Travel Day: Chiang Mai to Khao Sok

---

Obviously I'm still a few days behind. We are on the beautiful island of Koh Lanta now. I purposely didn't do my blog on Thursday evening because Z kept looking over my shoulder. My creativity is severely diminished when I have people reading it while I am writing it... plus, he keeps trying to change things 😊. Tuesday was our devoted travel day to get from the north to the south. We took the plane to Phuket through Air Asia where it was bright and sunny; no sign of rain to be seen. I was a bit worried from all the reports of flooding and that the rainy season was being extra long down south that we would be having a rainy, miserable time. Up until now, we had encountered about 2 hours total of rain. It was like I brought on all the good weather and left the crappy snow and ice at home.

The plane ride to Phuket was pretty bumpy, but we got there without fail. Our private minibus that I booked ahead of time was waiting with a sign to take us on to Khao Sok outside the Phuket airport. The ride was about 2 1/2 hours. I had prebooked the minibus because I was worried we wouldn't find someone to take use that far out of Phuket, but there were a ton of people waiting to take you wherever you needed to go. Our driver was wonderful, as he drove around 100 mph the whole way there. Zach disagrees that he was wonderful and drove like a maniac. I like getting places fast. Drives me crazy when we putter along like a grandma.

The drive to Khao Sok started to get really beautiful when we were about an hour and a half into it. Tall mountains with tons of greenery; it truly is a rainforest out here. I highly recommend if you have the time to make a stopover.

Believe it or not, I hadn't booked the hotel, but I had read good reviews about Morning Mist Resort. Yes, it is the most expensive place we stayed, but everything in Khao Sok seems to be expensive (ish). Compared to America, it is quite cheap. We were shown three rooms decided to splurge on room #1, which has a view of the river. It was 900 baht a night, and if you book a tour with them, you get 30% off the rate. Also, if you do an overnight on the lake, you only pay 1/2 of the price to keep the room. We were doing all of the above.

I went out on my balcony that overlooks the river, hoping to find some monkeys. All the bloggers who went to Khao Sok saw monkeys, the sign in our room said not to feed the monkeys, but there were no monkeys! I brought good weather and scared away the monkeys. If you book at Morning Mist, the bungalows are pretty far apart, and you do have to walk a ways if you are staying in the lower numbered rooms. Our room being #1, we probably were the farthest away. I brought the wrong type of suitcase too, and it was pretty hard dragging that thing across the rocks.

Before I forget, I never did get sick. It passed on Monday afternoon. I had a fever and chills, but the Motrin I think cured me. Apparently it was the same strength they give to people who just had babies. I was sitting pretty, believe you me.

Back to Khao Sok... it is so quiet, smells so good, beautiful, and a wee bit more expensive. We ate at the resort. The fried squid with garlic was by far my favorite, and the drinks were all decorated fancy-like. I felt rich! All the resorts are pretty much along the same road. It is a town (I think) that is one road long (or so it appears, though I probably am wrong). There is a mini mart where I bought some seaweed potato chip (don't knock it til you tried it!), a number of restaurants and little bars, and a few internet cafes. The cheapest internet I found was 90 baht per hour. In Chiang Mai, it was 10 baht per hour. Big difference.

I should point out, the mini mart itself is worth a tour. All mini marts are actually. It is where you can really see all the types of goodies a country has to offer. I took some picture of the Pringles. There were a few flavors we don't have back in the states: berry, soft-shelled clam, shrimp, seaweed. I did like the seaweed Lays potato chips though. Tasted a lot like sour cream and onion.

We didn't do too much on Tuesday, since we didn't get in until almost 5:00. We did book our overnight excursion on the lake, which set us back 5000 baht.Definitely our most expensive activity we will do here, but it includes trekking in the rainforest, spelunking/caving, overnight on floating rafthouses on the huge lake, a night safari, all meals during, and a morning trek the next day. All in all, I think we are still withing budget. Our budget, by the way, is about $120/day for the two of us. That is about 3600-4000 baht. It is looking tight but we are still doing it... and really, we aren't cutting any corners at all. In fact, I think we are partaking more in the local fare (i.e. Zach's drinking a lot of beer) than what I had planned.

---

Comments

[Ashley]

Ew Pringles
Those pringles look nasty. EWWWWWIIEEEEE.