adventure tour in the park with a group of 6 and get a little more adventure than we bargained for. The relaxing ‘lake cruise’ to watch the jungle wild life is rudely disturbed by a rainstorm. Yes, we see monkeys in the trees but they all seem to be laughing at us.

Rain in the middle of the Kao Sok lake

The cave we rush into is completely dark. Helped by torches we find our way through the alleys and chambers. In some places there is ankle-deep water and we slip and slide our way past mysterious yellow eyes following our moves. The thousands of bats are not very appreciative of our aahhs and awes and especially our flash lights, so flap away annoyed into dark areas unknown to mankind.

Thankfully the rain floated away (I directed it roughly to 52 degrees North Latitude / 5 Eastern Longitude) and after a bit of relaxing and canoeing at a floating oasis it’s time for the jungle trek.

Floating Oasis

During this trek we expected to be skipping joyfully over a jungle path drifting away in our thoughts, but to our shock this is an old skool hard core jungle trek. A guide with a big sword is cutting down the flora in front of us to create a walkway through the dense jungle.
The main worries of our group are not the spiders or the snakes, it is the blood thirsty leeches crawling through the wet leaves.
Ever seen a leech? I thought it was a depressed sort of slug waiting for a lucky break. In fact they are speedy little worms actively chasing you down, they are so thin (without your blood in them) they go straight through the trainers of a Portugese guy in our group, who freaks out and dances around on one leg while cursing in Portugese. Our Thai tour-guide, however, is walking on flip flops and on occasions pulling a leech off his leg to cut it in half. I of course am something similar, indifferently pulling leeches off my legs and swallowing them raw. If anyone ever tells you I was screaming something like ‘LEECH, LEECH, GET IT OFF ME! HELP MAMA’, that obviously is an utter lie.

Thai Rambo leading the way through the jungle

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Exhausted but with most of our blood remaining we return to our cozy bungalow long after dark. A night of tanking energy for tomorrow when we will continue our trip north to Leam Som National Park, hopefully to find a little more Zen.