On Wednesday I decided to carry on teaching the body as I had the week before because I only ended up teaching 2 lessons over the whole week so I realised there was no point changing the topic. I taught two lessons in the morning and still had my afternoon 12:30 to go. After my second lesson we were told that the principal wanted to take us to his orchard to pick mangosteen (remember the best fruit in the world?!). We jumped at the chance, first he drove us (with Buhlan to translate) to his home where we met some of his family. Then we moved on to the orchard. We were given buckets and he joked in Thai that if we didn't fill the bucket, we wouldn't be allowed back into our home. The only problem was that the ants love the mangosteens due to their sweetness. Everytime I picked a mangosteen off the tree, I'd have a family of ants running up my arm and having a little nibble. My remedy for this was to pick one, kill 5 ants, pick one... Buhlan thought it was hilarious.
After we went to the nicest restaurant in Bansong which Lan has taken us to before for soup, rice and noodles. We were showing the principal that we could count to 5 which he enjoyed and began teaching us more numbers. He also asked about Koh Tao and we showed him some pictures.
That evening we went shopping and found some pretty interesting canned food.
Pigeon and chicken feet. Nice. We decided against both and just bought the ingredients for a simple sausage and tomato pasta.
On Thursday, as we left the house to go to school we got a little bit stuck because there was a sports day parade going past! This country is strange but oh so exciting.
Then on Friday, after teaching until 2:30, Lan dropped us at the van station in Ban Song. She spoke to the driver for us to check that there definitley was a van we could get from Surat Thani city centre to Khao Sok National Park. They thought there was but weren't too sure if we would miss it. We got the van anyway into Surat Thani and got loads of stares by the 16 other passengers and the usual whispers of 'farang' went round.
We got to the van station around an hour and a half/two hours later due to traffic and were pushed towards an English speaking Thai man who sold us a ticket to Khao Sok and told us it's the last bus At 5. So at around 6:10 we got on the bus. Classic Thai time! We were curious for a while wether the bus was ever going to come and passed the time speaking with the bus man, he was asking us about Ban Song and teaching there.
The bus to Khao Sok took about 2 hours and when we got there there didn't seem to be a lot around, just lots of dark jungle! When we got off the bus there were a few cars about, a man approached us farang's getting off and asked us all where we were going and lead us to further transport. Before we knew it we were getting into a 4X4 with this man. As soon as we were in I had a little panic of thinking is this even a taxi?! Who is this guy! We could definitley be dragged into the middle of the jungle right now and no one would know. Luckily after a quick scan I saw he had a license hanging up on his windscreen, well it could have been fake but still, my worry was pointless because within 5 minutes we were dropped off at our hotel.
We were welcomed by the loveliest couple and the man told us that his home town is Ban Song so he was very excited that we were teaching there! We were shown to our room along a wooden walk way and were warned to watch our step as it wasn't well lit and some of the planks of wood were broken. Bit scary! The walkway was also quite high with no rail, classic Thailand. It would be a health and safety nightmare at home but I kind of enjoy that it's allowed here.
We had a lovely little room with pink princess mosquito nets, winning! We knew that Laura, Amanda, Rebecca and Victoria had already checked in but we couldn't contact them because we all had no signal and no wifi. We also forgot to ask which huts they were in so we could go and knock. We decided they must be in a restaurant so we'd go see if we could find them.
We started to walk along the path to the restaurants but it got scarily dark very fast so we decided to go to the closest one as it was late anyway. We enjoyed dinner in our restaurant with bats circling in and out and a plethora of lizards on the walls and lights along with a loud buzz from the jungle. It might sound horrific to some but I was actually really enjoying it!
On Saturday morning we got up early so we could book some sort of tour of the national park. We asked at reception and we were booked on a tour before we really knew what it was due to the receptionist's hastiness but who doesn't love a mystery tour!
Whilst we were eating some breakfast at the hotel, Victoria and Rebecca appeared. They were booked to do a jungle trek which was leaving at a similar time to our tour. We made plans to meet up with them after our tours in the evening the old fashioned way as our phones still weren't working to get wifi or signal.
Here's a quick snapshot of the hotel before our tour. Jungle paradise.
We were bundled into a van with a Thai man as our driver who introduced himself as 'Big Man' which he certainly was. We drove around to a few more hotels to pick other people up before doing the hour and a bit journey towards the National Park and Chewlan Lake.
First with our tour group was a long tail boat ride around Chewlan Lake which was incredible.
After enjoying some incredible views on our boat which was also driven by Big Man, we stopped at some raft houses for lunch and a swim.
After a good lunch of rice, chicken, fish and fruit we were told that we would shortly be getting in the boat for 5 minutes and then beginning our jungle trek to the cave that we would be swimming in! Big Man told us to bring a lamp (torch) for the cave and a camera and to wear trainers not flip flops. We didn't know to bring torches so didn't have any. Also, i've been using my phone as a camera and seeing as there'd been talk of swimming through the cave I didn't think my iPhone would really fancy a swim so I left it at the raft houses along with my bag. I was a bit worried that it could get stolen there but Big Man but a towel over all of our bags and everyone knows that towels work better than padlocks, lockers or safety deposit boxes as measures of security so my mind was at ease.
Sadly this part of the journey is assisted with no photos. I was tempted to draw some sketches to assist my jungle tales, I told Joy of the crazy silly thought that I had and she decided it would be funny so here goes.
We got off our long tail boat after a 5 minute ride from the raft houses. The edges of the river bank were really high and muddy after we'd got off the boat onto one side we had to slide down, walk through the river and slip up the other side. Notice big man leading our tour group. The picture is to scale, he was that big.
We then walked down an extremely slippy and muddy path on our way to the jungle. There was a stream we had to cross and there was a tiny thin log acting as a bridge. It was too far to jump so you had to have some good balance. It wasn't a tiny drop down to the stream either, it would have been tricky to get back up. Luckily we all put on a good tight rope act and made it across without too much trouble.
Okay so I may have exaggerated on this drawing. We didn't see any snakes but we did have to do a good bit of climbing and holding on to trees as it had previously been raining loads so the jungle had turned into a bit of a slip and slide as Joy found out when she landed on her bum! Har har har! There were also quite a few places in the jungle where we had to wade through the water in fairly strong currents which was made difficult when we were walking on slippy rocks. I know how Bear Grylls feels now on his adventures ;).
After about an hour of walking we came to a waterfall and Big Man climbed straight in there! It looked like too much fun to skip it and it was very hot so we all wanted to climb in. Whilst clambering gracefully over some slippy rocks I slipped and cut my knee on a rock. That red bit in the picture is me heavily exaggerating how bad my cut was.
It's not bad at all but it didn't half sting! I've got a good scar from when I fell on a waterfall though. Total 'gap yah' story.
We continued on through the jungle and came to the cave.
Big Man went in first with his torch and we all followed tentatively. It was dark and slippy, you had to negotiate your way over slippy rocks whilst not hitting your head on the top of the cave. The water got to hip level and we saw a little baby crocodile in there! Shortly, it opened out and got deep to the point of swimming against a current. We had to grab the rocks to pull ourselves along so we didn't get pushed back. At this point Joy began to panic and it was a good decision for us all to leave. We had heard stories before we went that a few years ago some tourists went in the same cave and died as the water level was too high and they got in trouble. Because of this you can only go in at certain times of the day when it's at a safe level but it was still a bit frightening!
We trecked all the way back to the long tail boat all looking a bit sweaty, wet and muddy but only minorly injured so all in all it was a great trip! Big Man had to turn our boat around on the river and was having a few problems.
HE FELL IN! Hahahaha haaa. It was very funny.
A soggy Big Man drove our boat back to the raft houses to collect our belongings from under his security towel and I had another swim and some fruit.
Reunited with my phone I took a post jungle experience selfie, looking a bit disheveled!
Soon after, Big Man drove our boat back across Chewlan Lake and then returned us by van to our respective hotels. What a job that man has!
That night we met up with all four of the girls for dinner and then drinks at a Reggae bar.
My 'Thai Spirit' cocktail wasn't so great. The funny thing about most cocktail menus you find here is that none explain what is in the cocktail, and I quite enjoy the suprise. Jack, one of our friends that we met in Bangkok orderd a 'Gay Power' whilst playing the name judging game and it was delicious. After a few of us tried it we all had 'Gay Power'.
We played a few card games in the Reggae Bar and had a really nice chilled night, due to being right next to the Khao Sok National Park, the little village doesn't have too much going on and was a bit more of a family place although there were plenty of backpackers there!
We did the 10 minute dark walk back to our hotel huts powered with our phone's torches.
In the morning myself and Joy met Rebecca and Victoria for breakfast about a 10 minute walk away. They left to get their bus back to their school soon after.
We then met Laura and Amanda to go tubing on the river. We were packed into a van with four black rubber rings with a Thai man that looked like the guy out of the jungle book so I named him Mowgli.
We were put into our rings and got swept away by the current. It wasn't very relaxing as you had to paddle away from and around rocks, the bank, trees as handing branches. It was however, very fun. Mowgli got out of his ring to grab and direct ours at some points where it was looking a bit dangerous or when the river went in two directions!
When we got back to the hotel the four of us asked the guy on reception to book us a van back to Surat Thani for 1pm. We then went to get some lunch at a restaurant with the slowest service in the world. Normally service and cooking time it's that long so we thought we'd be fine with an hour but we were so wrong. Annoyingly we couldn't do anything about it. We knew we were going to miss our van but we'd orderd the food too long ago to leave! Joy did the 10 minute walk back to tell our hotel what had happened before our food came. The guy at the hotel wasn't happy at all but there wasn't much he or we could do about it so he booked us onto the 2pm van.
The journey out of Khao Sok was so scenic and was great to see as we missed it on the way in as it was dark.
We made it back to Surat Thani and didn't have to wait too long for our bus to Ban Song.
Lan dropped us home from the bus station and we got some rest ready for school the next day after a busy week.
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