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Published: November 21st 2006
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Khao Sok
Our jugle hut! Hello again. Here is our second blog of Thailand but check out the first entry again where we have now put on some photos!
Khao Sok national park So we left the beach of Khao Lak on the west coast of Thailand and headed inland to the jungle in Khao Sok national park, which consists of thick native rainforest, waterfalls, limestone cliffs and a big lake. We were met by a host of pickup trucks, one of which took us to a wooden bungalow on stilts in the middle of the jungle, where we would stay for the next two nights - it was pretty basic but not bad value for 3 GBP a night. Our feelings about the hut were mixed: James didn’t like it because it was too unhygienic for him. However, the noises from all the insects and animals were incredible at night and we were woken by a fanfare every morning.
After a very hot and humid trek to a local waterfall, we signed up for an organised jungle trip the next morning. That turned out to be an excellent day, and certainly our most adventurous yet! First we had to wait around for
a group of Germans to finish their breakfast (which we didn’t like) but this gave Vanessa some time to strike up a touching relationship with a little Thai child. The little girl even climbed into the pickup truck when we were about to leave as she wanted to come with us, and it took quite a bit of screaming and struggling (on the girl’s part) to get her back to her mother!
We got going and were driven to a port on the lake, from where a ‘longtail’ boat took us on a scenic ride, covering about 20 miles or so, to some floating huts tethered to the other side of the lake. (We later read in our guide book that the lake was man made by a big dam built in the 80s to provide hydroelectric power.) We also spotted some monkeys and huge ‘chicken bats’ in the surrounding jungle on the way. After some swimming in the lake by the huts, followed by lunch of “fried rice with chicken” (with no chicken evident!) we went for an adventurous five hour trek through the jungle, the culmination of which was trekking through a 600m long pitch black cave,
with bats and big spiders in it. (But we had torches though so we could see). The most exciting thing about this trek was that in places (both inside and outside the cave) the path and the river or lake beside it became the same thing which meant that we all had to do some swimming! This was very sketchy in the cave where the river actually became a torrent and the cave got very narrow and steep in places.
Koh Samui We then made our way to Koh Samui, an island off the east coast of Thailand. This didn’t start off too well because the minibus driver managed to get most of the way to the ferry port before realising that he didn’t have his permit and so had to turn back! Nonetheless, this did serve to give us some insight into how some of the poorer Thailand people live however: the driver lived in a small concrete hut with all of this family, but they still had a hi-tech TV in their only room! When we finally got to the island, we had our first experience of lying Thailandic taxi drivers, which surprisingly we had managed
to avoid until then. The Koh Samuian driver succeeded in ripping us off by giving us a ride into town that we didn’t need since we could have simply got back on our bus for free!
However, we were later appeased on finding (more by luck than anything else) that our pre-booked hotel in the island was very pleasant. The bay where the hotel was (Chaweng beach) was unfortunately extremely touristy and even on the beach locals kept trying to sell us all sorts of stuff (Vanessa mostly got offers of henna tattoos and James mostly of drugs) Nonetheless the beach and sea were lovely and we found our few days of sunbathing and swimming to be very relaxing.
There is a Tesco on the island! So we went to check it out. (By the way, Thailand is actually Tesco’s biggest overseas venture, although you may have read - as we coincidentally just did - that Tesco has agreed with the Thai Government to temporarily halt its expansion here). It didn’t sell much of the stuff that you’d expect to find in an English equivalent, so we bought a few unusual products instead, before going for dinner at
Wat Po
Where they do good massages the in-house “MKs” restaurant. This was distressing. The waitress came to take our order, which started off OK because we just ordered some beers, but then she didn’t seem to go away, rather she stood waiting at our table with an expectant look about her. We had no idea at what we were doing since the menu was all in Thai and possibly Chinese and so she was waiting for a good 10 mins! Eventually we ordered a few things and she went away, only to return with a large pan of boiling water. She placed this on a hot ring in the middle of our table and then brought us a plate with all of the raw things we had ordered, which she kindly placed in the water for us, thus concluding her job. After about 10 mins of sitting there, we decided to investigate our food situation, and hunger concluded that it must surely be cooked! (Presumably it was because neither of us suffered any major food poisoning the next day!).
Bangkok We arrived in Bangkok at 5:30am on Sunday morning (12 November) after quite a tiring ferry, bus and train journey back from Koh Samui.
We had been planning to get a sleeper train with a bed but unfortunately they were all booked out. We therefore ended up on an old rickety train which only consisted of two carriages and must have been zooming along at about 150 mph. We kept on thinking that we were going to derail! Needless to say, we didn't get much sleep! They also unexpectedly gave us some (very spicy) dinner, comprising some dark brown fish goo and rice and a cube of transparent gelatine, followed half an hour later (at about 9:30pm) by a breakfast of tea and croissant/cake! Very odd… After admirably staring at buses at the bus stop in Bangkok for about an hour, we accepted that it was just too difficult to find out where any of them went and climbed into one of the millions of taxis to go to our hotel…
… Where we amazingly didn’t fall asleep! We had already ‘done Bangkok’ three years ago and so after a refreshing swim we just had a relaxing day wandering around some of the very cool giant shopping complexes and having a not quite so relaxing massage by some monks at Wat Po (definitely
more painful than we remembered, but presumably very good for you).
The highlight of the day was definitely seeing “The Prestige” (which is very good by the way) in one of the “Ultra Cinema” screens they have at a big cinema there. After being treated to a welcome drink in a private VIP lounge, along with a complementary head and shoulder massage, we were shown to our individual fully reclining leather armchairs and handed a duvet, pillow and bottle of beer (see photo)! All this for the small fortune of 8 GBP each… Cinema is never going to feel the same again!
Hope you are all well and do keep in touch!
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