Thailand - Khao Sok

Tuesday 3 July

Songthaew

Still a bit bleary eyed we left the train and had breakfast at a café before taking a songthaew to Khao Sok National Park where were based for the next two nights. A songthaew is a truck that has two bench seats fixed along either side in the back of the truck and it has a canopy overhead. The vehicle I had in my mind was quite a bit larger than the Nissan ute that came to pick us up. Our bags were loaded on top and the seven of us got in the back for a 2 hour road trip, which surprisingly wasn’t uncomfortable.

The road gradually climbed its way into the jungle and we passed rubber and coconut plantations and papaya farms before seeing glimpses of towering limestone cliffs though the trees.  It started to rain shortly after we arrived at our accommodation but had cleared enough by early afternoon for us to decide to go for a walk in the National Park.

We paid a small fee to enter the park and set off to walk to a waterfall.  It wasn’t too long before I discovered my first leech.  It was a nervous flick to remove the first but a calm removal after 3 or 4, after that they were just a nuisance.  You didn’t feel them bite and some fell off before we noticed them, where they had been was obvious as the small wound bled quite freely for a while.  The trick was to spot and remove them before they latched on.  We walked for about an hour before it started to rain, rain that quickly became heavy but fortunately we were a few metres from a shelter.  We waited in the shelter while it bucketed down and there were a few rumbles of thunder and flashes of lightning.  After 30 minutes it had all but stopped so we retraced our steps.  We investigated a side track on the way back and found some rapids in the river but never saw the waterfall.  It was a little disappointing that the only wildlife we saw was butterflies (and leeches) but all the same it was very enjoyable.

Jungle track

Leech  

                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

Soon after arriving back at our accommodation (Morning Mist) it rained again but it was very pleasant with temperatures in the mid 20’s.  We had been told that Morning Mist had the best food in the area and after the meal we were served at dinnertime we never looked elsewhere.  It was terrific food with lovely presentation and the staff were excellent.

The deck where we ate all our meals

One of the excellent meals

Mango smoothie - yum

Not good weather for seeing birds but I spotted this one

Friday 4 July

We woke to the sound of rain but fortunately it had stopped by the time we got up as today we had a day trip in the National Park on the Ratchaprapha Dam Lake.  The dam was built around 1980 to provide electricity for Southern Thailand.  The lake is bounded by jungle covered limestone cliffs and many limestone columns poke out of the water making small islands.  It is very spectacular. 

We had an hour’s minibus ride to the lake and once there we boarded a long tail boat that took an hour to get to a raft house.     On the way we had lovely views of misty mountains, most of them jungle covered and very steep.
   

The raft house was one of many accommodation places on the lake.  It was a series of buildings floating on bamboo and logs with not very stable floating walkways in front of some of the smaller accommodation rooms.

We had a multi course lunch then went back on the long tail boat for a short ride to where we had a 40 minute walk over a hill to get to some caves.  The thought of another encounter with leeches wasn’t particularly inviting but there weren’t as many of them this time and wearing socks with our sandals meant we had more opportunity to find them before they latched on.  The leeches were on the track and it was hit or miss whether they found you as you went by.

Our raft !

When we got to the other side of the hill we had a short bamboo raft ride to get to the cave.  The bamboo rafts didn’t look very seaworthy and once we were all on board they were barely above the water but we made it there and back with any drama.  The cave wasn’t very big but there were some nice stalactite and stalagmite formations.  After visiting the cave we retraced our steps all the way back to Morning Mist.