THAILAND - Khao Sok National Park (written from Bangkok, 20th June)

"The most beautiful National Park in Thailand" promised one website. Not much written about and rarely visited by the convoy of tourists that pass through it on route to Phuket and the islands, hard to resist really, especially with the promise of afore mentioned leeches. An adventure.
After consuming plenty of beer to ensure sleep, we hopped on the night ferry, an overloaded, rickety vessel that had us lying next to each other packed in tightly like sardines with a ceiling so low that you had to negotiate your way to the toilet on your hands and knees. Still, quite fun, or perhaps that was the beer. Apparently the boat went through a terrific storm in the night, the driver going at full pelt, the boat bouncing off huge waves. I say apparently because I slept soundly through the whole thing happily oblivious. Charley wasn't so lucky.
At 5.00am we staggered off the boat spent a few mysterious hours being shuffled on and off buses, driven in circles very slowly while being played loud pop music to stop us from nodding off until we were finally allowed onto the bus to Khao Sok.

After 2 weeks of beach life, the dense tangle of jungle, out of which rose high, craggy limestone cliffs, was so refreshing that we were not long installed in our pretty little jungle cabin (checked thoroughly by Charley of evidence of bugs or any other jungle life that might have crept in) before I was itching to explore. I dragged him, exhausted but good natured, into the jungle with those fatal words: "Let’s find that waterfall."
Any of you who might have read my previous entries might remember my other futile attempts at finding evasive waterfalls in South East Asia. My track record ain't great. With this in mind a 4km trek through thick and rather wild jungle might seem a little ambitious. But the path seemed sturdy enough and I was so exhilarated to be in a noisy, drippy rain forest (what is the difference between a rainforest and a jungle?) that we set off feeling optimistic, well I did, any misgivings that Charley had about the venture he kept to himself. 4km isn't that far after all...
No not that far, but baring in mind that it is 4km of track that became increasingly narrow and took us up and down into rivers, along deep ravines and through the undergrowth, stopping every few minutes to pick leeches off our unprotected flip-flop clad feet, you can see how it was slow going. We met some fellow jungle explorers coming the other way clad in the full regalia: Kaki shorts, long socks, walking sticks and thick boots. They eyed us with pitying contempt as we passed and revealed with some pride their blood-covered legs from giant leeches that they had had to burn off. Still, never to be defeated, even by darkening skies, rumbles of thunder and the threat that it wasn't that long before the sun would think about setting and we only had one liter of water between us that was running low, we pushed on. Dripping and exhausted we finally stumbled across the waterfall and had a well deserved dip in the icy water. We did not have long, however, because we still had the 4km trek back again. By now we were seasoned jungalists (not in the music sense) and made our way back to base without incident, our mutual leech checking becoming rather efficient. We stumbled into the open air gasping, gulped down bottles of water and collapsed exhausted, unused to such activity after the sleepiness of the islands. It had been a long day.
The following day we took things a little easier and followed nice wide tracks to the waterfalls and swimming holes closer to home. In the evening we sat by the fire in a deserted guest house talking to a chatting young guy who proudly told us that his jungle held tigers, wild elephants and bears. We were wondering what had left that alarmingly large pile of dung... We left him happily hunting frogs with a pitch fork and retired exhausted again and ready for another day of traveling.