Day 14

The morning is cloudy and cold as we gather in the lounge at 5:30am. Our second drive is a ‘big five’ drive, which means visiting a neighboring reserve, the 15,000 hectare Thornybush Private Reserve. The extra size (it’s 32 times bigger than Gualaguala) means they have space for all the big five animals (lion, elephant, rhino, buffalo and leopard), but in such a massive space they can sometimes be difficult to find.

Day 14

In the morning, when it finally arrived, I gingerly dressed in the wet clothes that had failed to dry overnight. I did have a dry shirt, so I wore that, but I was still feeling pretty wet from the waist down.

Day 14

It was a hot night, but the thunderstorm cleared the mosquitoes.  Rob came to wake me up but it wasn’t necessary.

Day 14

I woke up to find that the Italian hikers were dressed and packing. I checked the time and decided that 7am was too early for someone of my trekking experience to be getting up, so I dozed until eight, when the last of them left the room, casting an amused glance in my direction.An hour later the other guests were only just ready to check out when I arrived to do the same. I let them go in front, and regretted it. It started cordially enough, but soon arms were flailing and much fast and loud Italian was being exchanged. Eventually they left, and I presented myself to the now very worked up lodge owner to settle my bill. I was then stuck with the same problem the others had had, which was that the lodge’s credit card machine had stopped working. This was quite a problem, because I had no cash and the nearest cash point (ATM) was about 10 km away, and a long way down the mountain. It wasn’t a problem though. The owner wrote down her address and asked me to send a cheque. She didn’t even seem too bothered that it would be a couple of weeks.

Day 14

We had a free morning, but I woke up at 08:30 anyway, because next door were building something and clearly thought they should get an early start. Lorna decided to get a Thai massage, so the guesthouse manager arranged for a masseuse to come to her hut. I went off to check my email. The morning continued uneventfully, and after lunch we piled into the truck to drive to Nakhon Pathom, where our overnight train to Trang would depart, and made a stop on the way at our guide’s local temple – a brand new one but no less spectacular for it. It didn’t have any boundary stones, which I thought was interesting – most temples I’d seen so far had boundary markers: one stone for a normal temple, and pairs for royal temples. I had found them quite useful for working out where I needed to take my shoes off.

Day 14

No word from the service provider about my enquiry for a permanent connection, so I phone them to see if there are any human beings to talk to. There are. They inform me that a radio connection will be required and that the setup cost will be about Z$400,000 with a monthly fee of around Z$6000 a month. Unfortunately a new repeater station may be required in which case the cost may rise to Z$1million, which sounds horrendous, but is actually about £5000. I call two other service providers (there only seem to be three), and am still waiting for them to call back. Whatever the chosen option it’s still going to take around two weeks to install it, so it doesn’t give me much time.

Day 14

No journal available

location:Brisbane – Nimbin
summary:Tour of Nimbin, permiculture centre, solar power plant
day:14