Khao Sok National Park

We met up with Mel's friend, Julie, and we decided to go to this park that Julie had heard good things about. We spent one night in a cabin overlooking the river and found a cool guide to take us out on a 4 day tour. The first day we took a long-tail boat pretty far to go to the sanctuary in search of wild animals. We saw a bunch of monkeys and some cool birds and spiders. We also went for a good hike. That night we stayed in floating huts which was a lot of fun and a totally unique experience. The next day we did some more touring in the boat & our guide spotted an elephant. We all caught a quick glimpse of it while it ran up the hill, and our guide and boat captain went creeping after it to get some pictures on Mel's camera.

That night we stayed in a larger gathering of floating cabins where the food was really good and the local people working there were really fun. After dinner, we checked out the prices at the bar and saw that whisky cost 180 baht (approx $6 Canadian). You may expect to pay this much for a whisky in Europe, or even a fancier place back home, but it seemed surprisingly pricey for Thailand. We still ordered one and were pleasantly surprised when we got a mickey of whisky for the 180 baht. Needless to say, Mel, Julie & I had a good time chilling out with our guide that night and were joined by other locals at various points throughout the night. There were groups of travelers at other tables but the locals were only coming to hang out with us, which was a cool feeling. Julie had a funny quote that night, "I don't want to hang out with any white people," which we all had a good laugh about. The locals made us feel right at home at the floating huts. So much so that we asked our guide if we could stay there for an additional night before continuing on with our journey, which he said was fine.

The next day our guide took us on a tour of the caves. This was absolutely incredible and too hard to describe with words. The pictures definitely don't do it justice but still give you an idea of what it was like. It was about a 20 minute excursion from one end of the cave to the other, walking across rocks and through water sometimes as much as 2 or 3 metres deep. We went back to the floating community of huts for some delicious lunch and then headed out on kayaks with our guide to look at monkeys playing in the jungle. We did some more swimming, playing & chilling and came to the conclusion that that day was the best day of our lives so far.

Our guide, his younger brother, and our captain.

The floating cabins (ours was to the left)
The view from a lookout that we hiked to

The Caves

The captain made my day by letting me drive the long-tail boat.