Monthly Archives: January 2016

Khao Sak – Rainforest Camp

IMG_2114Saturday, January 02, 2016

It was off to Elephant Hill’s Rainforest camp, which is a floating camp on Cheow lan lake. We stopped on the way to the camp to see the dam that created Cheow Lan lake.  According to the literature, the creating of the lake created in the 80’s.  When the area was flooded it created a lot small islands.  Prior to the flooding, communist students used the area to hide out from the government.

After the dam, we headed by boat to the camp.  We passed one other camp on the way but besides that, there was no sign of civilization.The lake was surrounded by limestone mountains.  It reminded me of Halong Bay and Guilin.  I cannot imagine how this looked before the flooding.

After an hour, we arrived and were served lunch.  Afterwards we were handed our keys, we stayed in tent 7 – the Sun Bear.  Each tent was named after a local animal.  The tents were pretty much the same tent as the base camp, just a bit smaller and they sat on rafts.  All in all, there were a couple dozen connect rafts with two common areas for dining.

There was a jungle trek in the afternoon. The trek was  4 km and would take over three hours.  The guide warned this was a challenging trek and there was no turning back once we set out. As much as I wanted to go, I reluctantly decided to stay at base camp. With recent surgery, I couldn’t take the risk.  It was something I really wanted to do and it was hard to watch the boat depart. On the positive side, the camp was very quiet and it was very relaxing to sit and listen to the jungle.

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Khao Sok – The Mangroves

Me and Bamboo (the tour guide)

Me and Bamboo (the tour guide)

January 1st, 2016

I slept very well last night, dozing off to the sounds of the jungle. When I woke up the following morning, I opened the tent screen to find a half-eaten piece of fruit on my door mat. I looked at it puzzled and a groundskeeper cleaning sweeping the walkway saw me looking at it. He pointed and said it was from a bat. I guess I slept through a bat eating his meal. Then again, it was probably perched above and dropped it.

After breakfast we headed out to see the mangroves – the area where the river meets the ocean. Our trip would start with a van to the speedboat, a speedboat to a junk where we would kayak into the mangroves. I have to admit, I have never kayaked before. I have used the rowing machine at the gym but have never kayaked or rowed a boat,.  I had no idea that if you wanted to go left, you paddled on the right. I had a hard time getting the hang of it. It seemed counter intuitive and once we got going, my instinct of padding on the side of the direction you wanted to go kicked in and we would end up landing in the branches/roots of the mangrove. Sophon was pretty good about it but at the end said he would not go kayaking with me again. Continue reading

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Khao Sak – Banyan Tree Canal

Banyan Tree Canal

Banyan Tree Canal

January 1st, 2016

Our last part of the tour was down the Banyan tree Canal.  We crept through this banyan tree-lined canal looking for wildlife.  We weren’t disappointed.  We saw several kinds of snakes and monkeys.  I am not sure how the spotters see these things but they are able to look into a bunch of branches and find a curled up snake.  It is amazing.

The trip down the canal without the snakes was just amazing to see.  I thought, now this is the real jungle cruise, not like the one at Disney and this one is absolutely amazing.

It was back to the base camp for dinner followed by another night in the tent. Nice way to start 2016.

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