A neat plant on the side of the road

Jumping ahead a bit in my travels here is an awesome plant I saw on the side of the road. I have been searching for it each time I'm in a semi tropical climate. I saw it once at a friend's place, and never forgot how cool it was. Now I finally found it occurring naturally, well almost naturally, but after stroking many leaves of similar looking plants in many forests I was finally rewarded!

Doi Phuka National Park

From Bangkok I headed into northern Thailand, to the town of Pua and the to the national park. I was trying to find a bamboo hut guest house that had not existed for a few years (I didnt know that) and I turned up at the park. The ride was fun in the back of a truck where I met some young moks, sitting shyly far away form a small group of school girls around their own age.


I started off staying in a little hut for $10 a night and then switched to a tent which was $1 a night! I got the tent form a freind who worked at the park, along with many other fun things. But I am getting ahead of myself.



The Bamboo cabana I was staying in was a 10 minute walk straight up hill from the hitchen area, so it was always nice to walk down for a meal annd back up, at evening time i would walk down at sunset enjoying the colorful clouds and walk back up in the dark with a full sky of stars. 4 of the 6 nights were incredibly clear.

The park has one 4 km trail in the forest with crazy trees and vines, and then the next day I hired a guide to go to a waterfall and a cave.
Here is the view on the way to the cave, and the entrance from inside...

We had lots of fun. In the cave I wanted to shut off all the lights and enjoy the darkness and the guide got a little spooked and had to turn his light back on. There were a few bats near the entrance and a river further back. On the way in and out we passed field where corn and rice were growing or had just been harvested, and there were some people flying up and down the trail with 3 huge sacs of rice somehow strapped to their scooters!


The field were on very steep mountain sides, i was hoping my foot would help make this more obvious but it is hard to show mountain steepness in a photo.



We ran into spiders and other insects


and then headed to a waterfall. On the way down we passed cut out pools for fish farming, and then took a dip in the water. On the way we stopped at the guides house and had lunch. He had a dried and fried fish and I had lots of sticky rice and beans still in the pod. I had so much sticky rice I thought I would sink in the pools at the waterfalls.