La Rue Vibre !

After all those visits of temples we wanted to change a bit and take some fresh air. Thus we decided to spend few days in the natural park of Phu Kradung, in the north-east of Thailand.

Our arrival in the small town were not successful. After having spend the whole day in the bus we were relying on our French guidebook to find a place to stay. Unfortunately we did not find an hotel or something along the 5 kilometers we walked. Everything seemed to be closed, deserted. And when we said “Sawatdee kah”, hello in Thai, the dogs only answered us.
The night came and we finally reached the visitor center where we were supposed to find a resort. But the employees that were still there were not able to give us more information. However they were very nice (as usual) and some of them brought us to a “home stay”. And then we went back on the road we already knew, at the back of a jeep the hair in the air.

And the adventure were not finished. We asked to the owner if he knew a place to eat (we had not eat from the morning). But he did not speak English and thus called an English teacher to translate. It was quite funny particularly because we could not hear anything in the cellphone.
But he finally understood our request and lent us some bikes to go to the “city center”. Those children bikes were very old. We should be weird, me in front with my frontal light on the head and Remi behind his knees almost reaching his chin! What a happiness to seat at a table in a restaurant and eat some delicious thai meal!

The day after we went back on a road we already knew. Two thai girls proposed us to drop us to the park entrance. They also wanted to go to the top.
In fact the park is located on a plateau at an altitude of about 1300 meters above the sea level.
The ascent took us 3 hours. It was very hot and more or less difficult. Some stairs, climbing, little scales etc. We were completely wet as we had never seen that! On the way all the stalls and restaurants were closed, the park were closing in few days. We had not forecast this and started to lack of water (remember !). Thus a group of thais, we would know more after, gave us a bottle of water. In fact we do not like water as much as we are thirsty.

Here we are : the top ! Happy to reach the summit ! And what a surprise, the vegetation was completely different, with scrubs and pine trees. So we just had to go up 1200 meters to find some French landscapes (of the Landes).

Thirty minutes later we reached the visitor center, a quite big place where we find small restaurants, facilities and tent sites. WE went straight to the restaurants and ordered three plates ! The cook was smiley and we really enjoyed the food. She even offered us some green mango with sugar, a must!
We spend the rest of the day to sweep up the water under our tent which were sheltered by some concrete canopy. And we were waiting the end of the rain (a pure French reflex as we will see later).

The day after we went trekking with the group of Thais we had met during the ascent. There were Khaen (the man with the pink umbrella), his brother, his niece and a friend. We spoke a lot with them and learned that Khaen had traveled a lot. They were really nice and even invited us to lunch the day after.
After only five minutes after the departure the rain started to fall and almost never stop until the end of the day. Only ten minutes later we were completely wet. But we continued to walk and the rain was apparently not disturbing our friends.

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And then we were annoyed by the lichees, terrible animals! They hear us arriving and stick to our shoes and start going up, looking for blood to suck. They are quite difficult to kill and even if we think they are dead they are NOT!

The walk was not really peaceful. We had to cross rivers, walk on tracks that were rivers, climbing some rocks etc.

We even avoided some wild elephants. Those animals can be quite dangerous and had destroyed the wood shacks, looking for some food rests.

The landscape were wonderful! The view from the top incredible. We had the feeling to be on another planet.

Here is a little video about the walk. Enjoy!