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Day 16
Steve wasn’t feeling well this morning so he and Sue stayed behind as Lorna and myself set off with Charlotte, and our brilliantly named guide, Wizit. We drove to a small village, and started walking into the jungle with a couple of Wizit’s younger cousins leading the way. The 11 year old was a walking machine – and he didn’t appear to require any rest. I suppose everyone’s like that when they’re eleven, especially if they have a tropical jungle on their doorstep. I gradually got used to the pace and managed to admire the scenery as we we trekked through streams and clamboured over rocks. The noise was deafening as insects making a chainsaw type sound screeched around us.
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Day 15
I don’t know what time it was when everyone started stirring – I was certainly awake anyway. I asked Charlotte if she had managed to sleep. “Oh yeah”, she said, as if she’d never slept this well before in her entire life. The train eventually pulled into Trang station and we took a very overloaded tuktuk to the Trang Hotel. After lunch the next stop on the tour was the Thale Noi Bird Sanctuary, where we had several hours bird watching from a dragon boat that whizzed around lotus-covered lakes. About half an hour in, the birds were losing their appeal for me, though Steve and Sue were glued to their binoculars. I was more interested in the boat, which was able to skip over poles, ropes and nets at high speed thanks to it’s slender design and propeller that is several metres behind the boat itself.