Green peafowls, white-handed gibbons and the hog deer are among the wildlife that make Wiang Lo Wildlife Sanctuary in Phayao Province an eco-adventure haven.
Visitors get a rare opportunity to view wildlife in their natural habitat. The forest reserve located off the beaten track covers parts of Chun, Dok Kham Tai, Chiang Kham and Pong districts of the province.
We arrived there by car, but adventure freaks prefer to take the local bus from Muang Phayao to Chun district (fare is 50 baht per person). The 50-kilometre ride takes you to the district market from where vans can be hired for 100 baht to the sanctuary, which among other things offers hiking, wildlife watching, canoeing, fishing and other activities.
Unlike national parks, a visit to the wildlife sanctuary takes time to coordinate. Lack of accommodation and the need to have a guide accompany you can be time consuming, remarked Kittapas Khuntathongsakuldi, the park chief.
Wiang Lo is often brought to the attention of tourists by the Chiang Rai tourist office, otherwise it gets very little publicity.
We reached the sanctuary after dusk. The staff there had left the keys to our bungalow on the door knob. It was a chilly winter night, with just the moonlight to guide us to our abode perched on top of a hill.
The spacious one-bedroom bungalow, priced 1,500 baht a night, was good for five people. It had a refrigerator, modern bathroom with hot water and a kitchen.
After getting into our woolies, we joined the rangers outside over a bonfire where, among other things, ghost stories made the rounds.
Next day we woke up at the crack of dawn to watch the green peafowl in their natural habitat. However, as their feeding time varies from day to day, there was no guarantee that we would be seeing them upclose. Sanctuary staff had arranged for us to watch them graze at an enclosure not far from our bungalow.
After a short trek up a hill we stood peering through a bush to a spot where they normally made their morning rounds. From years of studying the bird, Kittapas told us that the green peafowl is one of two species, the other being the blue or Indian peafowl, commonly known as the peacock, that can be seen in the sanctuary.
The green peafowl, he noted, has a green tufted crest, different in shape to the fanned crest of the blue species, and a metallic gold-green plumage that appear likes scales around its neck, breast and mantle. ''It's a handsome bird all right, and Wiang Lo's biggest attraction,'' enthused the sanctuary supervisor.
The female's feathers are almost as colourful as the male's. It's interesting to observe that her features are generally darker. Juveniles, he noted, appear identical to the females and when one views these peafowls in the field it is very difficult to distinguish their gender.
Over an hour had passed and there was still no sign of the birds. Reluctantly, we moved on to our next stop, shelters for the white-handed gibbon and hog deer. To reach the gibbon community, the animal has been successfully been re-introduced to the sanctuary, we took a boat ride over a lake and watched them frolicking on branches of trees. Some brave enough even came down to the water's edge to greet us.
We continued our tour and arrived at an enclosure for hog deer. During the trek I saw lots of them and tracks left by wild pigs, but apart from the gibbons and the fenced-in deer being bred for re-introduction to th sanctuary, there weren't many birds to see, so to speak.
We reluctantly made our way back to our bungalow. Kittapas gave us the impression that we were just unlucky to miss out on the green peafowl.
Maybe we will be more lucky next time around!
To contact Wiang Lo Wildlife Sanctuary, call 054-421-557 or 081-883-1034.
Source : The Bangkok Post, 10 January 2008
© Copyright The Post Publishing Public Co., Ltd. 2008
