Day 100 - Tuesday, May 1
It's hard to believe that it's already May and that I left the US over 100 days ago. The time just seems to fly by.
Air conditioned rooms were relatively quite expensive in Khao Sok, so I was slumming it a bit in a little elevated tree house/hut with holes between the wood planks that made up the floor, only a fan to cool off, and a mosquito net, which, usually, is not a good sign (but the bugs ended up not being too bad). A picture from the
Jungle Huts website that makes it look deceptively less rough than in actuality, but for $10/night, it's hard to complain.
Like Khao Lak, Khao Sok was a bit of a ghost town, with many places closed for the low season. I spent all day on the hiking trails that were accessible from the entrance to the park, which was next to the small town where I was staying. Like the town, the trails were empty and I hardly saw anyone all day. Empty trails are nice and peaceful, but being the first one through also means I took out a lot of spider webs along the way, which is not only bad for the fact that I end up with sticky spider web on me and have to worry about some spider crawling on me and biting me, but I'm probably also saving the lives of a few mosquitoes, and I think everyone knows how I feel about mosquitoes. Luckily I saw this guy's web before running into it - hard to tell from the photo but he was easily bigger than my hand (yes there is a spider in the picture - it's not just a bunch of leaves).
It was cool hiking through the park, which had a jungly tropical feel to it. About the only drawback was that the ground had a lot of leeches roaming around, (the water too, which is why I opted not to swim) so I had to keep an eye on my feet and constantly remove them from my shoes, though luckily none ever succeeding in drawing blood. A few pictures from the trail:
I was little worried about a rainstorm catching me 5 miles from my hostel and having to make the long trek back in wet clothes, on a slippery trail, getting pelted by rain (which is probably why it's a ghost town in the wet season), but luckily it was nice weather all day, though hot, as always. I don't think I've ever sweat so much in a 8-hour period in my entire life.
Day 101 - Wednesday, May 2
I did a tour on Wednesday that included a boat ride across Cheow Lam Lake and a guided hike to and through Nam Talu Cave. Luckily the weather was nice all day and the lake was beautiful. It reminded me a bit of the fjords in New Zealand with the rocky cliffs jutting up straight out of the water. I got a little camera happy on the lake, but it was quite a picturesque place.
The hike to the cave was also cool - along the way we spotted this crazy looking elephant grasshopper:
Other photos from the hike:
The cave itself was huge; here's the entrance.
It was home to the biggest spiders I've ever seen in my life, which you can't really tell from the picture, but trust me, these things were massive, the largest was probably about the size of my head:
It was also home to a bunch of bats, which weren't very shy:
The cave narrowed a bit at the exit and required some swimming and climbing to get out. A photo of the exit:
I almost didn't do the lake and cave tour, but am very glad I did. While the hiking trails by the park entrance were cool, the lake and cave were definitely the highlights of Khao Sok.
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