Bang Pae Waterfall
This is the most dramatic waterfall (nam tok) in Phuket. To this place you come if you turn east in the roundabout with the two heroines and follow the road 8.5 km and after that to the left through rubber plantage about 1 km. Here you find many falls and pool to take a dip in. People and particularly Thai people bathe with clothes on. In the tropical climate it feels good to have wet clothes as long as they are wet.
The three last pictures above shows a nice team from the Phuket Rajabhat University. They all arrived here on motorbikes. They offered me a Singha beer and a nice talk.
These
two youngsters had been in the water for a long time and were beginning to
freeze and said that the water was very cold (naam yen) - my estimate about
I often return to this beautiful waterfall - this time with my grandchildren Elin, Hanna, Mikael and his girlfriend Nicole. The following picture shows Mikael helping his sister Hanna down from the big fall, where they had got a nice shower in the pool below. Nicole offers her hand too. It is a quite tough climbing on these slippery rocks, so one has to be careful:
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Here
there is also a rehabilitation centre for gibbons. There are also an exhibition and
some interesting reports on the matter.
The
water coming from the top of the hill is partly running down to the other side
of the mountain into the waterfall Ton Said. To this you come if you go to
Thalami and turn east at the traffic light. An additional waterfall you find in
Kath. You find the Kathu Waterfall in the end of a crossroad to the road
between Patong and Phuket town. None of these two waterfalls could be
recommended according to my opinion.
On the road from The Heroines to Bang Pae (road 4027) there is a crossroad after 6800 meter. This leads to a beautiful beach at the end of a small river in a village named Pa Kok. Here you can see the mangrove trees without water during low tide and in the background the islands of the Pangnga Bay. During the tsunami the water rose about 7 m creating some flood problems. In the year 2006 the community therefore built a 1500 m long protection wall along the beach. It is winding beautifully with a concrete rail and path with stone benches and some shelters. The small river run into the sea at the north end of the wall. Here I saw girls walking in the shallow water collecting shells hiding in the mud. These shells are very delicious:
This is If Wanna with a already very valuable half full string bag. After taking this photo on the way back I was near to draown in the mud. It was very unpleasant but with If's directions (fallang, fallang tai ti nun), I manage to get into firm ground. Soon after this I met Chris Sada Howhan. He showed me his boat:
Chris speaks good English and lives here in Pa Kok but is working in Patong at a hotel. He wants 2500 Bath for a whole day journey in the beautiful Pangnga Bay. His phone number is 089-9721175. In November 2006 I had the pleasure to engage him two days with my wife and two friends.
From
the same road (4027) I once turned right on a small road
winding between small cottages and jungle and finally ended at a big dam, where
the water was stirred by a number of propellers group wise mounted on shafts
rotated by diesel engines. I asked people around what this was all about, but
they did not say anything. Then I asked a friend in the neighbourhood by showing
him a drawing I had made. He went directly into his house to pick up a pencil
and a paper and draw the picture of a prawn. Thus this was a prawn farm. We both
were excited by the happiness you feel in understanding and making someone to
understand. But I ask myself why the first man I asked couldn’t have said that
simple word 'kung' which means prawn.
Andaman News TV11 Phuket, broadcast to Phang Nga, Krabi & Phuket
& Radio Thailand FM90.5 Phuket, 8.30am Monday 14 November 2005 &
www.Thaisnews.com
The European Union or EU Commissioner for Health and Consumer Protection,
Mr. Markos Kyprianou, and his delegation were escorted by the Thai
Permanent Secretary of Agriculture and Cooperatives Ministry, Bunpote
Hongthong, to visit a tiger prawn or shrimp farm in Phuket’s Thalang
district on Saturday. The EU delegates paid a lot of interest and
enquired about farming procedures and techniques, disease treatment and
environmental care. They also toured around the farm which is certified
by the Thai Department of Fisheries.
Mr. Banpote told reporters that the EU Commissioner was satisfied with
the farming standards which will benefit Thailand’s shrimp exports to
EU countries. Last year Thailand’s shrimps were removed from
Generalised System of Preferences (GSP) resulting in a decline in its
shrimp exports to 100,000 tons. He expects this year’s shrimp and
agricultural products to expand by around 30 – 40 % or about 400,000
tons.To
see mini-video, click here 
On the way back to the Heroines I paused in order to draw the picture of some longtail-boats moored in a little stream. Soon I got company by 5 little boys - very talkative. They told me the Thai words for different things: lue=boat, takajang=bike, nam=water, hong=house, etcetera. They laughed at my pronunciation - maybe I said something totally different. When I left them all of them jumped into the stream and swam away to their parents in the jetty house.
There is a small path along the stream - sometimes under the water. It ends deep into the mangrove swamp. Staying here for half an hour reflecting on the beauty and the silence, I suddenly heard someone singing behind the bushes. Out from the swamp a fisherman was paddling in his little boat. He had to turn in some kind of a maze to find the right way. After a while he disappeared, but I still heard his song long afterwards. The episode was like a wonderful dream, which I will never forget:
Using the satellite program Google Earth I can revive this episode on the map where I left the road at the upper red spot (7°,59',33.89" N, 98°,22',57.94" E) and followed the sandy path to the lower red spot:
The day was already a jack pot, but soon after I made a nice friendship:
This
beautiful snake lied apparently lifeless at the roadside. She did not show sign
of life when I touched her with a stick. A bypassing Thai man told me that she
was a 'pong kwai' and that she was not venomous. He wanted to kill her but I
managed to stop him. First I gave the snake some water and she started to move a
little. Then I gave her massage by caressing the neck and then more water. Now
she came to life and looked at me as she was trying to say something - we were
now friends. But the friendship was short. Miss Pong winded away into the grass
and disappeared.
Later
I showed this photo to a friend in Kata. He knows how a pong kwai looks
like and this was not that kind of a snake, but he could not tell the name of my
new friend. Back in
Another acquaintance I made could have been not so nice if a nice Thai girl had not warned me that a big Scolopendra Gigantea was about to climb up at me when I was sitting on a stair step drawing. This beautiful centipede is very venomous. One sting can cause the death:
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