Day 10: Hiking in Khao Sok National Park
[ Sally typing, this is a catch-up post Day 10 was actually June 27 ]
We rented a treehouse-kinda thing, really just a cabin up on stilts at the Treetop River Bungalows just next to the National Park. Last night we were beat after a long ride, so we kept things simple and ate dinner at the guest house’s restaurant. It was a good meal of traditional Thai food. Tommy made buddy’s with a cat who we nicknamed MJ (rest in peace, yes we heard). Tommy fed MJ the discarded tails from the shrimp in his dish and it was love from there.
Later, MJ was in my lap as I ate, and the owner snuck up and started beating the cat! Poor kittie, we assured her it was ok that MJ was socializing with us and she backed off. Clearly, MJ doesn’t see much kindness so it was pretty easy to win him over.
This morning we had a really nice breakfast at a place down the street, with a wooden deck and a cute view of the surrounding forest. We then headed to the Park for a 6km hike. It was pretty easy hiking, a wide dirt path most of the way. At the end we found a swimming hole with a “waterfall” which was more of a rapid, but still really nice and it felt great to jump into the cool water. Feeling anything cold is such a foreign feeling at this point, but really really nice!
After emerging from the water and gathering our things, it started to rain and we found a little shelter up the hill. Waiting for the rain to pass, a couple of guys emerged from the woods, dirty, sweaty, tired, and covered in leeches! David and Stefan were there names and they turned out to be fun companions during the rest of our time there in Khao Sok.
David, a Brit from Belgium, now in the process of moving to NYC (have I got that right David?) just happened to be doing a bike tour of Thailand, going North to South — opposite from us. So we traded stories and tips, and looked at maps together later on. Stefan is an electrical engineer from Germany who has done quite a bit of traveling around Asia and gave us a great tip to check out Golden Impian Divers for our scuba certification course when we get to Koh Tao (which we did! thanks Stefan!). Here’s David’s blog of his adventures bike touring around Thailand, he’s a really entertaining guy and a great writer, so it’s worth a peek!
We cleaned up back at the room after our hike and got a visit from MJ. We also discovered two leeches on Tommy’s ankles which he removed and I don’t think he stopped bleeding for a few hours. I didn’t know that there are such things as terrestrial leeches — I thought they were only found in the water. But somehow I got lucky wearing shorts and no socks, no leeches!
We met back up with the fellas and had dinner at a place down a long dark gravel road. Dinner was great and it was great to be in the company of some fellow travellers.
Back to the treehouse to pass out!
1 year ago