Chinese New Year Vacation: Part 3, Khao Sok

After much travel we finally arrived in the Khao Sok National Rain Forest. We were greeted by a friendly staff with a nice pineapple welcome drink.

Jeremy and I thought a lot about whether or not to join a tour group in Thailand. While we were confident in our ability to grab a Frommer's guide to Thailand and go, after many difficult transportation situtations in China we knew we'd appreciate having someone else worry for us. So, after weighing the pros and cons, we ultimately decided to go with a group. We used Intrepid Travel, a company that had the exact trip we had in mind down the southern coast of Thailand.
Our tourguide was a very friendly Thai woman named Tar (pronounced Da) who spoke English pretty well. There were 16 people in our group including us: 2 German girls who had just finished High School and were taking their year off to travel before university, 2 Sweedish sisters who were born in '86 and '89, 1 British girl who had taken 9 months off from her job as a software engineer to travel around the world, 1 British girl who had just quit her job as a nurse and was moving to Australia to find a job, a British couple who had a month off and had just finished traveling the Northern half of Thailand, 1 French girl who didn't really talk much, 2 Irish girls, Sinade who was a hairdresser and Emma who worked with people with disabilities they were continuing on to Australia for 2 months, 1 Brithish guy named Bob who owns a bar near Whales and thinks breakfast was the best invention that came out of America (everywhere in Asia calls eggs, pancakes and bacon "the American Breakfast"), and another couple from Australia named Lee, the welder, and Luella, who did some CSI-type job.

One great thing about the tour group was there was immediately a group of people to meet and hang out with. One not so great thing was that our tour guide made us meet and hang out every night. Immediately when we got to Khao Sok Tar shuffled us to a huge table and gave us a sales pitch for activities: elephant ride 500 bot, lake tour 1500 bot, tubing 200 bot, trip to smelly flower 750 bot, etc., etc. Not only did she tell us all that, but she wanted us to decide immediately, and then scheduled a 7pm meeting and dinner that night- all this and we hadn't even dropped off our bags yet. We told her we'd get back to her later and went to our bungalo.

The rain forest bungalo

We just wanted to get into our swimsuits and relax by the water!

Tar continued to push activities, all of which just seemed really forced and touristy, which was so unappealing we opted out of them all to explore the rain forest on our own. We told her we would not be able to make dinner and went out exploring.

On our way out we found a coconut grove:
And a hot party spot (which I'm pretty sure has that sign every night:
We never made it there:
We walked into the very small town surrounded by these gorgeous mountains.

We found a cute restaurant bar with some great hammocks and laid down and read/fell asleep. The lady who owned it was very nice and we talked to her for a while and also met her daughter who was about 4 years old. She was so cute, you could tell she was surrounded by English speaking tourists a lot because she wasn't shy at all. Being English teachers we were happy to engage her. Her favorite thing about English was the letter W and the word monkey. She knew internet web addresses as www.c-o-monkey.
The next morning we had a nice dinner on the porch of our hotel and ordered sandwiches to go for lunch so we could spend the whole day in the rain forest. Over breakfast we met a really nice grandparent aged British couple who spent the winter months in Thailand because their son was teaching English there. They were so happy to be in such a beautiful place and excited to tell us about their past travels to America. They had been to Texas and California and met a young American who thought it was "just amazing" that they were traveling. The old man did this in an imitation American accent, and leaned over and said, "well you know how Americans talk." haha! Yep, we do. They also kept telling us about "That old geezer" the he couldn't get a picture of because it would go down as soon as he got his camera ready. It took us a minute to figure out he was talking about a geyser. You know how those Brits talk.

After breakfast we went to the Khao Sok National Rain Forest. It is the oldest rain forest in the world and absolutely gorgeous. However, we were there during dry season, which meant all the large animals such as monkeys and elephants had migrated north. So there were no large animal sightings, but lots of snakes and lizards. Jeremy even saw a flying snake in the trees!

Two tough hikers!

Half-way through our hike we came to a rest area. This is where the well beaten path ended and you kind of went at your own risk. It was dry and the water was low, so it wasn't very dangerous. So we continued on. Here is some great broken signage on the ground, needless to say, we found our own way (which made it that much more exciting).

We found this swimming hole and set up our picnic lunch.

Then we hiked back to some more rocky waters. Where we were able to jump across the water on huge rocks that are normally covered. It was a lot of fun and a little scary.




Apparently during rainy season the park is full of waterfalls and it was toward the end of our hike, and we were getting a little disappointed that we hadn't seen one. Then we turned the corner and there it was! It was so beautiful. You could tell it would be a huge rushing waterfall during rainy season, because part of the rock had been carved out from continual water impact.


We figued out we ended up hiking almost 3 miles that day. We were beat! As we were walking out of the rain forest, hot, sweaty and tired, it started to rain a warm refreshing rain. It was gorgeous.

That night we had another group meeting and dinner. Since we skipped the night before we decided to be social and try it out. So we went to dinner as a group of 16. Tar had us bussed to another hostel down the road (walking distance) which was clearly an Intrepid place because she knew everyone and started waiting tables. The place could not support such a large group. Many people's orders were messed up, and Jeremy and I didn't even get part of our order. We decided that was the last time we would attend a group meal.

Since we were still hungry after not getting our order we found another restaurant and ordered green curry (which was phenomenal). Also having dinner was a very large Swedish man named Larsh, so we sat with him and started talking. He was retired and had been backpacking for three months through Vietnam, Cambodia, and Loas before he had gotten to Thailand. It turns out he worked at HP in the 1970's which at that time was the same company as Agilent, so he and Jeremy had an interesting conversation. After Thailand he was heading to Hong Kong and asked if we knew of anywhere to stay. We gave him the card of the place we had stayed, said goodnight and walked home.

The next morning we were up before the sun and loaded onto the back of converted pickup trucks on our way out of Khao Sok.

We were on the trucks for 2 hours to get back to the same breakfast spot the at the train station. I guess some restaurants are just good enough to hit twice. This is where Bob told us about his love of American style pancakes. I never realized that flap jacks were so rare in England. We started talking about culturally unique cuisine, and he thought of one that he refused to describe while everyone was eating. Once we were loaded on a bus, he told us about "Black Pudding," or "Blood Sausage" as it is sometimes known. I'll let you use your imagination, or Wikipedia it if you're really curious. He assured me that it actually tastes very good, and that it just has a bad reputation because its made out of blood. I told him I thought I'd stick with pancakes in the morning.

We got onto a ferry that had an open upper deck for laying out. We decided to hang out on a lower floor though, since the smoke stacks made the whole top area smell like diesel. We found a comfortable corner spot where we were able to watch the sea and the islands. At this point in the day, the weather was gorgeous.