KHAO SOK - THAILAND

We travelled to Khao Sok directly from Ko Pha-Ngan. We had a pick up from our bungalow at 6am and we took a mini van to the pier at Thong Sala where we boarded a ferry, the ferry took about an hour and a half and was a calm crossing. When we arrived we took a bus to a place called Suratthani which is a town about thirty kilometres inland and one of the main transport hubs in the south of Thailand. We got off the bus and took a tuk tuk to an office to 'confirm our tickets', (this is something you usually have to do at some point during your journey in Thailand, you stop, go to an office, present your tickets and they give you a sticker saying where you are going that you wear on your shirt. Pointless for you but good for them as they try to sell you food, drink, trips, guesthouses....), we were picked up at the office by a mini van which took us to another bus. This bus took us to Khao Sok and then a truck took us to our guesthouse. We arrived about 3pm after 9 hours, 2 mini vans, 2 buses, 1 ferry, 1 tuk tuk, and 1 truck. Sometimes you just have to go with the flow.

Khao Sok is a National Park in central Thailand, it's basically a huge rainforest. We stayed at Khao Sok Rainforest Resort and we got a warm welcome from our hosts who were some of the friendliest people we met in all of Thailand. Our bungalow was right by the river and as it was the rainy season we could hear the water rushing past all the time. Things close up early in the rain forest, you can't get a meal after 9pm but that was OK, we were quite tired after our long journey so had some fantastic green curry and an early night.

In the morning we had booked a six hour jungle trek. We were picked up by our guide, the self styled 'Tigerman' at 8am. He was concerned because we were wearing light clothes and he said we would get dirty. We said we didn't mind. The trek started fairly gently for the first hour or so along a wide path that was obviously heavily trodden. Once we reached the park rangers' station things began to get serious. Tigerman told us that to stop the leeches biting us to buggery, not his words I admit, we would need to tuck our trousers into our socks and douse them with a tobacco and water solution which kills them. It sounds vile but its better than having your blood sucked by what is essentially a slug. It turned out to be great advice because as we set off on the very small trails through thick jungle and over small streams we realised how many there were. We stopped every 20 minutes to flick the dead ones into the dirt.

Brian the lizard

During the trek Tigerman caught tiny frogs and bigger lizards from the jungle for us to hold and kept our spirits up by calling to the tigers that he had some fresh meat for them and to come and get it, I had a bet with him that if I saw a monkey before he did he had to buy us two beers each but although we heard gibbon calls from up in the mountains they were too far away for us to see them. On the way it rained heavily and we were completely soaked, but very hot as it was humid as hell, so by lunch time when we reached the waterfall we were trekking to we were glad to get the swimming togs on and jump in for a dip. Because it was the rainy season the water was high and although we could swim around the rock face to see the waterfall it was difficult not to be carried away by the current. We maybe only swam for 5 minutes in what seemed like a swim tread mill and then had some lunch. During our fried rice feast another couple came down to the waterfall, they, unlike us, had an unexperienced guide and were wearing shorts and sandals. The leech bites did not look pretty.

We trekked back a slightly different way and Tigerman was suitably amusing. At one point he secretly made a mask out of a big leaf and turned round and roared at Ruth with it over his face, this had him in fits of hysterics and Ruth screaming. He was a funny guy. We were nearing the end of our six hours and feeling a bit weary and very wet, and we were all saying what a shame it was we didn't see any monkeys. Just as we came to the end of the trail Tigerman stopped dead in his tracks and looked up in the trees. He spotted them first. We saw a group of about six monkeys swinging through the trees and chasing each other around. It was fantastic to see them in the wild.

We woke in the morning to hear a comotion outside the bungalow and I went to have a look. Tigerman was stood there saying, 'snake snake snake.' It transpired that a seven foot long python was taking a nap in a bush just outside our room, so I got the best pictures I could without gong too close and kept my eye out after that. We felt that we would be able to do a smaller trek on our own but it was raining really hard, as it had done the night before. Rain in the rain forest is not like normal rain, its like having buckets of water poured on your head continuously so we decided that maybe it wasn't a good day to start doing the whole Indiana Jones thing and after breakfast I promptly went back to sleep whilst Ruth read. In the afternoon it had brightened up a bit so we went for a walk around the park perimeter, but not in the jungle. It was still interesting and we saw some monkeys, lots of brightly coloured birds, wild banana trees and white snails, ever seen a white snail anyone? We went for a beer in the reggae bar to kill the time and ended up having several. I phoned Kev as it was his birthday and by the time we remembered that dinner finishes at 9pm we were too late, so had more beer instead.

Richard the long tailed macaque

Look at the size of it......and what about the snake!

The following day was our last day and we were determined that we would go on our trek. Luckily it was brighter and there was no rain so we grabbed some lunch from the guesthouse and set off for Sip Et Chan Waterfall. We had bought a guide book from the guesthouse so we weren't completely in the dark but the trail proved to be very small, quite overgrown and very wet from the previous two days. It took us about two hours to get there through three kilometres (or so the guide said) of undergrowth and along the way we saw a huge red and black butterfly, lizards and all kinds of weird plants. On the way back, after lunch we had a bit of a hairy experience when the path gave way under my foot and I nearly fell down a 50 foot drop, luckily I grabbed a vine that was hanging down and stopped myself before I went plummeting into the abyss. Ruth was a bit unnerved about it but I had it under control, what with my extensive jungle experience. Ha. We followed some tracks that we found off the trail for a while in the hope of seeing something bigger than a gnat's ass but I think we probably scared whatever it was away long before. By the end we were completely knackered but in any case, Khao Sok Rocked.

Steve the lizard

It was a tough trek