Bangkok

The last country of our trip, was a little bit of Thailand. Originally when I was researching for this trip, I excluded Thailand because it was simply too much, but then I checked the ticket prices from Siem Reap to Amsterdam and they were twice as expensive as flying from Siem Reap to Bangkok and then to Amsterdam, so we just had to spend a bit of time there.

I wanted to return to Thailand for a full trip only there or to combine with another nearby country, because I really wanted to go to an Elephant Sanctuary and most of the legitimate ones (who not only claim to be a sanctuary, but really are) are there. For example Lek Chailert’s Elephant Nature Park, located in the Chiang Mai provinnce. I had found another one around Bangkok, a bit to the South-East But there simply was no time because this would be a whole day which we did not have for this only (back then I did not know about Kulen Elephant Forest yet, I only found that out on spot). So I researched some places for birding in Bangkok, surprisingly, because you know.. who would think that Bangkok, such a big and busy city, would have a place for birding?

But I did find that the Rot Fai Park was a HUGE park full of wildlife and most of all – BIRDS, from kingfishers, to owls. So i planned to spend at least half a day only there. But after arrival, we first went to explore the city and its highlights like the Grand Palace and the Temple of Emerald Buddha which was situated in the center of the city and it’s an insanely huge place with so many things to see, you can easily spend 4-5h in there only and you need a map for it. It’s huge and so interesting. We then took the ferry that goes right on the other side of the river and check out Wat Arun. To be honest, Wat Arun is probably the prettiest temple I’ve seen, ok, maybe after Ta Prohm and Ta Som, but they are a completely different style so then I can kind of put them together on my scoring scale. It’s all white with tiny ornaments covering it all with all colours and different shapes of flowers and whatnot. So amazing!

Rot Fai Park, Bangkok

We spent around 5-6h in Rot Fai park. Fill was too hot and didn’t want to go around much so I walked and he was sitting on a shadow bench to wait for me. I wanted to explore the park and this was a place out of heaven with its lush landscape, trees covered in vine plants and orchids growing out of the tree bark, tiny squirrels crossing the paths and giant 3-4m long monitor lizards walking on the path between the lakes of the park. Huge turtles resting on top of stones inside the water. Everything about vegetation andv animals seems to be huge in this part of the world, they do live very well there, a perfect mix of warmth and humidity seem to do wonders for the plants and also for the animals. I might be wrong there, but that’s what my impression was. Also, you could see so many species of birds, some of which I’ve put below. Not all are from the park, but a big portion is, perhaps half of the photos are from Rot Fai only, the rest are from other parts of our trip. And I enjoyed so much walking in the park. Unfortunately I did not see kingfishers, i went there specifically hoping to see the Oriental Dwarf Kingfisher, my dream bird, I had seen in my research previously that people have spotted it there and was hoping to see it, but I wasn’t that lucky. I did see so many other interesting species thought that it was still a great decision to go there. If i had more time and returned several times, it’s be even more fruitful but oh well.. another time. There are also huge Lotus flowers, as tall as me, so at least 1.7m and

You can see these photos and many more of the park itself, incl. more animals and plants and sceneries in big size in the gallery at the end of the post.