Khao Lak To Khao Sok
I allowed myself a couple days in Khao Lak to see new friends off and to see other parts of Khao Lak. The town is fine and full of luxury hotels if that’s your thing but north are fewer hotels and more open beaches. It’s worth a search on Surin beach or a couple others up that way. All places offer tours of various degrees, fishing trips, one day excursions to the markets in Takhuapa, Khao Sok and return, Jet boat to snorkel the Similan Islands, Fun dives for those who are apprehensive about a new environment, lots of choices and more than I care to name at this point. Beach walks are great further up the coast. I needed to do laundry after 6 days at sea with minimal clothing basically a bathing suit and a t-shirt.
The owner/manager of the Traveller Lodge told me of a national park just south down the road, up the hill, and I took the time to go on a very beautiful ocean/rain forest trail walk in the park to a very small and beautiful beach with virtually no one on it but me and a monkey.
The following morning I packed and crossed the street for the first bus heading north to Takhuapa around seven am, just wave it down. It cost 60 Baht on the local bus to go 30 kilometers to the bus station in Takhuapa and another 100 Baht to get to Khao Sok and hour later. You can also hire a taxi for 600 Baht but you are now on Thai time so what’s the hurry? The difference pays for an extra night and dinner. I arrived at Smileys Bungalow and pulled in for 300 Baht/night. There are newer ones for 500 Baht. I was staying for 8 days but not all in town but still wanted the bungalow to keep my gear I would leave when the time came.
I highly recommend inner tubing down river for three hours of chillaxing. Come December if the rains have subsided as they should seasonally then the water goes low and tubing is a bit of both wading through shallow spots and again setting your tail in a tube and doing very little to get down stream. The river runs through limestone monoliths and plantation properties with a few bungalow groups and resorts along the rivers edge. I continually go to Art’s Review Resort for a late lunch and a sunset. Art’s over looks the river with a deep swimming hole and a very popular rope swing drop in the late afternoon with the local kids. It’s all in good fun.
Evenings are very low key with a Chill-out bar with a camp fire and a Reggae Bar pushing the definition of night and day but for the most part a sleepy little village with specific tourism operations in place offering activities such as night walks looking for critters, tubing, day tours of the area, guided excursions into deep regions in Khao Sok National Park. There is a company getting well-established here running people into deep jungle for 3-5 days where you are self-sufficient. One of my favorites is a night on a floating bungalow on the lake behind Rachaprapha Dam. This is a massive reservoir used for power but also back in the day, late 70’s and 80’s, the communist students were hiding in the local villages and when the logging companies came in and cleared out the trees before the dam was finished the future was prewritten and the communists moved up above the expected water line and into the limestone caves and were even harder to find than before. Some local villagers sympathized with their cause and helped with food, medicines and the essentials. The water came and created a massive lake elaborate with spindling fingers of waterways and limestone outcrops of epic proportions. The government dropped in a stack of different freshwater fish for a sustainable fresh water fish economy. Some of the deep water fish are said to hit serious kilo numbers, I’ve heard up to 50, some say higher and that’s a local argument I’m not yet ready to enter. Maybe a fishing trip the next time; The Old Man and The Lake, ha!
I hooked up with two Dutchmen and three Frenchmen at 8 am and we had a quick breakfast and hopped in Kit’s van to the lake about an hour and a half away, hopped on Kit’s long tail boat with canopy that we immediately dropped to take photos. We took a lot of photos. Manu and I had bigger cameras and went to work along with a few Gopro film cameras and some smaller hand held cameras and phones.
When I was here last I stayed at Green Mountain View Guesthouse with Tawee, on the other side of the mountains to the south and very secluded. I would have stayed there but his number had changed. It’s also where the tubing ends. He’s still there and we chatted.
Kit drove us through the vast waterways for about an hour and then into more narrow passages and some with monolith spires all the way around us. I told one of the Dutch guys, Luc, that I had been coming to this National Park since 1996 and he was curious why. By the end of the trip he knew well enough why, they all did.
We pulled into Smiley’s floating bungalows where we found only a few people. That’s always a good sign at any of the floating bungalow places on the lake at high season. Originally the bungalows were made of bamboo and wood but innocently some of the operators would turn to the forest to get their supplies and to stop this those in power changed the rules and all new bungalows are of metal framework with store bought siding, plywood, batten/board, on metal floats. The walkways down the floats are also metal and can get hotter than hot so good footwear is a must. You are also going to need that same footwear to get through the cave.
Flip-flops are not worth bringing at all. This is a rain forest and mud is a constant. Have you ever walked through mud in flip-flops? No good. Sandals with straps are your best bet or trainers that can get soaked. While walking the trail I could hear the occasional person take a digger and splat in the mud. Have no fear there are plenty of places to wash off before you swim through the cave. That’s right, there are some spots where your feet don’t touch and the guide carries a dry bag where everybody chucks their cameras in for the really wet part. You actually walk through a mountain and come out the other side. In the cave are big spiders, not poisonous, many types of fish in the water, and hundreds of bats overhead. It has that ammonia bat guano smell to it for part of the trail.
The boat ride to the jungle walk to the cave is a nice introduction to the deeper recesses of the reservoir. Every now and again you can see an over grown logging road buried in trees and new growth. There are few maps of all to be seen but I’ll tell you now there are bat caves, unexplored caves and even some that haven’t been discovered. It is an exploring spelunkers wet dream that would take more than a lifetime to sort out. That economic industry has yet to be tapped.
We returned early evening and there should have been a night ‘safari’ by boat to look for critters along the lake bank but Kit wasn’t really in the mood and we had had a big night prior so we were happy to chill. A card game ensued in the floating dining room. I hit the deck at 9 pm and awoke to Gibbons and long tail monkeys hooting and barking into the rising sun. I got up and sat on the front walkway by the water and watched the sun shake off the shadows of the night.
Three cups of tea and we boarded the long tail for a morning ‘safari’ of photos and looking for animals that had come out of the forest for morning fruit by the lakeside. The light was perfect and the water so still that you could see the sun twice and every tree had a reflection. You could look for animals in the reflection and never look up. It was an epic morning.
We peeled into a couple bays with little success always looking for fruit trees or a band of gibbon on the move swinging through the canopy. Kit turned into a bay and cut the engine below a massive Banyan tree where a flock of twenty or more Hornbills were bickering with band of long tail monkeys over the ripe fruit in the tree. On our arrival a group of Hornbills moved on but many stayed, some even stuck their heads out to see what was happening.
After half an hour Kit started her up and we crossed a finger of water where the water was as still as glass and we all took advantage of it. I was on the ‘good’ side of the boat and clicked like I had the jitters hoping one would capture what we were all seeing.
I got lucky,
A few times.
We played the afternoon away swimming, fishing and more swimming in the tepid water. During the drive back, the Dutch went their way to Surat Thani and the French and myself went back to Khao Sok for a night at the Reggea Bar to play Jenga and pool.
The next morning I walked into Khao Sok National Park for a second run at Ton Kloi waterfall, 7 kilometers through the jungle. I had to get up early because 14 kilometers doesn’t sound like much until you add the fact that its over roots, logs, narrow paths all in the jungle with seven different waterfalls and ponds to chose from to swim in. I saw a wild boar, a mouse deer, and a couple snakes that were harmless.
I returned to Art’s Review Resort for a Tom Yum Ghai and a Chang Yai. I watched the water flow and kids swing into space and let go with the inevitable splash followed by screams and laughter.
Another week well spent in on of my favorite areas of Thailand. Eight days is seriously not enough, but then again I get itchy feet. See you where they stop for the holidays.
I believe it’s back in the water searching for whale sharks.
