Khao Yai National Park

Beautiful view

Mike looking fetching in his leech socks

Gibbon

A different variety of gibbon

Tommy

Tommy again- we're staying far away

400 year old tree that was taken over by a strangler fig- The tree is gone all that remains is the fig "skeleton"

 

Pit viper

We spent a couple of days in this national park. Beautiful countryside with lots of wildlife. We booked a tour with a guide who was able to spot a lot of wildlife we wouldn't have otherwise seen. It was nice to be out in the woods. Leeches are not a problem this time of the year but ticks are so we did wear the leech socks for our hikes in the jungle. We were lucky to see so much wildlife. Apparently it's hit or miss on whether you'll see anything.
The elephant we saw is in musth (pronounced must) which is a condition in male elephants where they have excess testosterone which oozes from their bodies during certain times of the year. They are super aggressive at this time. You can see this guy (his name is Tommy according to our guide) is oozing between his eyes and ears at the temporal glands. We had to be careful to not get too close as they are known to charge. Even the female elephants avoid them during this time. Our guide said we were really lucky to get so close.
Today we moved on to the Thailand/Cambodia border. After 6 hours of travel on 2 buses we arrived at the border town of Aranyaprathet and are spending the night. Tomorrow we'll cross over to Cambodia and head down to Siem Reap for 5-6 days to tour the temples at Angkor Wat. We hope the border crossing is easy. It is the most used border crossing and is known for hassles and scams. One of the scams we've experienced twice is that the bus drops us off outside of town instead of at the bus station which would be within walking distance of our guest house. Then we have to pay a couple of bucks for a tuk tuk into town. We have no idea where we're supposed to be dropped off and we can't really communicate so we have no choice but to pay for the tuk tuk. It's not a  big amount of money but it gets a little tiring. Of course with the right amount of money we'll make it across the border with less hassle.