Lions, Tigers, and bears oh bollix!

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Note: No pictures because Thailand computer part doesnt work...will try to fix it!


Thats enough of the beach life...Ko Lanta has been kind so we have decided to rough it again and get back to nature. Ash has told us about Khao Sok national park which is only a few hours drive away. The rainforest contained therin is supposedly similair to the way it was 160 million years ago. Yes folks, thats when the dinosaurs were knocking around. While there are unfortunatly no dinosaurs there at present, there are plenty of other creatures that are capable of eating you like Bears and Tigers.
Deciding the break things up a bit, we jumped on an air conditioned van to Krabi, where we would lay up for the night and purchase essentials, which entailed walking shoes and insect repellent for the girls and a few bottles of Chang for me. Chang when applied to the body orally not only makes you feel great but doubles up as an insect repellent, laxitive and sleeping aid.
Krabi is nice place to spend a day or so and there are plenty of markets that sell bootlegs of anything you can imagine. Theres also a huge statue of a crab you can swing out of while your embarassed girlfriend takes a photograph.

Air conditioned van to Khao Sok takes about about 2 hours non stop but being a Thai tourist bus, this incorporates 6 or 7 toilet stops in places fitted with toilets that resemble a crater left behind from an artillary shell...fitted with a chemical warhead. Be sure to flush the squat toilet with a full bucket of water to ensure the contents of the bowl reaches the adjoining reteraunt kitchen. The aformentioned resteraunt, affiliated with the tour company, will kindly sell you back your evacution at prices that make dublin look cheap.

While you wait at the toilet stop a tout will canvass the passengers with accomadation options for the final destination. In most cases these will work out at double the price of everything else in the area due to the fact that Mr tout's commission for dragging you there is added to the room rate. Tell the tout that you already have something booked and he will tell you your choosen one is full, dirty or funniest of all "full of prostitutes", yes apparently the ladies of the night now work the national park!
The Van drops us off at the Jungle Huts resort and their sales rep tries to get us inside so we give him the slip and go to a number of places listed in Ash's lonely planet. Thailand, as we were warned in advance by a Welch bloke called Richard, has a serious case of Lonely Planet syndrome. Once lonely planet helpfully mention a resort in there listings, the resort will actually double its price the following year.
All three resorts on our list which were listed in Ash's book at costing 300 to 400 baht, which is the average rate in Khoa Sok, last year were now, qouting rates of 600-900 baht. Richard's advice was to check out the other resorts nearby those that didnt get the nod, he said most of them don't get a mentioned for a reason, but you'll often find another one, that seeking the lonely planet blessing, is trying its hardest to get noticed.
Down the road we found rooms for 300 baht, the room was large, the bathrooms well furnished, the patio freshly swept, the only gerkin in the big mac...lots of dried rat shit on the bed. I used to keep pet gerbils when I was a young fella and whatever rodent laid these cables was at least 4 or 5 times larger then dumb, Dumber and Dumbest( Yes that was their names) average discharge. We were shown another room for 20 baht that was slightly smaller but had larger more liquid like rat droppings, the resident rodents obviously have had too much fruit in their diet.

Eventually, we returned with our tails betwin our legs to our original drop off point at jungle huts and seeing as they offered 300 baht a night we decided to have a look. Bear in mind taking the accomadation offered to you when dropped off by a tourist minibus in Thailand is ussually beginers mistake number 101, in our experience its always ended in tears but it was raining, 300 baht was pretty good based on what we had looked at and if it looked in anyway habitable we would take it.
Would you believe it? the room had warm water, a flushing toilet, a clean bed and it was even raised on stilts in case any of the indigenous wildlife wanted to climb up an eat us during the night. We were also advised to keep our windows closed in case the wild monkeys climbed in. The in house tour guy even took us on a Free tour to see a waterfall and feed some monkeys and believe it or not the free tour was exactly that, completly free and with no catches or funny business.
Seeing as we were in country, we signed up for a proper tour, a day long trip into the national park by jeep, long tail boat and best of all lunch on a village floating in the lake followed by a 4 hour trek through the rainforest and into a flooded cave that used to hidout of communist insurgents.
The same bloke who brought us on the free tour ended up being our tour guide. the resort seems to be family run and the tour guide is clearly the hyperactive 20 somthing year old son of the owner. He enthusasitcally beckons us into the back of a pickup truck and then proceeded to speed toward the first destination, somehow managing to steer the car while chain smoking, telling jokes and flicking through various cheesy dance tracks on the cars built in stereo, most of his music cd's are so scrached they sort of sound like hardcore techno. He's a lovely bloke and we are going fast enough in the car that vecicular death will be instantanous so I wont have the chance to lower my opinion of him should we get in an accident.

Feeling happy to be alive we arrive at the boat dock and pay the park entry fee, a few dozen baht for Thai's, a few hundred for tourists and get on the longtail boat that will take us an hour up the lake into the far reaches of the park. A young thai steering the boat while our guide continues with the funnies, he taking the piss out of a quartet of German tourists who to be fair are taking it pretty well.
The water here is like a milkpond so the long tail boat free from worryiing about swells is able to fly along at some clap. The outer edges of the national park consist of some seriously impressive limestone forest, big massive columns of rock garnished with a layer of lush jungle, if you could turn them upside down and make them levitate a few metres they wouldn't look out of place in James Cameron's avatar. everyone is cowed by the scenery and if it wasn't for the hornetesque drone of the longtail boat you might have something representing a awe inspiring silence.
The lake, is blue, magnifent and seemly endless. To discribe the geography hear as limestone forest would be wholly inaccurate at this point, the limestone geography of Khao Sok national park are merely its gates. The main body of the park being a rainforest that wouldnt be far removed from Jurassic park. The rainforst is dense and is packed right up to the shores of the lakes and rivers, here and there are telling gaps in the foilage at the waters edge where large game come to drink. After an hour of watching the rainforest we arrive at the village.

The village itself has about 30 overnight huts all made from bamboo floating about an inch above the surface of the river, in monsoon conditions this village floods and gets damaged and a lot of the resident thais seem to constantly repairing it, no doubt from the recent floods. Lunch is served, enough stir fry to feed three times our number and two fried river fish about the size of ceral boxes. The fish are massive with mouthfuls of needle like teeth but the white flesh tastes superb, you can tear chunks out of it with a spoon. Despite having reservations about what effect river fishy will have on my stomach I tuck in. At the village we also had the opportunity to go swimming, after being assured the river was free of crocodiles and casting the thoughts of leechs attaching themselves to sensitive parts of my anatomy I dive in. The water was as warm as a bathtub and I swam right into the middle of the inlet until all I could hear were the gibbons hooting unseen in the jungle.
The trek began immediatly after lunch and thankfully we were under the cover of the trees. The main problem on the trail being leeches, they lurked everywhere and nearly everyone bar me got latched onto. A russian couple, who inadvisably decided to do the trek in flip flops got set upon every few metres. Pulling off a leech is difficult, the slimy bastards once you pull them off immediatly decide they want to burrow into your hand so you need to shake them off pronto. Aside from leeches I nearly stood on a mean looking scorpion camoflaged as a leaf.

The cave itself contained a strong flowing river which meant that at some places we were wading up to our waists. Niamh was quite distressed at this point and kept insisting that slimy things kept brushing past her legs beneath the water, later we learned these were giant catfish that make their home in waterlogged cave. Our guide by this time was in his element, turning off his torch so he could swim underwater to grab our legs or deciding to pass to me melon sized live toads and other underwater creatures in the pitch black. Throughout the time all I could think about was that I was in waist level body of water, in a leech infested jungle, and I tried not to think about the most accesable place on my body for waist level paricites to attach themselves.
We emerged from the cave and the guide offered us all ciggerettes which I refused. He insisted I should partake, as there are far more things that can kill you then ciggerettes, considering we had to get in his jeep again shortly he was spot on.
By the time we finished the trek it was sundown and we were homeward bound on the longtail boat, the jungle was beautiful in the setting sun, the water stretched out on all sides was the colour of olive oil and we even spotted some spider monkeys relaxing in the trees.
Now I'll just say a short prayer while Mr tour guide drops us home...

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Photos

The limestone forest
No blue people though!

River fish
Tasted great and thankfully no after effects!

Comments

[risto]

Thanks for your interesting blog.I was there two years ago but did not visite Khao sak.Had to come back and do it.Hope you can manige to send your photos from there also.Greetings from Finland.

[Andywalsh]

Finally got em uploaded! honestly the pics don't do it justice!