I visited Koh Chand Island, Thailand, for 2,5 weeks with my family. Although I predominantly did family-things (a lot of swimming with my kids), I managed to spend 1,5 hours in the rainforest each day searching intensively for snakes. Getting into the rainforest of Koh Chang turned out be be difficult. When I entered a trail to Kong Plu waterfall in the evening I was stopped by personell, I wasn’t allowed to enter. When I subsequently entered a small stream into the forest somewhere else, someone (I saw a silhouette moving though the forest as it wasn’t completely dark yet) shot a rifle twice and I decided to turn around. But in the end I found some wonderfull trails (a trail used for elephant trekking, some river beds and a beautiful trail to Kai Bae waterfall). In total, I spent 25 hours in the forest and in that time I found 25 snakes representing 9 species. Obviously, that’s just scratching the surface: the species accumulation curve is still climbing steeply. On Borneo, where I invested a huge amount of time (Santubong Peninsula), I found roughly 1 snake every 2 hours. Using the same “Visual Encounter Survey” strategy on Koh Chang I found 1 snake every 1 hour. I’ll have to do some statistical tests but it appears that the snake density on Koh chang is significantly higher. In that sense, Koh Chang reminded me of Pulau Tioman (Malaysia) which was snake paradise. Rest assured, I will be back on Koh Chang next year.
Some shots of the rainforest to start with:
Then some shots of how snakes are found:
And here we go:
Trimeresurus cardamomensis (tentative id)
Dryacolamus davisoni
Oligodon cyclurus (still tenative id)
Lycodon laoensis
Ahaetulla prasina
Ptyas korros

Xenochrophis flavipunctulatus
Gonyosoma oxycephalum
Chrysopelea ornata
