THAILAND: KHAO SOK NATIONAL PARK
Headed Down South
More travel...we woke up, said goodbye to our awesome hosts in Chiang Mai, and flew south to Surat Thani. We hopped on a minibus for a 2-hour drive to Khao Sok National Park. After finding the Jungle Hut Resort, which was newly renovated and beautiful, we got settled and watched the rain come through in waves from our view of the jungle.
Stretching our legs, we strolled along the main (and only) street...about 500m...grabbed some drinks, dinner, and dessert. It was rainy off and on, which allowed us to use our rain jackets for the first (and only) time the whole trip. The town of Khao Sok is peaceful and quiet - there is not much going on, which reminded us of rural Ecuador. We hit the hay early and dreamt of our jungle trek the following day.
Day 2: Cheow Lan Lake
We woke up in our jungle hut in Khao Sok National Park and joined our group headed to Cheow Lan Lake for our overnight lake adventure. This was the adventure I was most looking forward to in all of Thailand, and it did NOT disappoint. Setting off at 8am, we joined a group of about 20 people, split into two minibuses, to drive out to the lake launch point. Hopping on our first longboat, we rode through the bluest turquoise waters out to the Smiley’s Raft House. The mountains seemed to shoot out of the water everywhere - it was breathtaking. Despite it being rainy season, we had lots of sunshine, which made the views even better.
After a quick orientation at the Smiley’s Raft House main pavilion, we were assigned rooms, got settled and ate lunch. Then we had a few hours of free time to explore! We took the kayaks out for a couple hours and then lounged in the water through the rainstorm.
Before dinner, we set out on our first water safari with the group to search for monkeys in the trees! Our group boated around the inlets for an hour and saw a fair amount of monkeys in the trees, which was fun to try to spot the sneaky fellas. The rest of the night we spent eating dinner and hanging out with the other guests before packing it in early to prep for another early morning!
Day 3: Sunrise, Monkeys, Safari Trek
Sunrise wake up call! At 6:40am, we departed for another morning safari and spotted some gibbons, macaques, and a hornbill (all monkeys!). Back at Smiley’s, we ate breakfast, checked out of the bungalow, and then hopped back in the longboat to drive to our jungle trek launching point. While the intermittent streams were refreshing, it was quite muddy and a few in the group had some leeches attached to them - we somehow escaped those buggers! (I was too busy slipping a hundred times along the muddy route and trying not to fall on my butt - next time, I’ll rent the shoes for $3). We spotted another monkey much closer (about 15 feet away) this time, but the real highlight was the cave at the end of the trek (sadly no photos as the water was too deep to bring phones). There were only a few of us who went in, and we were glad we did - super cool rock formations inside the cave but frigid water!
Upon returning to Smiley’s, we had lunch, took a quick lake shower, and took the same longboat ride back to the pier. There we took the minibus back to town to catch the bus to our next pit stop - Phuket! After the 4 hour ride, we found our hostel (Blue Monkey), grabbed dinner, and crashed. Early morning tomorrow with a ferry trip first thing to Koh Phi Phi, where we’ll be spending the next 3 days on the beach relaxing after nonstop activities and travel. Pick up the rest of our trip down south in our Southern Thailand blog.