Site Report: Pak Thale

Visits

• 2013-02-02: After our exciting morning at the India Visa center, we entered the Bangkok transportation nightmare. We thought that we might take the train to Petchabuli, but we were unaware of the general late running status of the trains in Thailand. The heat and humidity at the train station was appalling, and we finally gave it up to take the airconditioned taxi/minibus combo. After spending the night in Petchaburi, we rented a motorbike to explore the coast. I was hoping for the pink motorbike with the "666" license plate, but we got the powder blue one instead. Looking on the map, our destination in Pak Thale seemed close, but it seems a lot further when you are riding in the gutter so that the regular traffic won't run you down. We arrived fairly early to the shorebird spot, where the spoon-billed sandpiper had been seen, and we spent a couple of hours looking for it. We saw ploverpalooza there for sure, but we could not find the sandpiper. When the tour bus rolled in, we gave up and went looking for lunch. After lunch, we noticed that a few cars were leaving the shorebird site at the same time. I thought that maybe it would be worth giving it another look. A couple of other people pointed out the sandpiper before leaving. It was pretty amazing to see a migrating bird of which there are something like 30 left in the world. As I watched the sandpiper, another one flew in to the same pond. After visiting this area, we continued south on the coastal road until we arrived in an area that looked like the place for boat trips. When trying to find the boat place, however, we encountered some motorbike chasing dogs which was not good. We finally found the boat trip, and rode off to a nearby sandbar and beach which were nearly empty.

Species Seen

Lifelists

• Asia
• World

Trips

• Around The World in 66 Days