In part remembrance and part revival of hubby’s love of the wild life, the great outdoors and hiking, he books us a trip to Khao Yai National Park for his birthday celebration. A gift to himself. Sounds a delightful escape. And because of the horrible air pollution in Bangkok in mid-January I am extra happy to get out of the city to nature too. I had had enough of being cooped up in the apartment with the baby unable to take her outside due to the air pollution – I was waiting to take a deep inhale of fresh air!
Khao Yai National Park was created in 1962 as Thailand’s first national park, and is now its third largest park, and it forms one part of a UNESCO World Heritage site in the area. The area hosts a wide variety of wildlife, including elephants, barking deer, gibbons, the occasional bear, and a whole raft of fascinating birds like hornbills and woodpeckers.
Getting There…
We hire a driver and large car and drive on out to Khao Yai with us, baby and two grandparents on the adventure. Google Maps advises it’s just a little over 3 hours drive to our hotel near Khao Yai, Kirimaya Golf Resort and Spa – sounds good! However, I think Google needs a button to calculate travel duration when there is a baby or young kids in tow! Re-calculation. Baby needed to eat again already after only the first 45 minutes, by which time we had not even made it out of the city because it took us 20 mins to get all the people in the car (it was a game of musical chairs), and then the driver had stopped to buy gas.
It’s easy when you don’t have a baby to not think twice about taking 20 minutes to get into the car and then stopping 20 minutes to get gas and buy snacks. Before you know it you’ve lost 40 minutes of “baby-well-fed-and-not-bored-or-crying” time and you’re stopping after only 45 minutes of solid driving time – which doesn’t even get you out of the city!
Escaping the air pollution in Bangkok
The other problem, and more important one, about taking 20 minutes to get everyone in the car is that during that time we are breathing air that is rated 178 on the US Air quality index. For those not in the habit of checking their air quality the way that most people check their weather app, this is classed as “unhealthy” i.e. not just for more vulnerable groups such as children, elderly or those with respiratory conditions, but for everyone.
There is a serious haze over the city making it difficult to see more than a few blocks over the skyline (visualize some pictures you see of Beijing). People are walking around with face masks on to try and protect themselves – even though its worth noting the masks you typically see them wearing are not actually effective in blocking out the most harmful particulate matter which is sized 2.5 (smaller than the quarter width of a human hair). But people feel like they have to do something, and the more effective N95 face masks were sold out in the city, and air purifiers were also almost sold out, so it’s more a way of appeasing the mind rather than actually helping the body.
A Stop-Off at Farm Chokchai
On the way to the Park we stop at a Thai restaurant for lunch, but there is no indoor space and we decide that we don’t want to sit out and breath the air outside. Even though we are now two hours drive outside the city of Bangkok, the air is just as bad on the Air Visual app with readings also at around 160 US AQI for cities like Ayutthaya, Sara Buri and Nakhon Ratchasima that are around Khao Yai. So we ask for a restaurant that has indoor seating.
We arrive a few minutes later at Farm Chockchai and walk in, they leave the door open, sigh. Oh well, it is better than sitting outside I guess. The restaurant is an American style ranch that serves steaks. Hmm, OK, so we have brought the parents-in-law who have flown in from the USA to Thailand to experience the country (and obviously to see their grand-daughter) to a faux-Texas styled ranch, sigh again.
Well, at least here they are happy with the menu and able to order a steak and vegetables that fit with their low-carb diet and that are not Thai-spicy to overheat their tongues. It’s a win. Though we do try to manage their expectations in terms of what a steak may be like here. Eating cows is really not a Thai thing – they don’t have many and they don’t eat much beef. That being said, this is changing in recent years since I’ve seen a lot more red meat in the supermarkets and beefsteak restaurants while living here this time around than 10 years ago.
This Farm has about 3,000 dairy cattle and they operate a dairy farm – apparently the first in Asia to meet dairy cattle exporting standards. We take a walk around the farm area that rears cows and have a look at the souvenir shop with cowboys and Indians souvenirs. They run tours, offer wagon rides, show the farming equipment they use, have a showroom, and animal shows at the Farm.
Part of me is sad that Thailand is trying to re-create more and more international experiences that sort of miss the mark compared to providing an original authentic Thai experience. I am thinking, for example, of an imitation Italian village, Palio Khao Yai, and this American ranch farm and restaurant near Khao Yai National Park. It makes my heart feel heavy mainly because I think Thai culture and food is soooo wonderful and that is what they do best: why try to be anything else? But Thais are masters at fusion of their foods with other country foods, like Italian, and that appeals to many Thais and tourists alike.
Tranquil Accommodations
From departing our apartment to arriving at the hotel, the journey took us 6 hours in total – unbelievable for a journey that google maps says takes around 3 hours, including traffic. Yes, perhaps they should have a setting that asks you if you are traveling with a baby – you know, the way they ask you if you want to take a toll road or not… so they can adjust their estimates to something even within 50% accuracy!
We arrive at our hotel, Kirimaya Golf Resort and Spa.
The staff are beyond helpful and friendly. I love that Thais in general really love babies, and want to help mothers – it is such a relief. There are no dirty looks like you can anticipate receiving at some 4 or 5 star hotels in some countries – just pure delight at the baby’s sweet little face and gestures. They can’t help but talk to the baby, touch her, help you with the stroller, cover the baby with shade from the sun, bring a green bean for her to play with and chew on. They are really such a welcoming culture when it comes to babies. I was told that this is largely because in Buddhism, taking care of others weaker than you and particularly the most vulnerable like babies and the elderly is an act of merit-making and is worthy of providing support to the carer. I just love this mindset and approach.
Its about 3pm, we are all tired, I take a walk around the grounds because I am so, so, so ridiculously excited to have air that I can breathe, that I don’t have extreme guilt for taking the baby out in – I can feel the air is cleaner here. And I am really looking forward to the smooth roads so I can actually use our stroller – wow, what a perfect combination!!
If I were in the US, or Europe I would not even think twice about this – actually, let me re-state, I would not even think once about this since I would so inherently take these things for granted. Ah, just the basics. (side note: “Just the basics” is a phrased I have coined for my life this year. I have used it a lot, mostly when referring to what has to happen each day when you have a new baby – just the basics i.e. going to the bathroom, eating, sleeping, washing hair is a luxury, washing the body is more of a priority). I walk along paths that I can see are a dead-end in 50ft, just so I can walk those 50 ft there and 50ft back. It feels good. But it does make me realise I am acting like a gerbil on a wheel, exercising within a small, small contained area. This is how desperate I am to get out and walk with my baby in her stroller.
After this, I manage to leave baby with dad to get some real food and sneak off for a happy hour beer at the pool, overlooking the hills – beautiful and peaceful 😊 I’m still concerned about the air quality with pollution blowing through from Nakhon Rathchasima, Sara Buri and even down from China (which has been the main preferred finger-pointing direction of the Thai authorities, though Cambodia has also been on the wrong end of this as well lately).
I realise paranoia has set in – that I’m thinking about this all the time – and I know that if the air is bad, my asthma will be triggered and I wont be able to sleep that night without the use of an inhaler. I decide to stay out for an hour to battle the paranoia. It was worth it. I did get a bit wheezy but I choose to blame this on the cold that I’m recovering from and try to think of the air as safe so that we can all go hiking in the mountains the next day in good conscience.
The Park Trails
We jump aboard the people carrier driven by our driver from Bangkok, he takes us into the National Park and we go for a walk the next day. We take a loop trail, all five of us, that leaves from behind the Visitor Center and takes us about 45 minutes. We cross wobbly, jiggly wire bridges, which I would not have thought twice about before, but with one baby and one elderly unstable on his feet and scared of the height of the bridge, it feels a bit nerve-racking. Hubby is carrying the baby on the baby carrier and wants to go help his dad so I take baby – we agree that I should take care of baby and he should take care of his parents.
Yes, we are that “sandwich generation” where our children are very young and our parents are old both at the same time. It’s a lot to look after! We make it through, everyone is happy having had the experience and considered it an adventure, phew! This wasn’t a particularly scenic trail but its main attraction for us was that we could do it while carrying a baby.
We then take a short hike, just hubby and I, to the most famous waterfall attraction of the Park, Haew Suwat waterfall, that gained notoriety in the Western world following filming of a scene from the Hollywood movie, The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio in 2000. It was only 15 minutes from the car park where the driver dropped us off, but it is fairly steep decline.
It is beautiful, and imaginably even more so during the rainy season when there would be greater falls. There are many people taking photos at the bottom and we tire of the crowd so we hike a little further along the route for 40 minutes or so. This trial is very off-the beaten track, overgrown, and we don’t see any other walkers so we decide to head (rather scramble) back along the trail to the car park.
For this, we had left the baby with the grandparents – it would have been difficult and likely unsafe to have brought her there since there were many trees limbs we had to scramble under, various biting insects, and some slanted pathways that it would have been easy to slip on. But it was a good dose of walking and adventure for us.
The next day is the highlight for hubby and I of our trip there. It was his birthday the previous Friday and he had planned this rip to the mountains as a birthday gift to himself. Having not been able to go hiking for many months given that he had a heavily pregnant wife close to delivery, then a new born baby, then an international move to Bangkok, and concern over biting bugs and malaria in the jungle areas of Thailand when traveling with a baby, there has been limited to no opportunity to go hiking.
We rise fairly early – he has adjusted his definition of early when it comes to us, and I have adjusted my expectations of sleep when going on trips with him. I feed the baby and we leave her with the grandparents. She’ll be fine I tell myself. Although I have concerns that we’re so far from medical care and that we are leaving in the only vehicle for transport available to us, I push these out of my mind. I agree we can go for up to 5 hours. I guess for hubby this is good news as it means I will not dilly-dally with photo-taking, as I usually would, and will power through to the end even when I’m tired!
We have a great hike. It is just the two of us. The way it used to be. Well, not quite like that, but very close. I am checking the time frequently and want to ensure we can complete the whole trail in time. As usual hubby is ambitious and I have been sucked into that in the past and ended up hiking for HOURS….! We climb trees, climb a watch tower to view the plains and animals, take photos of one another, make jokes, talk about important things without strong will or emotional attachment to a certain agenda or feeling the need to be right and “win”. It’s refreshing and light (sounds like an ad for a soda), it felt pretty good.
We were advised to hike with a local guide through the park as there is often the threat of various wild animals attacking unsuspecting hikers along the paths. Since we choose one of the most well-worn paths frequented by many, many hikers, we decide not to walk with a guide. I do have my moments where I question the sanity and safety of this decision, but it does feel liberating to be the two of us roaming free with no other hikers in sight. I try to push that fact out of my mind and hope nothing happens to us otherwise no one would know! The landmark of this route is a giant fig tree for the eyes to feast upon.
The next day, hubby leaves baby and I in the hotel early morning and the grandparents have a turn of sunrise day-tripping with him. They drive to one of the spots we had discovered on our hike the previous day, hoping for the chance that the may catch a glimpse of some elephants on an early morning stroll through one of the open areas. They weren’t quite so lucky to see the elephants but they did embrace a stunning sunrise over the fields, and some quality time laughing and cuddling together in the wild expanse of the Park.
Later in the day, upon their return, we load up the car and head back towards Bangkok.
All in all, I feel that everyone has had something that they really enjoyed from the trip, and that was important. The drive back goes much more smoothly as baby sleeps for almost the whole journey – even through the Bangkok downtown traffic! We arrive within the predicted 3 hours, showing that google maps is great when there is no baby on board causing a stir!