My first greeter was this very friendly dog. Every time I would stop petting him, he would bat at me with his paw.
We each got a mountain bike and started our somewhat challenging 12 mile ride. We had support vans following us when we were on the road.
We rode through beautiful rubber tree plantations.
You can see that they slash the tree and then collect the sap to make rubber.
Our guide explaining the rubber making process.
Basins full of rubber.
Plantation worker rolling the sap into sheets. This plantation is only a small room, but is one of the bigger operations here.
Plantation dog
Rubber trees produce between age 7 and 30. After they die, the plantation owner usually plants pineapple bushes and banana trees to make money until the new trees reach production age.
We had bananas and a really delicious sticky rice and toasted coconut snack.
We then biked to a national park to visit the Gibbon Rehabilitation Project. Gibbons are an endangered ape. The project rescues gibbons that have been taken from the wild. In Patong, people will try to get you to pay them to take a photo with a gibbon. To get the gibbon they find a mother and baby, and shoot the mother from the tree. The family will try to protect the baby, so the poacher will kill the family too. If the baby doesn't survive, the poacher will kill another family. They estimate a poacher has to kill 7-10 gibbons in order to get a baby to use for tourists. They then drug the apes to make they stay awake all night and they often contract hepatitis and HIV. The Project rescues and eventually tries to pair and then release a pair and baby back into the wild.
A gibbon eating a gibbon treat made of banana and dog biscuits.
Next we hiked up to a small waterfall which happens to be the tallest in Phuket.
Spider:
Caterpillar:
Lizard:
We finished our bike ride at the pier.
Here are floating fishing operations.
Our last view from the ride:
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