October 26th, 2024
In the morning, I took a minivan taxi from Krabi to Khao Sok
village, a small enclave near the Khao Sok National Park. In my limited research that I did online
before coming to this country, I’d read a few blogs that stated that this was
their favourite place in Thailand…so why not check it out? The main highlight is Cheow Lan Lake, which
is interestingly about an hour away from the little village, but this village is
where most of tourists stay.
After checking in at the Palmview Resort where I booked a
little hut raised up about 12 feet above the ground, I wandered into the village
for a late lunch. Later I tried to
figure out what my plan for activities was for the next three days. I found a small tour company and the lady
there named Mook was super helpful. I ended
up planning five different activities:
ATVing, a night trek, a half day morning hike, canoeing in the afternoon
and a full day at Cheow Lan Lake…in that order.
My hut:
The next morning at 10:30, I was picked up by a young woman
and even younger man and driven about 4 kilometres outside of Khao Sok to an
ATV place. The woman in her early 20s,
Maia, was to be my guide and I was the only one on the tour as it is still the
tail end of the rainy season, so business is slow everywhere.
Maia asked me about my experience with ATVs and I told her “Not
a lot” but my last ride was in November in Uganda, so I was relatively
current. These ATVs were automatic, so
they were easier than the ones in Uganda, but not quite as fun. After a few laps around the practice area, I
was good to go.
On one of the first little hills that was covered in hard
packed red mud, Maia climbed it easily, but I could not get more than halfway
up before spinning out. The young man
who had driven the truck was nearby and helped push me up the little incline. I felt like I was a rookie, which granted I
was, but throughout the rest of the ride my tail end seemed to be slipping side
to side whereas Maia’s ATV drove straight.
I checked out our respective tires and hers were definitely better than
mine. All that being said, I actually
enjoyed having to counter steer a lot.
Our first stop was a viewpoint of a “heart shaped hill”. It kinda looked like a heart, and I played
along with the tourist gimmick and held my hands in a heart-shape as Maia tried
to capture it with my phone.
The heart shaped hill...hard to see but it's in the middle of the photo:
Later we stopped by a small forest of rubber trees that were
planted in a grid-like pattern. Each
tree had a little plastic bucket hanging by a wire about 4-5 feet above the
ground, it reminded me of maple syrup trees in Canada. Maia explained to me how the farmers would use
a special knife to cut a strip of the bark at an angle, just 5-6 millimetres deep,
which caused the latex resin to seep into the bucket…if done correctly. This is known as rubber tapping. Usually this was done at night as the heat as
the latex would coagulate the resin and would not run into the bucket. Supposedly, it would take a couple of farmers
4-5 hours to work their way around this plantation.
The rubber trees:
Next, she taught me a bit about the oil palms which were planted
nearby. Palm oil is an edible
vegetable oil from the fruit of these palms, which is not technically a tree. The oil is used in food manufacturing, beauty
products and as a biofuel. Unfortunately,
the lure of this cash crop has caused the burning of natural jungles in order
to plant oil palms in places like Borneo, which is endangering many animal
species like orangutans.
Parking by the trees:
I asked Maia if she grew up in the area, but she was
originally from Bangkok and had been here for two years. She liked Khao Sok but occasionally missed
big city things like going to the movie cinema.
I queried where she learned her English, which was decent, and her
answer was not what I expected: “From video games.” I guess she plays a lot of online games and
from chatting with other gamers, she’s picked up a lot of her English. Good on you girl! In a lot of her explanations, she frequently
used the phrase “By the way…” It was
cute.
Reaching the far end of our tour, we walked up a small slope
to see a nice view. There was a small
man-made pond there that the local farmer installed in order to irrigate the crops. I was surprised to see koi fish in the water
and Maia explained that they help to keep the mosquitos from spawning in the
water.
Walking up to the view:
We drove back the same way that we came and did a few laps
around some trails near the ATV centre. Once
again, I got slightly stuck on an incline of slippery mud and Maia came back
and helped push me up the hill.
It was a super fun couple of hours on the ATV. Maybe not as good as my ATVing
in Uganda where the vehicle had more power, the terrain was a bit more
challenging and it was fun having to wave to all the little kids screaming “Mzungu,
mzungu!” (which means white guy…in a nice way). You felt a bit like a celebrity.
I had planned to go on a jungle trek but in the late after
the skies opened up and just dumped rain.
It continued to rain on and off into the evening so I postponed for the
following evening.
The downpour in the afternoon:
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