Khao Yai National Park And An Interesting Train Journey!

We’ve been in Thailand over a week now but the first five days we were enjoying the luxuries of air-con and hot showers in a boutique hotel in Bangkok. We’d kind of got out of the travel spirit and were becoming too comfortable so we decided to pack up our bags and go on an adventure!

We headed to Khao Yai National Park where we stayed two nights at Greenleaf Guesthouse and booked a day and a half jungle tour. Back to a fan room and cold showers but for £5 a night and great, cheap, tasty food we can’t complain!

A stand out on the menu included the Panang curry, nice and spicy and similar to a red curry but with a thicker sauce. All the classic Asian spices plus a few extras like paprika and nutmeg.

After dinner we visited a bat cave and it turned out to be a highlight of our trip. Every night, around 2 MILLION bats leave the cave together to go on the hunt for food. Seeing them all pouring out together was incredible, especially against the backdrop of a beautiful sunset.

The national park is full of stunning scenery and on the full day trek we saw wild gibbons, giant hornbills, spiders, scorpions, a green pit viper, macaques, monitor lizards and many more.

The next day we headed by train to Ayutthaya. On the platform stood people with baskets of food and bags of rice. The railway policeman was sneakily taking photos of us on his phone so we posed for a couple with him, after all he did have a gun! He was very friendly and held the queue back to let us on the train first…VIP treatment!

We travelled third class and seemed to keep the locals very entertained. Everyone wanted pictures of us and the man in the photo below was determined to have a conversation with us in Thai even though we couldn’t speak it, nor he a word of English. So we just nodded, smiled and accepted when he pulled random shrubbery in through the train windows for us to eat!

What’s great about train travel in Asia is the variety of hawker food that’s constantly on offer. We had a super spicy papaya salad with bbq chicken and sticky rice. Only one photo of the salad as the locals were so intent on watching us eat we felt obliged to get stuck in straight away! It was how you’d say in Thailand Aroy (Delicious) and so cheap. If only trains in England offered this great fresh food service instead of a manky overpriced packaged cheese sandwich.

We arrived in Ayutthaya happy to be rid of our new found celebrity status and get back to being normal tourists again. Our faces ached from smiling and nodding for 3 hours, it really is exhausting being famous!