Today Pauli, Onna and I took a boat to Adang Island (the mountian island next to lipe). Here is the headquarters of the national park. The island is much bigger than lipe, and all protected land except for a small Urak Lawoi village on one side.
There was no one on the island except for a few families/workers employed by the national park. The finnish couple took a bit to go swimming and relax on the beach, and i went in search of someone to interview. The ranger stations were closed, empty, but not locked. There was a saveworldsavelife / playboy calander hanging in one. I found out later, the national park (all of it including everwhere i've been snorkling ect.) is stricktly technically closed this season. Eventually, i was directed to the head of the area's national park, who was working at a compter on his porch. I forgot his name so i'm going to call him Mr. B for now. Mr. B and i talked for an hour and a half. It was wired to talk to him, after hearing s much on the island about the national park and its lack of enforcement. Its always hard to tell where things are getting stopped in the chain of comand, of course.
He spoke some english which was really helpful. He said the national park couldn't be strick about enforecement - and when i asked why, he said because it was way too big. too big for them to patrol for one. but also that the fishing boats were peoples jobs and they needed to work. If the fishing boats didn't come in the national park, they wouldn't get anyfish.... I kept asking around to try to see what he would say and eventually he said "the laws in Thailand are not like the laws in Malasia or the USA. The laws in thailand have holes in them" . When i asked if the budget they got from the goverment was enough he said "not enough. not enough. not enough. not enough. not enough". Apparently they only have enough money for oil for the boat to patrol about two days a week... when they had a boat. Apparently the boat is in for repairs for the month, was last month, and will be next month. I have a foggy recelection it was also in for repairs six months ago... So now they can only patrol in a small longtail boat: meaning its too dangerous to go out at night.
Mr B. appeared quite concerned about the bleaching, as well as any illigal logging on Adang (by locals to build boats, or use in thier houses). I wondered, personally, that taking one tree was kind of like taking one big fish, but clearly there was a difference here.
The tax that is paid by the tourist who come, 47.5% goes to other parks,5% the local gov, and 47.5% to lipe: but it can only be spent to service tourists NOTon patrolling orprotecting the park. I.e. for repairin the national park's bungalows. The money is sent into the national park center and redsitributed.
I thanked Mr B. for his really good (long!) 1.5 hour interview and Onna and Pauli and I climbed the mountain behind the station. It was hard and hot! uh oh landsea! (but at least canada wont' be hot). We found out there wasn't a waterfall at the top, butwe were traveling waterfalls by the first five minutes. From the top Lipe looked like a postcard. The terquoise water and the little boats like cows comiing into feed from a blue field...
Then Onna relaxed while Pauli and I went on a huge adventure to try to findthe waterfall. The path was obscured by huge vines and wove right into the jungle (sort of parallel the beach but far away). We saw everything on our walk! a forest rodent, squirrels, a small monitor lizard, a huge basketball sized flying squirrel glinding between the trees, a black and white hornbill, bats under a big bolder, and monkeys high in the tree tops!! horay!!! i've wantted to see wild monkeys so badly! We probably saw so much becausei don't think anyone has walked that path for many months. We didn't find the waterfall though. It dead ended in a huge bolder strewn riverbed. We hiked along the little trickel for 20 minutes, took a picture standing proudly at a knee high trickel, and hiked back.
That evening i had dinner with Dariusand Bee, and went for a long swim out into the bay. It was beautiful, the feel of the water on my shoulders without the rashgard, and the coral omminous beneath the surface.
No comments:
Post a Comment