In Thailand, a bpai tiao is a trip of any length. I’ve written about some of my more significant bpai tiaos to tourist destinations here, to be used as travel ideas and tips.
It started out as something that was really only marginally interesting: one of my host sisters has just finished high school and was going to Chaiyaphum to register for university to study nursing. Chaiyaphum is about an hour from where I live. So we all loaded up into someone else’s pick up truck and made our way there. We all being Gee (my 18-year-old host sister), Geek (my 12-year-old host sister), my host mom, the man who owns the car, an “aunt” and me.
(Aside: I have a really difficult time discerning the relationships of people in my village. When people come over, Gee will introduce them to me as her brother, sister, aunt, uncle, grandmother or grandfather. This goes along with how people are address in Thai society, people who fall within the age group of those familial relations to you are called by that title: nong is younger sibling, pii is older sibling, na and aa for aunt and uncle and bpuu and yaai for grandfather and grandmother. This is also why it isn’t considered rude to ask people how old they are when you first meet; people just want to know how they should address you.)
After going to the university and finishing the relatively quick registration process, we got ready to head back. However, there is a national park that is very close to the city that it was decided that I should see. So we headed off to Tat Ton National Park.
Tat Ton is 218 square kilometers and is best known for the namesake waterfall that is about 6 meters high and 50 meters wide. When I was there there were lots of people swimming both on the upper and lower parts of the falls. In a small sense it wasn’t that different from national parks in the US. However, there is a lot of affinity for single use products, lots of packaging and lots of plastic bags here. I’ve also observed very little hesitation to litter. There were also lots of little stands selling any thing you could think of inside the actual park. Another point to think about is that the entry fee for Thai people was 20 baht. The price for me, a foreigner, was 200 baht. (1USD is equivalent to about 30THB). Now when I do the conversion, paying less than 10USD to go to a national park is great. But I make Thai money, and so seeing that I was paying ten times as much as the rest of the car was a little annoying.
Regardless, the falls were still beautiful to look at for a while and I looked at a relief model in the visitor center to maybe scope out a camping trip in the future.
