Wednesday, March 10 - Luxury at the Hyatt and onto Kaeng Krachan

 I awoke for a minute at 5:30 AM as Bob was leaving to go birding with Dion and David and three others of the group. I got up at seven and found my way to the breakfast buffet and joined Frances and Jean for coffee, pastries and a delicious bread and butter pudding. We walked around the pool area which is really pretty amazing! It is a river pool which I had never heard of before. The pool winds around in a narrow, ~12’ wide channel lined with blue tiles, topped with boulders and tropical plants. You can swim from the hotel to the beach and/or the pool bar.

It looked so inviting that I had to try it out. I had misplaced my bathing suit way back at the Marriott and so used Bob’s trunks and a t-shirt. Thais tend to be pretty modest and I noticed a few others clad similarly so I figured I wouldn’t look too weird. I found a bin of large yellow towels and found a chaise and stepped in. The water was in the 80s and I swam along, under bridges, past flowering trees and finally came out to the ocean. I figure I should at least take a dip in the Gulf of Siam and splashed around it the shallow turquoise water for a while before returning to the pool shower to clean off. I ran into Mary who said she had tried the Dragon Slide, so I thought I ought to also! Wow! I climbed 40 steps up onto a shrubbery-enclosed platform and sat down in the rushing water. It looked really steep and long but suddenly I was shooting straight down and crashed into the water through a large dragon’s mouth, thoroughly soaking my hair and sinuses! Frances fortunately caught my descent on film!

Bob returned from his expedition to a great preserve of marsh grasslands with a mile-long boardwalk. He saw lots of birds, plus a Dusky Leaf Monkey! We were to meet the group for lunch but couldn’t find the restaurant and had to ask at the front desk. A very nice young man lead us the ¼ mile or so past more pools, spas and shops and finally reached the McFarland House and went upstairs to a large open room with a great overhanging roof lined with enormous gutters to catch the often torrential rains. The menu had meals based on “water”, “air”, etc but whatever, it was very good: crab rolls, shrimp, salads. fruit smoothies. We didn’t have far to go today, so we relaxed and had a great meal and watched the overcast sky and light showers building up.



We finally packed and loaded up and set off inland and up into the mountains to our last national park, Kaeng Krachan. It took a couple of hours to reach Kaeng Krachan Resort, the only hotel in the area, and we had the afternoon off until supper. This is our most basic hotel for the tour (no internet!) and fairly strange! There are about 72 cottages, each holding two parties. The AC barely functions and it is pretty sparsely furnished, but it does have desk and table and chairs outside.  The bathrooms however, are quite snazzy with a strip garden and fancy floor tiles.  Several of the others have room frogs and/or geckos.

 I just relaxed and read. There seems to be no one else here which is par for the course according to David. At 6:30 two open carts appeared to take us to dinner, which seemed funny until it turned out that the hotel restaurant is a couple of miles away! This place is enormous, with groomed grounds, a pool and exercise area?? We had a large Thai dinner, List and bed.



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