i keep a diary

August 09, 2007

Thailand Part Four: Khao Sok National Park

Thursday, August 9th

me
The morning after my big 31st birthday celebration, I awoke bright and early (and with crazy-man hair).
bed head ˆ me
I spent some of the morning reading through the book Jeremy have me for my birthday (Thanks, Jer!)...
book
...and then after showering, I decided to have myself a slice of the birthday cake that Meredith had gotten me only to find it swarmed with tiny, feasting ants! Nooooooo!
cake
me
I took a knife and dug out an ant-free chunk so that I could at least have a taste of the wonderful cake Meredith had gotten for me before we had to throw it away! Booooo!
cake ˆ me
After getting our cake on, we walked around the Khao San area and did a little bit of shopping (new backpack and a bathing suit) before we moved on from Bangkok. After we were finished, we hit the roof of our hotel...
hotel
...and relaxed and read by the pool.
bangkok ˆ skyline
Let's hear it for vacation books! Wooot!
book
meredith
Meredith (and my brand new backpack that cost $5!).
meredith
Around 2pm I called Jeremy and took down directions on how to...
note
...take a taxi all the way across town and out to a suburb of Bangkok to visit the international school where Jeremy teaches English! We arrived at the school a little after 4pm...
sign
...went inside and found Jeremy's classroom!
jeremy
Tah-dah!
jeremy
me
He must've known that I'd be coming!
me
jeremy
After taking us on a tour of his school, we called a taxi and went to hang out at Jeremy's apartment for a little while.
jeremy
jeremy, meredith
Later that evening, we went back into Bangkok and grabbed some dinner (Meredith is sad because she was starting to feel really ill). And then after we finished eating, we said farewell to Jeremy and headed to...
jeremy ˆ meredith
...Hua Lamphong train station!
train station
We were taking the overnight sleeper train down to Surat Thani, and then from Surat Thani, we'd be taking a bus to a small village that was right on the outskirts of Khao Sok, one of Thailand's famous rain forest National Parks!
tickets
A little before 11pm, we got to our train and were totally bummed to discover that we had seats instead of a sleeper car! When we were booking our tickets, the man at the travel agency had asked me something that was strangely worded, something like "Do you want to sleep in bunks or next to each other?" and I replied "Next to each other."

As soon as we saw our train seats, I thought back to this and realized that he'd been asking us if we wanted a sleeper car or just to sleep side by side sitting up in the seats. Doh. (I guess I just figured there was a different type of sleeper car where you could sleep in big pull out bed instead of bunk beds. Hi, I'm a moron).
train
meredith
Anyway, due to this misunderstanding, we had to try to sleep sitting up on a really bouncy train. Here's Meredith (who was already feeling totally sick) decked out with a sleep mask, ear plugs and our one inflatable neck pillow.
asleep ˆ meredith

Thursday, August 9th

After barely managing to eek out an hour or so of sleep, I woke up around 7am the next morning...
jungle
...and the countryside was lush and green.
trees
We arrived at the Surat Thani train station around 8am and after stretching for a bit, we hopped a bus into town...
bus
meredith
...here's sweaty, hardly-any-sleep Meredith...
bus ˆ meredith
me
...and cranky "if I don't get some sleep soon I'm going to die" me.
bus ˆ me
We got dropped off at the Surat Thani bus station, and from there we caught...
scooter
...a bus to take us the remaining two and a half hours from Surat Thani to Khao Sok.
bus
meredith
Our bus literally dropped us off on the side of some road on the outskirts of Khao Sok National Park, and from there someone from the hostel we'd booked online came and picked us up! Here's Mer excited about the fact that we were on the final 10 minute leg of our almost twelve-hour journey!
pickup truck ˆ meredith
Check the scenery! Those "mountains" that you see behind the building are limestone "karsts" that Thailand is famous for.
karsts
Scaffolding in the jungle is made out of BAMBOO! How fricking crazy is THAT?
bamboo
A little past 12:30pm (about 13.5 hours after we left Bangkok!) we finally arrived at our hostel, the Khao Sok Green Valley Resort which was fantastic and I totally recommend staying there if you're looking for a great, inexpensive hostel in Khao Sok!

After checking in, we literally dropped our backpacks on the floor...
meredith
...and promptly conked the fuck out. (Meredith sleeps with one leg out and has a DINO ARM! Hahahah!)
asleep ˆ meredith
crookjaw
After an epic seven hour nap (traveling in Thailand can be pretty exhausting), we spent what little was left of the day lazing around and reading on our bungalow's front porch where we made friends with one of the local stray dogs! If you look at his mouth you'll see that it looks like he'd broken his jaw in the past and it had healed a bit crooked with led us to dub him Crookjaw the Friendly Dog!
dogs ˆ crookjaw

Saturday, August 11th

meredith
After catching up on our sleep, we woke up super-early the next morning and got ourselves some breakfast.
food ˆ meredith
After breakfast, Meredith documented some of the local wildlife. Like this itsy bitsy toad! Look how tiny he was!
toad
Here's a macro close-up! And here's his teeny tiny leeetle friend...
best ˆ toad
...Mr. Small Snail!
best ˆ snail
While Mer was taking pics of critters, I booked a day trip to go check out Chieow Laan Lake. A little past 9am, our guide showed up and we hopped into a pickup truck and headed towards the lake.
driving
me, meredith
I got to sit up front with the driver and Mer had to squeeze in the back behind me.
us ˆ me ˆ meredith
Check out the scenery on the way. So amazing.
trees
We arrived at the entrance to the lake (it's a National Park, so you have to pay a fee to enter) a little past 10am.
chieow laan lake
Our first view of the lake from the parking lot!
chieow laan lake
The tour we'd booked involved spending a whole day exploring the Chieow Laan Lake via longtail boat!
boat ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ longtail
After getting out of the truck, we stopped for a quick bathroom break and then hit the lake! Most of the other guests stayed under the boat's awning, but since Mer and I had slathered ourselves with sunblock, we decided to sit up on the bench on the very back of the boat and enjoy the sun and scenery.
boat ˆ chieow laan lake
Out on the lake.
boat ˆ chieow laan lake
The longtail boats are really fun. They're basically handmade boats with car engines strapped to the back that have been converted so that the drive shift turns a propeller.
boat ˆ chieow laan lake
The guys that drive the boat sit on a an old bench seat that was also taken out of an old car.
best ˆ boat
As nice as these pics are, they still don't really do the place justice. In person, it's absolutely breathtaking.
Here are a few more pics where we're getting closer to the mountains that were in the distance when we first started out.
boat ˆ chieow laan lake
See how big they are?
chieow laan lake ˆ karsts
meredith
Smiley Meredith.
chieow laan lake ˆ meredith
The guy at our hostel highly recommended the tour of the lake and I took his word without asking him to go into too much detail about what we'd be doing on the tour. Around this time we'd be driving across the lake for almost an hour and we were starting to wonder if the whole tour was going to be spent on the boat.
best ˆ boat ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ karsts
Then we rounded a corner and what we thought was the other side of the lake turned out to be an island in the middle of the lake! We entered a cove of some sort and then a couple of minutes later...
best ˆ chieow laan lake
...we spotted a series of floating raft houses built along side the edge of the island (which pretty much looked like someone had dropped the top of a mountain into the middle of a lake).
best ˆ chieow laan lake
Getting closer...
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
...almost there...
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
...ta-da! And we've arrived! Turns out these raft houses were build by the locals and you can totally rent them out and vacation in them!
best ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
Our guide told us that we were going to be hanging out here for a couple of hours to swim, relax and eat lunch and then we were going to hike across the island and then take a boat from the far side of the island over to a cave! Here's a pic of the big communal hut where our lunch was being prepared.
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
We hung out in the shade and relaxed for a bit.
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
Then we changed into our bathing suits...
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
...in the guest huts and then...
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
meredith
...WE WENT SWIMMING! Hahahaha. Check out the action shot of Mer jumping in for the first time.
best ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ jump ˆ raft house ˆ meredith
meredith
I jumped in right after her and with my camera safely locked inside a diving box...
chieow laan lake ˆ swim ˆ meredith
meredith
...got some sweet underwater photos of us jumping off the bamboo dock and into the turquoise water!
chieow laan lake ˆ underwater ˆ meredith
The view of the guest huts from the water.
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
me
Me blowing nose-bubbles underwater.
chieow laan lake ˆ underwater ˆ me
meredith
Check out the totally jungley mountains in the background. Can you believe that this place actually exists in the world? Even though I was there, every time I see these pictures I'm like "What? That place can't be real!"
best ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ raft house ˆ swim ˆ meredith
meredith
I like how that one mountain is shaped like a Smurf hat.
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house ˆ swim ˆ meredith
me, meredith
Drying off on the dock after our swim!
best ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ raft house ˆ us ˆ me ˆ meredith
meredith
Around 1pm we ate a delicious lunch. Here's Mer with two of the other tourists (If I remember correctly, they were from Germany) enjoying some post-lunch fruit.
chieow laan lake ˆ food ˆ raft house ˆ meredith
After we'd finished lunch, we went back out on the docks and we ended up striking up a conversation with one of our boat drivers. Which eventually led to him insisting that he take a picture...
boat ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ longtail ˆ raft house
me, meredith
...of us pretending to be the boat drivers! Hahah.
boat ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ longtail ˆ raft house ˆ us ˆ me ˆ meredith
meredith
Meredith ran into a "snag" when she tried out the special "boat-driving hat."
chieow laan lake ˆ laugh ˆ raft house ˆ meredith
meredith
Here's a shot of the bench on the very back of the boat that we sat on during the ride out to the floating-hut village!
boat ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ longtail ˆ raft house ˆ meredith
After we were finished goofing off with the the boat driver, it was time to leave the raft village...
boat ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ longtail ˆ raft house
...and we set out on a hike to cross the island.
hiking
It only took us about thirty minutes to cross the island. We came out of the jungle and had to walk down a really steep trail to get to another "boat launch" area.
chieow laan lake ˆ raft ˆ raft house
And I use the term "boat" lightly. See those two things on the left? Those are the boats that we were going to be taking to cross the lake and get to the cave that we'd be exploring! They were actually rafts made out of bamboo with 5 HP engines tied to the back!
chieow laan lake ˆ raft ˆ raft house
Traveling by motorized bamboo raft is a totally crazy experience. That combined with the surroundings made me feel like I'd woken up in some bizarro Legend of Zelda world.
chieow laan lake ˆ raft
me, meredith
Me and Mer on the raft!
chieow laan lake ˆ raft ˆ us ˆ me ˆ meredith
On the way we passed another floating-hut village on the water. This one didn't have any guest houses and it was really cool to see that the "tourist" huts were pretty much identical to how the locals live.
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
Cave entrance!
cave ˆ chieow laan lake
After thirty minutes or so on the raft, we reached the shore near the cave!
hiking
We tied up our rafts and climbed up to...
hiking
...the entrance of the cave!
cave
One of our guides giving us an overview of some of the formations we'd be seeing in the cave.
cave
Look! It's a, uh, rock formation!
cave
Stalactites!
cave
Stalagmites!
cave
Another kind of rock formation found in caves! (Anyone? Anyone?)
cave
Some quick Googling helped me nail this one down as an example of "drapery."
cave
I think this is also drapery, but it stretched twenty feet from the ceiling all the way to the floor of the cave. It was crazy to look at!
cave
This formation is called "flowstone." This one in particular was the guides' favorite because it looks like hundreds and hundreds of elephant heads (and if you know anything about the Thai, you know they love themselves some elephants).
cave
It's hard to take cave pictures that give a viewer any sense of scale because a camera flash is never strong enough to light up so much darkness - but on the way back out, near the mouth of the cave, there was enough natural light coming in and you can see how huge the place was!
cave
We made our way back across the lake and docked our rafts. Before we set out on our hike back across the island...
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
me
...our guides made us special leaf hats! (Which really took the whole living inside of the world of Zelda thing to a whole new level. Hahaha.
leaf hats ˆ me
meredith
Here's Mer voguing in her hat.
best ˆ leaf hats ˆ meredith
me, meredith
Hahaha.
best ˆ leaf hats ˆ us ˆ me ˆ meredith
And here's (a totally awesome) pic of our entire tour group ALL WEARING LEAF HATS!
leaf hats
After we'd hiked back across the island, we boarded our longtail boat and started the long trip back across the lake!
boat ˆ chieow laan lake
A closeup of some of the cool, spindly trees that were growing in the shallows.
chieow laan lake
Another raft house village.
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
This one was a little different than the others we'd seen in that the huts weren't built against the shore. Instead, there seemed to be a raft-walkway that connected two separate islands, and the houses were attached to walkway in the middle of the water! One of the guides told us that this type of setup was used to catch fish in nets!
chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
A view of the same village from further away so you can see the size of the mountains in the background.
best ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ raft house
Not too much of a narrative here. I just like these pics because the clouds are pretty.
chieow laan lake
Heading directly towards one of the many, crazy video-game-looking islands that are on the lake.
boat ˆ chieow laan lake ˆ longtail
I'll bet you anything that if you explored this island you'd find a heart container and at least a couple of blue rupees.
chieow laan lake
me, meredith
On the ride back to our hostel, we gave up our seats in the cab and sat in pickup bed where we got to enjoy a little over an hour of 65 MPH winds!
pickup truck ˆ sunglasses ˆ us ˆ me ˆ meredith
We spent the rest of the day, lazing around reading and eating delicious Thai snacks!
treats