It must be time for us to move on as it
actually took a brainstorming session to come up with a plan for our latest
long weekend. The main objectives were
to not need a visa and to avoid the North-South Highway here in Malaysia. We didn’t fancy spending 10hours sitting in a
traffic jam like the last time we used that route on a public holiday weekend. In the end we plumped for Southern Thailand
even though we’d be revisiting places; namely Nai Thon Beach on Phuket and Khao
Sok National Park on the mainland.
The last time we’d visited Phuket it was
off-season and we got a cracking deal in a 4* hotel on Ao Nai Thon. We still found a great deal in a smaller, new
hotel (Nai Thon Mansion) but that was where the similarities ended. Phuket has been discovered by the Russians
and they are invading the place by the plane load. The hotel we’d found on the internet was one
of many new places. In fact there is
another huge hotel similar and next door to the one we stayed in last time, a
huge resort at one end of the bay and a massive one being built at the opposite
end of the beach. To be fair the
development is being very tastefully done but the increased number in holiday
makers means there are now rows upon rows of beach beds and brollies. I don’t like seeing beach furniture
regimentally lined up and witnessing oversized, burnt foreigners lounging on
them didn’t add to the scene.
That said, the bay now has more on offer in
terms of restaurants and many of them are still independently run. Plus you can find an empty space and enjoy
what is still a pretty bay with inviting waters. Yep – even I was tempted to venture into the
waves and got wet right up to my shoulders!
I can’t tell you anything else about Phuket as we simply lazed around on
the beach reading and regularly cooling down in the ocean. Our aim was to fit in as many of our
favourite Thai dishes as possible, as this will probably be the last time we’ll
visit Siamese shores whilst residing in this part of the world.
http://www.booking.com/hotel/th/naithon-beach.en.html?aid=311984;label=naithon-beach-IdT6kpoE73mrGynSti7VIAS9009676393;ws=&gclid=CMP7x4iUpK4CFch56wodjElFRg
Getting a taxi to Khao Sok looked like it
was going to be easy enough as there was a taxi stand with a fixed price
list. The trouble was we weren’t on the
list. Good, as that meant half our
fellow tourists wouldn’t be following us but bad, as they just made up a
random, silly price. In the end the
chief at our hotel sorted us out with a fare of 3000 Baht. We knew it was going to take a good couple of
hours and the hotel we were moving on to had quoted the same amount. Crossing over to the mainland by car makes
you realise just how close this big island is to the mainland. In fact if you didn’t know you’d assume that
you’d just crossed a river!
The drive over to Khao Sok was lovely as we
didn’t use any highways and it was a pleasure going through small, local towns,
agricultural land and areas of forest and hills. Years ago we’d been in this area and ended up
visiting a national park by accident as we boarded the wrong bus. Over the years we’ve never been able to
remember which national park we were aiming for and which one we ended up
in. I scoured the photo albums only to
discover that is was Khao Sok that we’d visited so even this part of the trip
was a re-run. Well – you can’t expect us
to remember every detail of every trip from over the years!!
Khao Sok has also changed but nowhere near
as much as Phuket. There are many more
mini-marts, travel agents, guesthouses and restaurants but they are all small,
family run gaffs. Steve had booked us
into a place near the park entrance but down a track so in actual fact
virtually within the park boundaries.
Our Jungle House http://khaosokaccommodation.com/index.html proved to be an excellent choice – very well run, easy
to organise activities at reasonable-ish prices and tasty food in their
restaurant. The place is, as I’ve
suggested, set within a forest with the chalets dotted among the trees. They only have about a dozen rooms but each
one offers something a little different; whether it be its position within the
grounds or the building style. Many of
them are on the banks of, or close to, the river that runs along the bottom of
a huge karst cliff. They were already
booked when we contacted them so we went for one of their jungle tree houses
instead – our second tree house of the year.
It was fantastic; set along a path that only led to our chalet and built
about 10 metres up and attached to a huge tree.
Following a tasty lunch sat in their
open-sided restaurant watching butterflies, birds and lizards pottering around
we were ready to do an activity. There
was plenty to choose from but we already knew we wanted to do an elephant ride
(my choice), go kayaking down the river (Steve’s choice) and spend some time in
the park itself. On reading that the
kayaks were paddled by your guide we decided to give that one a miss – I’m sure
it would have been good but it sounded like an expensive boat ride to us. So we booked ourselves an elephant and went
to enjoy the river in the interim. Steve
of course had to go for a dip and I was happy to sit on a log with my feet in
the water hoping some interesting creatures would wander by. Nothing did but it was a very pleasant way to
while away an hour.
Our transport arrived as promised and
within 20mins we were looking at an elephant but had to wait for the previous
tour to finish before we could set off.
To keep us occupied the guides showed us some of the local plants and
explained their culinary uses. Soon
enough it was time to climb up to the platform and get ourselves ensconced in
our howdah. Now we all know that
elephants are big animals, but; it’s not until you’re sitting on the back of
one wondering how come the ground suddenly seems a long way off that you really
appreciate their bulk. We thought our
guide had been joking when he pointed out the route but no – we really did go
up that steep bank! As the elephant was
plodding downhill we had to cling on tight for fear of slipping out of the
howdah! Our fella was somewhat peckish
so we had to wait a couple of times for him to consume the odd sapling and
hover up some shrubbery.
The mahouts led their beasts up a small
hill and to an area where we could get down and go to look at a waterfall. It had been billed as a spot to take a dip
but it really didn’t look inviting. In
the end the mahouts had much more fun getting the tourists to pretend to be in
charge of these magnificent animals.
I’ve read somewhere that they can understand, remember and respond to up
to 70 commands; added to that they learn to only follow their own mahout’s
shouts. Steve was invited to climb up
onto the elephants back in front of the howdah for a bit of bare-back
riding. The other girl in our group got
a chance too but for some reason I was over-looked. Now I’ve ridden an elephant bare-back in the
past and in actual fact had to virtually kneel on top as not surprisingly my
legs were too short.
The mahouts do this every day but they
seemed to take genuine delight in taking photos for the daft farangs. On the way back we passed a cave and the
elephant was directed towards it – for a second I thought we were going caving
on a pachyderm. Thankfully not, it was
another photo opportunity – not that our mahout managed to take any in
focus! It might not sound like the most
exciting thing we’ve done but we enjoyed it.
I’m never sure of the ethics of these things but carrying a couple of
tourists around a jungle has to be better than pulling heavy logs or dodging
the Bangkok traffic. Plus you can’t beat
the chance to touch and hand feed these wonderful creatures.
That evening we ticked off another ‘must
eat’ from our list in one of the restaurants in the village. Then we retired to our balcony with the torch
to see if we could spot anything interesting.
Nothing again but the jungle noises were great.
Since we’d decided against the kayaking we
booked ourselves onto a night walk instead – today was going to be a walking in
the jungle day. So following breakfast
we headed off into Khao Sok National Park which is a matter of minutes walk
down the road from the village. In fact
the road ends here so the park has not been spoilt by developers. The park entrance fees are still B200 a head
but we knew the ticket would cover us for the night walk too. There are really only 2 trails in the park;
one that follows the main river and another that follows a smaller river to a
waterfall. We thought we’d done the
former last time and the latter was marked on the map as a circular route so we
choose that. There is never a huge
amount of information or signs provided in Thai national parks but for once we
managed to pick up a simple map.
Our destination was Sip-et-Chan waterfall
which they reckon has 11 tiers and is a mere 4kms from the park HQ. That doesn’t sound far does it but bear in
mind that traipsing through the jungle is much tougher than walking over fells. The park was deserted and we didn’t see
another soul until we were almost back at the headquarters. Per usual we were hopeful of spotting animals
but once again were disappointed nothing put in an appearance. Actually that’s not strictly true as the
leeches were out in force. Even being
vigilant and checking our clothing at very, very regular intervals we did not
get out of the forest without donating blood!
The path was easy enough to follow although
where it crossed the river proved a little tricky on occasion as the signs
weren’t always easy to spot. Most of the
six river crossings Steve managed to do without getting his feet wet but the
stones were too far apart for me to confidently hop across. I decided it was better to wade through and
get wet feet than to slip from a rock and get soaked and potentially hurt
myself in the process. I also hoped it
might drown a few leeches each time too but I don’t think a little dunking fazed
them!
We duly found the waterfall but of course
could only see one tier. It looked like
the path continued but within meters it became apparent that we’d have to
retrace our steps. At this point we got
a strong sense of déjà-vu – we’ll have to compare the photos. Although we’re getting a little fed up of
jungle trekking we enjoyed the walk savouring the peace and quiet. Back at HQ it was time to roll up our trouser
legs and investigate the leeching! Steve
had 3 little bites and for once he wasn’t bleeding copious amounts. My left leg revealed just one bite that was
still oozing a little red liquid but I knew there’d been more activity on my
right leg. I rolled up my trousers and
instantly half a dozen leeches tumbled to the ground, another couple unhooked
themselves and plummeted to earth very fat and bloated. Yet another well fed individual shot up out
of my boot and launched itself into the grass.
In all I had 10 bites and several of them were still bleeding quite
profusely.
Back at our jungle tree house we double
checked we’d removed our blood sucking friends and had fun getting washed and
changed without smearing blood all over the pristine white towels! We decided soaking our limbs in water would
help to stem the flow of blood so headed back down to the river. I reckon my bites quietly oozed claret for
about an hour but of course I lived to type the tale. With having booked ourselves on the night
walk we were in a bit of an eating conundrum.
It was too early to have a slap up meal and anyway we didn’t want to be
walking on full stomachs. But, we also
knew that our kitchen closed at 9.30pm and suspected that the restaurants in
the village wouldn’t stay open much longer.
The walk was meant to last a couple of hours so we worked out we’d be
back just in time. We even mentioned
this when ordering our starter snack and she agreed it would be better to have
a meal later.
Our guide appeared bang on time (7.30pm) and
it turned out there was only one other couple joining us – phew, a small
group. The guided walk started within
the grounds of the guesthouse and in fact we cut through the palm plantation to
get back to the park entrance. Obviously
it wasn’t an extensive hike but we actually walked much further than you tend
to do on these things. Our guide was
very good at spotting critters of the night and extremely enthusiastic – in
fact Steve & I felt he would actively choose to be a night owl. Owls were not one of the things that we saw
but we did see quite a wide range of creatures.
Obviously we saw all the usual small stuff
like creepy crawlies and frogs and a little bird fast asleep on a twig. The final list reads much better than that
and we seemed to see everything twice – no we weren’t walking in circles! A couple of snakes (pit vipers)is always a
treat and one was quite low down in the branches so we could see a lot of
detail. We were also lucky enough to
encounter a couple of civet cats and although we’ve seen these before these
looked to be a different species. At one
point the guide got very excited and was frantically flashing his torch through
the undergrowth as he was sure he’d seen the eyes of a sun bear. Within minutes of giving up trying to spot it
again he spied the eyes of a civet in a tree and then dashed into the forest
twittering away to himself. Steve was
the only one that managed to keep him in site and followed. Apparently they’d been looking at a sun bear
but all Steve can confirm is that he saw the glow of two eyes and that they
were different from the other animals we’d seen. Not conclusive but amazing to think we were
so close to such an endangered species.
The overall highlight was finally getting to see a slow loris – we’ve
been trying to track one of these down for years. We saw one quite early on in the walk and
although it was clearly a loris (not just eyes shining at us) it was high up. The second sighting was even more rewarding
as the loris was lower down the canopy and moving around so we got to see it
very clearly. I have to report that it
wasn’t particularly slow!
We felt we’d been out a while and that the
trip had worked out to be good value for money but we had no idea just how late
it was. By the time we got back to the
village it was almost 11 o’clock so our 2-hour potter had turned into a 3 ½ hour
jungle trek. Like I say great value but
all the kitchens were shut and we were starving. I wish the staff in the guesthouse had
indicated that we might be longer than we anticipated especially considering
we’d even talked about it when ordering snacks.
Missing the odd meal is hardly the end of the world but we still had a
couple of things to tick off our favourite meal list!
We were up before the kitchen was open the
following morning as we’d been booked onto a van to take us to the airport in
Surat Thani. We thought we’d have to get
a taxi as it looked like none of the vans would link up with our flight. However, there was more availability than we
realised so it only cost us B600 instead of B2000. We reached the airport with plenty of time to
tuck into a plate of tasty noodles.
Farewell
Thailand and thanks for another great trip.
