Over the next two months, Sarah and I shall be recording and photographing in the forests of Thailand and Malaysia.

For those of you placing orders during this time, Alison will be attending to inquiries and CD orders. She will be able to access emails daily, so if you have any questions or difficulties, just email her at our usual address: cooee@listeningearth.com.au

She will likely be in the office only once a week, so CD order dispatches may be slightly delayed. However all download orders are automated, so should process through as usual in real time.

A few friends have asked our rough itinerary, so here’s an overview…

This coming Thursday we fly to Bangkok, and the following evening catch an overnight train to the provincial town of Khon Kaen in the north of Thailand.

That’s the confirmed part of the trip over with, after this, we shall be winging it! After numerous efforts to organise treks, we’ve achieved little. We need to find good areas of jungle and be able to explore them at leisure, which just doesn’t fit the conventional trekking template. We’ve found ourselves in the too hard basket. So hopefully, we’ll either be able to achieve our ends without the logistics of a trek, or we’ll be able to arrange for park rangers to accompany us once we arrive at each park.

Nam Nao National Park is our first destination, a large and relatively little-visited park with areas of pine and deciduous forest. There is reported to be a good diversity of birdlife here, including barbets and woodpeckers in abundance.

From there we travel west, pausing at Sukothai, the ancient Siamese capital from around the 12th century, which has appealed to Sarah as somewhere she’d love to see. So we shall spend a few days cycling around exploring ruins and decaying stupas.

Our next park is remote Mae Wong, on the Burmese border. The mountains here are at the end of the Himalayan range, and we anticipate hearing many of the families of Himalayan birds we fell in love with in Nepal; yuhinas, fulvettas, minlas, laughing thrushes, babblers… We don’t know how we’re going to organise such practicalities as feeding ourselves, because our destination is a tiny campground deep in the park. There is a ranger station, but no facilities, so we shall have to stock up on bananas! Having read about this campground, we have found it amazing to use Google Earth to locate it exactly (16º60′00.00″N, 99º06′28.68″E). I can even see the patch of grass we’ll be pitching our tent on!

Thailand’s peninsular forest parks present us with a bit of a conundrum. Initially we thought Kaeng Krachan, not far from Bangkok, would be at risk of noise pollution from flight paths. However our research into Khao Sok, further South near Phuket, indicates it will be a less pristine location for many reasons. So KK it may well be. Once again, there is a campground deep in the forest that may make an excellent base camp. More bananas.

In the Andaman Sea to the west of Thailand, are a group of islands protected as a marine national park. Kho Tarutao is one of the largest and least disturbed offshore islands in this part of the world, and I would like to see whether there is some good recording to be had there. In particular I’m fascinated by the Nicobar Pigeon, an extraordinary all-black ground pigeon with iridescent plumes. Maybe we’ll come across them there.

But really, the Andaman Sea; coral, beaches, tropical sunsets, fresh seafood…

Then back to work. Malaysia. Specifically, Taman Negara, famed not only as peninsular Malaysia’s largest and most precious nature reserve, but one of the world’s oldest rainforests, growing undisturbed for 160 million years. And, in contrast to the more monsoonal forests of Thailand, this really will be rainforest. Gibbons, hornbills, pittas, exotic birds galore! And leaches, apparently.

There are a few other Malaysian parks we may visit if time allows, such as the lowland rainforest of Endau Rompin. For the last week or so, we shall be visiting friends in the wilds of Singapore, and believe it or not, I am planning on recording there. Whether that will amount to anything other than distant traffic and aircraft flyovers, we shall have to see. But Singapore sounds an amazing place that neither of us have been to, so we are looking forward to it.

So that concludes our projected two months. We hope to be able to upload a few posts here as we travel.

Till then, be well!

Andrew & SarahTweet

Tags: meditation music, National Parks, natural sounds, nature CD, nature download, nature music, nature sounds, sounds of nature, Thailand