Apart from being woken up by William in the night, we’d both had the best night sleep since leaving, these beds are so good!. Up and out by 10:00 as the booking includes breakfast. We take our small trek down to the restaurant but and grab some half decent food, then try, and fail to go for the canopy walk as it turns out they only work half day on Fridays here, some religious praying is need in the afternoon we now understand. 

So, the obvious choice is jump in a boat to the other bank of the river and explore the town. Other than a large hill in the middle of the town there is almost nothing there, so takes about 15 minutes but we did have some odd tasting drinks whilst walking around, plus booked some interesting looking boat ride for the afternoon

Quick lunch in a not so good floating restaurant for lunch and back to the chalet for a 15 minute rest before heading back out for our boat trip.

Didn’t realised that we get two men to guide and drive us in the boat, plus the boat is ours alone! So we head of up river for about 45 minutes seeing some amazing scenery as we go. Most impressive though was the way these guys steered this long boat upon the river, between rocks, up rapids and avoiding everything in their way with amazing skill! One at the back with a small outboard engine, the other at the front with a large stick, I assume the junior of the two, to help push us along as we get dangerously close to rocks and fallen trees!

We get up some good speed at points and it feels like something out of James Bond with the jungle flashing past as we spotted up the river, trees lining both sides and monitor lizards are spotted swimming at one point!  We leave the boat and trek for what was meant to be 15 minutes, that takes about 30, through the undergrowth, no guide at this point bizarrely, until we get to a big natural pool that’s been caved out of the rocks by the river. After a quick, and not very relaxing swim as Rebecca was clamped around my neck like a leach, and we head back. It looks lovely, but to be honest a lot of trekking each way for a quick swim in a fast flowing river with a small child trying to drown you really didn’t do it for me.

Annoyingly, we get back to the boat and in the meantime a loaf more locals have turned up and are playing where our boat is moored on the side of the river; locals have obviously spotted this pool thing is just a pain add well, just don’t mention it to us.  Anyway back along the river, going with the current this time and we have a great trip back. Boat trip, amazing stuff, trek and swimming, not so much!

Given that we’ve now discovered the nearest cash machine is  about an hours drive away, and were low on cash Li came up with the idea of eating in the chalet restaurant as we can charge it to the room and then pay on card, so we did just this and it wasn’t bad at all but not to the same standard as last night by any means, plus about 5 times the cost!

Finally we get back to the chalet and I decide to take Rebecca out for a night time explorer. Torch in hand we leave and were pleasantly surprised, bats, lizards, big old crickets 4 inches long plus something called a Civil Cat, which is some strange looking creature about the size of a large cat, but with a fox style nose, spiked fur pointing backwards and a big bushy tail. Basically a big rat come squirrel, about two foot long! Finally then on the way back the prize of the night, a wild tapir standing eating some melon that someone has left out, I assume for them. At least 5 foot long and standing about 3 foot high it was quite a sight but didn’t seem to care about all the photos people were taking, an impressive end to a great day