Amazing Thailand

Thai drivers are crazy, well of course not all of them. 15 minutes outside the airport the shuttle bus driver almost rear-ends another car and there were two 3 car accidents ahead of us! My 6:00 am welcome to Bangkok! It took me 5 hours to get to Pak Chong, the city an hour from the national park where Jamie and Jackie were going to pick me up. I waited there for two hours for them in front of the 7-Eleven. Being basically the only foreigner there, people were pretty interested in me, especially the little kids. There was a small group of guys across the street from me who drove taxi motor bikes, who were also intrigued as to why I was sitting there for so long. They asked a woman who seemed to know English fairly well to see if I was ok.

After the girls picked me up they took me to get pizza! It was actually really good. Then we headed straight to the house in the national park. The national park is beautiful and lush and colored with all shades of green. The house is small, but quaint. There is a campsite across the parking lot from the house where Thais come to get away from the hustle and bustle of Bangkok on the weekends. Yesterday we had the day off, since it was the Queen's birthday, so Jamie and I took a long walk to a beautiful waterfall. Then I sat in the park/ campsite and read. There was a group made up of about 25 Macaque monkeys who were trying to steal food from the campers. It was pretty funny when they would get away with stealing something. There were two females in the group with two babies, which was adorable.

Today was my first day in the forest. We started work at 6:00am setting up plots and measuring trees. I was exhausted after being in the forest for six hours and that is a short work day! Being a field assistant is definitely one of the hardest jobs I have had. But the reward was that we saw two adult Gibbons and a baby! I also saw lots of butterflies, moths, pheasants and so many different ant species and spiders! I also saw, weird and sometimes gross fungi and spores in orange and black and browns. The forest is so alive and wondrous. I can't wait to see what's in store for tomorrow. Tomorrow we follow the Gibbons.