Visited by Jon and Marieke February 2019

When people think about Thailand usually islands and the ocean comes to mind. Few people think about lakes, but as it turns out, Cheow Lan Lake in southern Thailand’s Khao Sok National Park is one of the country’s greatest highlights.  While Khao Sok has all the infrastructure of a great destination, it is out of the way from more popular spots and therefore not as well known to travellers. In fact, I don’t think Jon or I had spoken to a single person during our time in South East Asia who had been to Khao Sok or had even heard of it.

To quote the national park’s Google Listing “Khao Sok National Park is a nature reserve in southern Thailand containing dense virgin jungle, towerlike limestone karst formations and the man-made Cheow Lan Lake”.  This means two very different experiences in one destination.

Khao Sok: The Town

A variety of accommodations are available within walking distance of the jungle entry point.  For some reason, I decided that camping would be a great idea. There was a place right next to the entrance of the park with excellent ratings advertising fixed tents with a futon.  Nostalgic for my tenting days with Steph in Patagonia I booked it.

It turned out that futon means a woven mat and a thin blanket on the floor of the tent.  While uncomfortable, it was at least survivable. It was the heat that was intolerable. We could not open the flaps for more ventilation because the tent was positioned about 10 feet from the dining area where a group of obnoxiously loud travellers decided to hang out until 2am. Without a breeze to go through the tent opening the flaps would not have helped much anyway. The accommodation owners tried quite hard and even gave us a free bbq meal on our first night there, but they turned sour on us when they realized we did not intend to book a jungle or lake tour with them.   

The morning after our arrival we emerged from our tent sore and exhausted and walked two minutes to the entrance of the park.  It is suggested that you only go so far into the jungle (to waterfall #3) without a hired guide, but I had read some reviews saying it was not really an issue.  We decided to risk it and go to the last waterfall on the map (Ton Kloi Waterfall #7) located 7km from the park headquarters. The plan was to go straight there and then check out the other falls on the way back.

The first few kilometres were easy on a wide gravel road and we stopped at the snack bar located near waterfall #3.  Unfortunately, they had run out of water, which we had counted on buying. Great start! Luckily we had brought out Steri Pen so we were able to drink water from the river once we ran out. 

The rest of the trail to the final waterfall took us much longer than we had expected.  The path was constant up and down navigating vines and roots protruding from the ground. We also had to pay attention to where we put our hands, having no idea what kind of insects we would come into contact with.  I am sure we would have appreciated our surroundings more with a guide to interpret, but we never felt lost at any time. When we finally arrived at the endpoint I looked at the waterfall and wondered why we had not just stopped at one a few kilometres back and really enjoyed it.

There was one other couple there (we only saw 4 people on the entire trek) and we hung out for 20 minutes. We went for a quick swim, but hard fruit was falling from the trees above making hanging around dangerous, plus wasps were swarming us as we tried to eat. On the way back, we had no time to stop at the other waterfalls since we had to sign out of the park by a certain time. We emerged from the park exhausted, but feeling accomplished, with another night in our terrible tent to look forward to.

The next morning we awkwardly waited outside our accommodation to get picked up for our lake tour.  If you are wondering why we did not just book with them and avoid the awkwardness, the reason is as follows.  The lake has a combination of privately-owned accommodations and government-owned accommodations. Some tour companies own their own while others (like the place we were staying at) rent the government’s huts.  The price of the tour is the exact same, but the private accommodations are much nicer.

The tour company we signed up with was Smiley. For roughly $100 Canadian each, the tour included minivan transport to the lake, a boat ride (through what looks like Halong Bay without the garbage) to the floating huts, 2 days of meals, multiple boat excursions and a guided walk through a massive cave.  Our assigned guide was named Kit Kat and he took us on all of our excursions.

We were in heaven the moment we saw our bungalow.  It had large glass windows overlooking the lake and our own private ensuite.  We could actually open our front door and dive right into the water. The bungalow also came with an inner tube plus there were a bunch of kayaks for the guests to share. What was more amazing was that almost everyone in our group was over the age of 25, most being in their 30s which is hard to imagine anywhere in Thailand.

During our free time, we became friends with Poppy, Michael and Caitlyn. After a short sunset boat safari and buffet-style dinner, we spent the night drinking from the bar and playing card games and Yahtzee.

The next morning our group went for the cave tour which included another nice boat ride, a 3km trek in the jungle and an hour in Nam Talu Cave filled with bats, toads and spiders with glowing eyes. The water got so deep at points we had to full-on swim through tight spots to move through the cave. We were able to go through the full cave, but during some months the water levels are too high.

We returned to the bungalows for one last group lunch before saying our goodbyes. Most of our group headed back to Khao Sok, but we had opted to head to East to Suri Thani to catch a flight to Vietnam. If we had our time back we would have definitely added on a second night to just relax on the lake.   

Khao Sok Accommodation tips

Khao Sok Town  Accommodations: We regret not booking at Smiley Bungalows in the town of Khao Sok. Some of the other people on the tour stayed there and had great things to say about it.   

Khao Sok Cheow Lan Lake Accommodations: Smiley’s floating bungalows run along either side of the main dining building with basic huts to the left and fancier huts to the right.  The basic huts are usually assigned to tour group booking the huts from Smiley. The nicer ones are used for people like us who booked directly through Smiley.

There are two levels of nicer huts on the right.  This was a bit awkward since some of us got really nice huts with huge windows and others got more Ok huts. We finally figured out that because every guest pays the same price for the tour, couples were paying twice the price for their accommodation versus single people, so couples got the nicer huts. Once that was realized the people who did not get the nicest huts calmed down. The nicer huts have up to three beds in them, so if you make friends with someone while in Koh Sok and opt to share a hut you will likely get nicer digs. You can also opt to stay an extra day and just chill out in your bungalow. If you have time, extend your stay!

Getting to Khao Sok National Park from Ko Phayam

We went from Ko Phayam on the west coast near Ranong. Transferring from Ko Phayam to Khao Sok was easily arranged at the port of Ko Phayam. You need to get a boat then get on the mini-van (this is all booked together). There is only one minivan transfer per day with limited spots so once you know when you want to leave book it as soon as you can.