Into The Jungle

The train arrived at Surat Thani – which looked like a place where you get off the train and get on to a bus to keep going on to somewhere else – and touts were herding sleepy travelers in different directions. I was one of few going in my chosen direction, to Khao Sok National Park, but I chose to trust the touts and go with them – first the bus was going to come in a couple of hours, and then it was going to come in a few minutes, and then it was going to leave from here, and then I was rushed over there. Once I got on the bus I felt better – and had new appreciation for my mastery of the system in Morocco. I reminded myself that Edie’s brother Andrew said Thailand was easy for women traveling alone – and Linda had said it was easy too. I guess that wasn’t hard – just momentarily stressful. The countryside flew by, getting more picturesque as we approached the national park – lots of trees, some mountains – and then I was dropped off. I had a hotel name, but there was a man who met the bus with a handmade sign and a friendly manner (and a promise to bring me elsewhere if I didn’t like his place) – so I went with him, on to Khao Sok Jungle Huts. I had an individual hut by the river, with a steep staircase (glad I left the big green suitcase behind!). By this time the light snack I had had on the train had worn off, so I had a second breakfast at the family-run dining hut – a shoes-off area, as are most Thai homes.


Next, I went on an elephant trek – I didn’t know then that I could have done this at several other destinations in Thailand; it made sense to me that elephants would be in the jungle. Elephants used to be an important part of the logging industry but now there’s no more logging – the elephants can’t go back to the wild so often they and their mahouts (a trainer/handler/caretaker – each elephant has its own person) go into the tourist industry. It is extremely cool going through the jungle atop an elephant. When I returned, I walked along the road from the Jungle Huts to the park entrance, noting restaurants and other trekking options, found an internet café (being whisked away was all well and good and I was happy with where I ended up, but now I wanted confirmed reservations for the rest of the week), took a shower and had lunch. Then I went into the national park for a short but steep rainforest hike. Per Lonely Planet, the Khao Sok rainforest is a remnant of a 160-million-year-old forest ecosystem that is much older and richer than the forests of the Amazon and central African regions. Then it was back to the Jungle Huts for dinner – the food was great, and it was really dark out there, so why go elsewhere? It occurred to me that the mosquito nets in the rooms were more than decorative – right by the river, in the jungle and all – but if there were any mosquitoes, they stayed on their side of the net. I had had to jettison my white noise machine in Rabat, but for the most part I slept well on this trip – fans and/or air conditioning made a noise that I found soothing (and of course made the air more comfortable as well).