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Welu Wetlands
This is a rarely visited mangrove
forest that covers a huge area. Part of it is easily accessible by
road and there's even a wooden walkway, around 1km in length, that snakes
through the mangroves and provides visitors with a close up look at trees
and stuff.
Get there by heading from the mainland
ferry pier, back to Sukhumvit Road ( highway 3). head back towards
Bangkok, go past the police/army checkpoint, over the large bridge over the
river and look for the signposted turning on your left about 1km further on.
Follow this road, you'll come to a barrier across the road manned by a
security guard who's presumably there to stop people stealing the trees.
Go past him and you'll see the
mangroves in front of you lining the road.
The walkway does a loop around - you'll
see this entrance/exit. You can start your walk here. We didn't
we kept going another 800 metres to the end fo the road
You know you've made it to the end of
the road when you cant go any further and can walk out onto a concrete pier
which leads out into the estuary.
Look left - nothing but mangroves
Look right - nothing but mangroves
Adjacent to the start of the pier is
the start of the walkway. There's a signboard here which has the
potential to contain useful information. At present it doesn't.
First thing you notice is that
different species of plants have signs showing their names. If I could
pronounce 'Rhizophoraceae' I'd be able to tell people we have some at our
house.
Mangrove tree's bear fruit. You
can't eat it.
It's not long before you reach another
information point and rest area.
Continuing on . . .
The walkway comes out onto the shore of
the estuary.
Nearby, you'll be able to rest your
weary legs and learn more about the surroundings from another information
board.
The walk is very nice, no noise, quite
a few wetland birds flying around and a lot of crabs in the mud.
Having wandered 200 metres, it must be
time for another rest and also time to see if we can learn more about the
ecosystem, surely one of these signboards has some info on it? Maybe
not.
The final quarter of the walkway takes
you across the grasslands. Can't remember if I made a poor attempt at
an arty photo or just slipped when taking it.
The end of the walkway is in sight . .
But there's one final rest area and
information board. Maybe all the info about who built the walkway, why
it was built, what you can expect to see is located here?
Unfortunately it isn't.
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