ESCAPE TO THE COUNTRY

Decamp from the frenetic Thai capital with Bangkok's fashionable set, discovering up-and-coming rural retreats around Khao Yai National Park and the ruins of Ayutthaya -blossoming, variously, with new boutique boltholes, contemporary art galleries and vineyard experiences

- LEE COBAJ

THE SUN IS DROPPING SLOWLY, AS IF WEARY FROM BURNING SO BRIGHTLY ALL DAY.

The mountains coiled around the broad valley turn to silhouettes against a color wash of lilac rose and tangerine. The air is warm and still, and I can hear what sounds like a waterfall rushing in the distance. My guide, Khun Patirop Thipparat, tells me to look up. The sound isn't coming from whooshing water but from a torrent of wrinkle-lipped bats emerging from their cave to spend the night hunting for insects.

The colony exits the hillside above Tham Sila Thom Buddhist temple like smoke seeping from a volcano. It's an extraordinary sight. There are hundreds of the creatures - no thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, two million, in total, it turns out moving in a continuous ribbon across rice fields and grasslands, around limestone outcrops and red-roofed farmhouses, towards rainforested mountains, where they dissolve into the pink-cloud distance. The only things that break the snaking stream are the crested serpent eagles that dive into the flow to pick off their prey - an easy meal - before the wavy line reforms.

Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh. The beguiling display goes on for over an hour, perhaps longer. Finally, we lose sight of the animals in the darkness. Through the night, the dormouse-sized bats, with faces like fanged chrysanthemums, will act as a natural form of pest control, hoovering up the multitude of insects found in this agricultural region. The guano they later produce will become a highly prized fertilizer, earning the tiny mammals the gratitude of local farmers and Buddhist monks alike. Then, at first light, the torrent will weave its way back home, vanishing into the labyrinthine core of the mountain again, just as it has done for millennia.