#ratchaprapa

Helen's brother, Tim, kindly booked a trip for the 3 of us to a national park about an hour from Surat. This involved getting up around 6am and heading to a tour office, which then took us to a boat which took us to our resort on a lake. The journey on the boat was amazing. Technically Ratchaprapah is a lake but it's massive! From what we understand, they built a dam and then flooded a whole region which has now become a national park. The tops of mountains protrude from the lake creating hundreds of small islands. We cruised in a longtail boat through these mountain tops stopping at various places to take in the beauty until we arrived at our resort about an hour and a half later. The resort consisted of a large restaurant and bar, and approximately 12 bungalows all of which were floating on the lake.

We had lunch as soon as we arrived. This was a buffet of deep fried fish, a pork curry and vegetables accompanied by the Thai staple that is rice, rice and more rice. It was very tasty! After lunch we had the afternoon to relax on the lake, either sunbathing by our floating house or paddling about in the kayaks. We were lucky with the weather as it remained sunny for most of the day. It did however rain for a small time later in the afternoon, bizarrely this in when all the Thai people who were staying came out for a swim! We later found out that Thai people generally dislike the sun as they do not want a tan. To have a tan is considered to be the mark of someone who works outdoors (ie building works or farmers) and is considered therefore poor and/or unsuccessful! It seems that people here are sold the idea that white people are successful and therefore products like whitening creams are everywhere. Makeup, suntan lotion, deodorant etc all contain bleaching agents. It's a bit of a sad affair really but I guess ironically we are sold the same idea, only for us a tan is considered the mark of success. The mark of someone who can afford holidays in the sun or a second house somewhere in France... Either way we all got to have a swim!

In the evening we had another equally delicious buffet dinner, although the Massaman curry was outrageously hot, a fact which Helen found out a little too late! The evening was spent relaxing in the bungalow and enjoying the calm. The following morning we headed out early on the boats to spot the Hornbill, a bird which (we think!) is native to the area and fairly rare. Luckily we spotted a few albeit from a distance away up in the trees. We headed back to the resort for some breakfast Thai style (MORE RICE) and then checked out of our floating bungalow. The longtail boat back took a few detours around some of the more majestic scenery before we got back to where our minibus was waiting.