An early rise at my hotel

A quick breakfast

And then it’s off to Khao Sok National Park, I’d seen photos of its lake it and I just had to go there! An hour’s drive from Khao Lak I have to wait here (photo) for an hour for more people to arrive before we continue to the lake

Here’s a map of the lake, I’m currently at the ‘you are here’ (duh), and the trip will continue to the damn on the east of the lake from where boats will take us to Raft House 3 (middle of the lake, southern end)

The view is getting more interesting here with these unfamiliarly shaped mountains

One of the typical Thai scams here: later in the day we’ll be going to a cave, we are 15 minutes from where we need to be and stop at this little shop, we are told that because we all go into a cave we must all have specific torch and here we can buy one if we don’t have one. So clearly the trip organisers have a deal with this shop: we bring you customers and everyone will be buying a torch so we want a commission. Everyone reluctantly buys a torch (they should have told us beforehand) and we continue

We have just arrived at the Ratchaprabha Marina and see boat after boat leave with people to take them to whichever Raft House they’ll be staying at. It looks fabulous here!

Not that many boats left though by the time we finally get there and of course the little group I’m part of arrive when there is absolutely no boat left, they’ve all gone! We have to have to wait and wait and wait and wait in the heat and nobody tells us anything. Everytime we ask one of the Thai crew that just sits there on the ground: ‘When boat come!? We wait long time. We want boat!’ we get told in very bad English: ’15 minute’. We are all royally pissed off of having to wait so long while everyone else has already left and with zero communication from the crew. But after 1.5 hours finnally a boat came back and took us on our trip

We tried to forget the stress and enjoy the view, which is nice, and the apparent wind is very welcome too

This is an artificial lake, a reservoir, created by building a damn and flooding the area, I wonder how deep it is

Some lovely views

And lots of boats, speedboats…

…and these traditional ones

I guess the lake can’t be that deep if trees are still poking out above the water

And then, as if we hadn’t had enough of our patience tested, the engine breaks down!

I use the time we’re lying still to talk to this lovely Dutch couple (I gave them url of my blog so they might visit here one day, if so: “Hoi! Hoe gaat ie?”)

They fixed they engine

We arrive at Raft House 3

Which looks deserted but that’s because all the others – who arrived here 1.5 hours ago – have already left for the cave trip

We first have our reheated lunch

Brings back memories… in this case however they are shoes for people to use in the cave, Luckily I brought my own shoewear

Anyway, so this is it, this is where we’ll be spending the night, lots of little bungalows on floatation devices

Time for our cave trip, first we need to go on a little boat trip again to get to the start of the walk

Our group is maybe 10 people in total

Start of the track, lush green jungle

At some point we overtake a big unrelated group

Should be far now

It’s a nice jungle walk I must say

The cave!

Entrance, cave looks cool, I hope to take some great photos here, I even brought my tripod!

Oh yeah, it’s the Nam Talu Cave

Damn, I’ve only just set up my tripod and now the group that we overtook is already right behind us and catching up

Ok, by now my group is 10 minutes ahead of me, followed by the other group (of maybe 60 people) and I am at the very end trying to take some cool photos. I can forget about that, there will be people in every shot, besides that I feel the urge to hurry up because my group is so far ahead of me now

Some big spider species this cave is known for

Between this and the previous photo was a lot of wading through sometimes waist deep water, which was cool! No time whatsoever for any photos, I guess a private tour would be needed

I’ve managed to overtake that entire group of 60 again and am now hoping to see a sign of my own group, I don’t remember this little bridge so I hope I’m still following the correct path back to the boat!

Sweet! I made it just in time. Hungry now, looking forward to dinner

We arrive back at the Raft House

But no food yet, after a short rest we first we go on yet another boat tour, looking for wildlife! Exciting!

Unfortunately the boats stay so far away from the shore that you’d have trouble spotting even an elephant

So we just enjoy being on the water and the views and forget about the wildlife

Nice sky

I was sooo looking forward to dinner and then they put this smelly and ugly looking fish on the table! Luckily there’s a massaman curry as well, which isn’t bad to be honest, but the smell of that fish…

Everyone having dinner

The bungalow. It’s absolutely stinking hot in there and there’s no fan or anything. It’s me and two other random guys sleeping here, the bungalows are welded on floating barrels, so there’s a lot of metal and also a lot of metal on metal contact when the bungalow moves on the water which results in loud squeaky noises, I am not expecting a deep sleep…

Nite nite everybody