I understood that among many thousands of B. kubotai only a few Y. sidthimunki was found and I knew that it must be almost miracle for me to find one, I hope I could, but at last I failed. Never the less, this morning, I did found many other species of fish, Acanthocobitis rubidipinnis , Poropuntius scapanognatus, Syncrossus berdmoeri, Botia kubotai, Microrasbora kubotai, Bangana devdevi, Tetraodon cutcutia, Crossochilus burmanicus, Homaloptera modesta, Schistura maepaiensis, Hampala salweenensis, and Psilorhynchoides sp. to name a few. It was one of the nicest moments in my life and I would cherish it forever. It was almost noon when I got back to the camp. The orchid team was back and they were very excited. They told me that up in the mountain, there were so many lady’s slippers, more than they ever hope or expected and there were some nice variation too. However, the most exciting part was that they found a small red Bulbophyllum orchid which they pretty sure was a previously unknown species to science. For them this was huge for orchid have, over the history, gained more attention than fish and majority of it has been discovered, and to find a new species of orchid is much more difficult than fish. This little Sun Bulbophyllum as we called it, has proved to us once again how virgin this part of the world was, especially to the naturalist.
After the conversation we went for another round of diving and did some under water photographing. This afternoon, we had a simple lunch and started to pack our stuffs and some fish that we would take back for further study. We did not forget to take group pictures with the BPP who had been such a nice host before we left the Suriya river.
The way back was even worst than when we came for we had to climbed up the steep limestone hill. Worse, we were running out of drinking water. At one point, I though I would as well just collapsed and laid there forever, then we helped each others, took turn carrying heavy stuffs and we finally made it back to the car.
That night we, once again, we camped at Lang-ka Ranger Station on the Kasa river, but we were so tired that nobody went out to explore the area further. After all, the conversation around the campfire was so interesting that I wouldn’t dare to leave even if I had enough energy to do so. It was a rare kind of conversation, pure naturalist talk.
In the morning, Tok and Ton took a walk down stream and found some locals Karen fishing with traditional bamboo stick rod. In the basket of the fishermen, they found a nice little Poropuntius It looked so interesting that Ton asked the fishermen for the fish which they kindly gave this one to him. The fish was in very bad condition. However, after a few months in my tank, it healed nicely and became one of my most favorite fish in the tank, for I have soft spot for Poropuntius in general. Until now, we couldn’t figured out what species it was but there is very high chance that it, too, was formerly unknown to science. with golden body and orange tail.
Then we spent another 7 hours on the dirt terrain before we finally reached the paved road, which concluded one of the most tired, fun, and successful expedition we ever took.
----- THE END -----
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