Thailand: Khao Sok

The first rain we had experienced in over a month began to fall as we entered Khao Lak- our stopover before Khao Sok. It was an odd, donning the Vietnamese ponchos after such a long time. Whilst searching for somewhere to stay the night we soon realised that we had greatly underestimated the price difference between the North & South of Thailand. In the end we walked for over half an hour along an unlit road to the next village to find a 300baht room. Luckily we just missed the torrential downpour that cut off all the electricity just as we were settling in for the night- our host was very efficient and supplied us with a candle for the evening!

The next day we got the public bus to Khao Sok National Park. Another (freshly built) traditional thai hut on stilts awaited us (one amongst six in our hosts garden). We didn't have to wait long for our first wildlife encounter as we were soon shown the huge gecko that lived in the eves and the monitor lizard that inhabited the tree hole next to the washing line. During our stay we saw nearly as much wildlife in the garden as we did in the park, including the tree frog that lived behind a picture frame and the giant toad that was a resident in the main house.

Pit Viper no.1

The park itself was almost too similar in places to the enclosures in the lost world, with broken concrete steps and rusty signposts. Nick soon became the first victim of leeches- a species we would get to know very well over the next few days! Amongst the bigger animals that we encountered there were giant 'bird eating' golden orb spiders, gliding lizards (one which flew past my face), long-tailed macaques & dusky langurs. One evening we decided to a night safari and were fortunate to get a very enthusiastic and knowledgeable guide (the same cant be said for a lot of them that we saw). Within the first 5 minutes he found 2 civet cats in the garden, and on the way back a slow loris climbing along an electricity cable. Inside the park he also found us these species along with a very spindly mouse deer, porcupine, black scorpion, many roosting birds- oh and another pit viper. I should probably mention at this point that we found one ourselves the day before and Nick risked getting a photo of it (I told him off after).

We still had one bird we really wanted to see- hornbill. After traveling to the giant lake at the centre of the park and kayaking around it we had no success. Then on the last day whilst looking at langurs we spotted one flying above the canopy. The best word to describe it would be: prehistoric. It completely matched the lost world atmosphere.

We were sad to leave our second hut but our next destination was the Similan Islands and scuba diving, so that made the process a whole lot easier.