Khao Sok National Park

We arrived in Khao Sok after a long journey in a minivan, which unexpectedly stopped for 2 hours and changed vans. This did give us an opportunity to see then Gloucester services of Thailand (a farm shop services which we think only coach tours probably stop at). We arrived on the outskirts of the town and could soon see why we were told that this was a ‘must-do’, the scenery was beautiful and we weren’t even in the park yet! We checked into our hotel (Nung House) and our room was more modern that we were expecting, with a good aircon system! We dropped our bags and headed for something to eat after the long journey - mango sticky rice! We also booked on to a night safari which the hotel recommended for that night, as well as yoga in the jungle for the following morning. 

After a couple of quick FaceTime calls, we went for dinner at the hotel which was very good and got ready for our safari. We were both a little apprehensive as to what we had signed ourself up to but when in Khao Sok and all that! We paid the national park entrance fee and after about 90 seconds of walking found our first creature: scorpions, which the guide used UV light to help us see more clearly. We proceeded to then find lizards, geckos, spiders, snakes, mantis, frogs and the most exciting, a civet cat (who sounded more like a dying cat or either of us on karaoke) and monkeys! It was about 2 hours long in total, Lauryn was a bit scared throughout the entire thing and was ready to go home after about 45 minutes. Now we are both really glad we did it though! 

The next morning was an early ride at 6am as morning mist yoga started at 6:45. This studio was high up in the jungle and we could hear the sounds of gibbons and other creatures as the morning mist settled (hence the name of the class). Neither of us were very good at it but we had fun and it was good to stretch our bodies after being cramped in a minibus the day before.

We walked back through the palm plantations after the class, nearly adopting a chihuahua on the way who would not stop following us until we got to a bigger scary looking dog. We went to get breakfast of a blueberry muffin and fruit for Lauryn and avocado and eggs set on toast for Dan and made friends which a guy from Martha’s Vineyard who asked to sit with us. After exchanging a few travelling stories, we parted ways and headed back to the hotel to pack up.

Our next night was going to be at Riverside Cottages and had already booked on to a few excursions with them. We phone them up and they kindly offered to pick us up from the other hotel for free. We checked in and shared a penang curry and 2 portions of rice for lunch. The room was quite different to the previous hotel, with lots of gaps for ‘friends’ to join us but it was cozy none the less.

After getting changed, at 3pm we met our guide at reception for our canoe tour. We had expected to be rowing ourselves but had a guide to do the hard work for us! We were with a Canadian couple (who were in a separate boat with their own guide) who told us stories of their travelling, including their tour to the largest cave in Vietnam which you have to be invited to go into as only 6000 people had ever made the 5 day journey! It was very relaxing cruising along the river and the guide pointed out things along the way, including the inevitable monkeys which, at one point, we thought may join our boat!

We stopped part way for a dip in the river, but the prospect of fish nibbling at our toes meant we didn't stay too long. Our guide then showcased what he had been working on whilst we were swimming - rings made from woven bamboo which were surprisingly strong! We continued down the river to another stop where we had coffee and hot chocolate from handmade bamboo cups, with water which was boiled in the trunk of a bamboo plant on a fire the guides had made themselves - very impressive! Our tour carried on for another short while until we reached the bank where the jeep picked us up to take us back to the hotel.

We relaxed in the room for a while until passersby probably heard a panicked Lauryn who had just found that the piece of rust she was staring at in the sink (and nearly poked) was in fact a frog's head peeping out the overflow hole. Lauryn hid under the mosquito net recovering from her traumatic experience and Dan tried poking, then proceeded to Google 'get frog out of sink' before deciding that gently squirting it with the bidet was the best cause of action. He then left (or was flushed away) and never returned... poor frog.

One frog down, we quickly went to the restaurant for dinner. After about 10 minutes there were swarms of flies all attracted to the lights above us, which was not very surprising as we were in the jungle. Two cocktails (to calm Lauryn) and an hour later and they had mostly gone and we could enjoy our dinner and cribbage in peace. We kept hearing splats on the floor and Dan soon realised that this was from a lizard who kept dropping from the ceiling! We got an early night, but neither of us slept very well as we were wondering what 'friends' we in the room with us and we found suspicious droppings on our porch in the morning.

We were up and had breakfast early ready for our half-day hike around the jungle! The sounds and sights were very different to the day before, though the presence of elephants was still obvious, them having visited just the night before. The animal highlights were lizards, butterflies, giant tadpoles, fish, frogs, a snake and a pufferfish (which the guide enticed out of the water and neither of us realised had such sharp painful teeth). At one point, the guide quickly hugged a tree and we were quite confused until he came back with a lizard which uses webbed skin between its legs to glide between the trees - we quickly realised this was the same kind of flying lizard that we heard splatting on the floor the previous night.

We also saw three different sets of monkeys this time, stump-tailed macaque, long-tail macaque and langurs. We had to keep pinching ourselves that what we were seeing was in the wild, not in a zoo like we had seen in Singapore! In the daytime, you could also really appreciate the scenery of the park, as we hiked through the jungle and across the river. The trees were so tall that you could barely see the tops of them!

We were walking for about 4 hours so when we returned to the hotel, we had definitely earned our lunch at the restaurant! We relaxed here until it was time to get the pickup truck to the bus station and a minibus to Surat Thani train station for our overnight train back to Bangkok.

Lauryn had found a good restaurant 5 minutes from Surat Thani station which was overlooking the river. We had dinner here whilst watching the local lads fishing for their supper and stayed until it was time to return to the station and catch our train back to Bangkok.