KHAO SOK NATIONAL PARK!
After our horrifying last experience of booking onward travel through a travel agency we weren't particularly excited at the idea of doing it again but leaving Samui independently was going to be a lot more expensive and a lot less straight forward than not so we had to put ourselves through it once again.
We got picked up at our guesthouse and were ready for another odyssey but this leg of our journey luckily turned out to be easy and painless. And quite short as well. Our destination: Khao Sok Village, a small quiet hub nestled in the heart of the Khao Sok National Park. Here's a couple of pictures of the place and of our bungalow I wish I had taken but I didn't and googled instead.
The Khao Sok National Park grounds sit halfway between the Andaman and the Gulf coasts and its characteristic dramatic limestone formations and lowland rainforest are over 160 million years old (over 100 million years older than the Amazon rainforest) making it one of the oldest on the planet.
The highlight of this National Park and undoubtedly one of the highlight of our trip (I'm talking Top 3 here...) is the man-made Chiew Lan Lake, one of Thailand's most scenic bodies of fresh water which features limestone karst cliffs that rise dramatically from calm, pristine emerald water.
We went on an overnight tour of the park, sailed through the lake on a long tail boat and spent the night on a floating bungalow.
Waking up with this view.
And swimming in this gorgeous water.
This experience itself was worth all the time and money we spent here in Asia and with so much more to offer such as terrific hikes and waterfalls, caves and viewpoints, unique flora and fauna, the chance to camp in the jungle and kayak its emerald waters it is definitely a place we'll visit again. One day.
Next: Koh Lanta.