My travelling companion is a fellow condo owner, he who failed to kick a girl out of his bed so he could attend a committee meeting. I shall call him Nik, although I normally call him something else. Nik enjoys jumping into his truck and whizzing around Thailand taking photos. He invited me to attend his latest whizz, which was to be a trip to Chaiyaphum province. Nik is an early riser, I am not, so we compromised on a start time of 0600 and away we went on the five hour drive to Chaiyaphum.
There is always a risk in committing to spend two days in a car with someone you don’t know very well. How will they drive, will there be stuff to talk about, will the music suck? Fortunately, Nik turned out to have a similar driving style to myself; one that I would summarise as being “enthusiastic.” With a 3.0 litre turbo engine in a substantial truck, we were able to make good progress, scattering fellow road users and pedestrians who dared to impede our progress. The music was a classic selection covering many years and genres, from Eddie Cochran, through Desmond Dekker to Dr. Alban. Some tracks I had not heard for many years, and yet the lyrics seemed to come immediately to mind. This led us into a discussion on brain functions. How is it that I can be introduced to someone and then forget their name five minutes later, but I still remember songs I heard forty years ago. Nik said he was the same, he can never remember the names of bar girls in the morning, but that is probably because he never asked them in the first place. Anyway, good conversations on brains, music and relationships and before we knew it we were sitting down for lunch near Chaiyaphum.
The plan was to visit two national parks on the first day, and two more on the second. On the way to the first we passed a clump of sunflowers which just had to be photographed.
The sunflower makes a good subject even before it has flowered.
All along the road there were rice paddies. We never managed to find a perfect location for photography, but these shots are a reminder that some people toil in the fields for not a lot of money to bring us our daily plate of rice.
By 1230 we were at Pa Hin Ngam National Park and ready to face the issue of double pricing. Many tourist attractions in Thailand have one price for Thais and another for foreigners, no prizes for guessing who pays more. The justification in the national parks is that the Thais pay, via taxes, to have their parks maintained and therefore they should pay less. It’s an emotive subject, best handled in my view by just paying up and not getting upset; or having someone like Nik in the car. The charge at Pa Hin Ngam was 20 baht for Thais and 200 baht for the rest of us. Gathering up our Thai driving licences to prove we live here, he turned on the charm with the cashier girl and, speaking in Thai, persuaded her that we qualified for the 20 baht rate. The charm offensive worked at the next park too; but failed the following morning, probably because the cashier was male.
Into the park with our 20 baht tickets and the weather was not looking good. We had planned dramatic shots of the rock formations in the park, outlined against a blue sky with fluffy clouds, what we got was this:
But the rain held off and we wandered around the rock field trying to get some shots in the poor light.
One of the stones seemed to have a particular significance and people were making prayers and offerings of sticks.
After the stones it was off to see the Kra Jeaw flowers which bloom for a couple of months every year in this part of Thailand.
Fields full of these flowers makes for an attractive sight; but get up close and you discover how complex and weird they are, like two flowers joined together.
After three hours of shooting in Pa Hin Ngam we felt we had had our 20 baht’s worth, so it was time to head off to the next park; but I suspect this post is too long already, so… to be continued.