Due to the tour I booked down to Singapore being cancelled, I booked another one with Intrepid that was very similar although it did mean that I would go Back to Kao Sok National Park for a couple of nights (see previous blog).

So my last tour started with another overnight train down to Surat Thani then a minibus over to the park. Since I had so much fun last time, I convinced everyone we should go tubing down the river again. Didn’t see many snakes this time but we did stop off at the monkey temple again. We found a little cool bar that was ran by English guy selling large 750ml beers for 50 baht (£1) so spent the evening there getting a little tipsy with the Irish couple Steve & Maria.

I decided to spend the next day by myself just chilling out in the jungle, had a little wonder in the stream and watched the wildlife go by. I was really impressed that they had Wifi, so spent a large part of the day sitting on my porch playing on the internet. We went back to the same bar for dinner and a few beers; it was pretty cool having English style chips again with brown sauce.

The next three days we spent in Krabi which is a beautiful area full of islands and beaches (they actually filmed The Beach one of the islands) it’s also really overrun with Tourists. We did spend one day touring all the islands and lagoons on a speed boat and snorkelling around all the coral. I’ve never snorkelled before and it took me quite a while to get used to breathing underwater. Matters weren’t helped by the guys on the boat throwing bread at me causing the fish to go into a feeding frenzy around me (even having a little nibble at my fingers). We even stopped at a beach that was inhabited by a tribe of monkeys (that seemed to like coke). It was a really amazing day that I’m not likely to forget in a hurry.

After our Chang Mai trekking experience we headed back to Bangkok before we stated the second part of the tour to Southern Thailand. We had the majority of 2 days free so first off we went for a well deserved massage then a spot of lunch before we said goodbye to Clare and Taryn who were heading down to Phuket for a few days of sun. That evening we met up with the new group and guide who from the start seemed a little incompetent. He started the meeting before everyone was there, he forgot to introduce himself or any of the group to each other or organise a meal which resulted in only a few of us going out for dinner that night.

The following day Pam, myself and the Finish couple Katja and Jukka hired a longtail boat for an hour that took us around the maze of canals around Bangkok where we saw loads of houses up on stilts and kids swimming around in the water which I suspect may be mainly raw sewerage.
On the way back to the hotel we passed a red t-shirted protest (I don’t really remember the names of the groups but I know its yellows Vs reds and the yellows have a penchant for airports). We quickly hurried past them as I’d heard that there’d been a few times grenades had been tossed into the middle of the protests.

That evening we boarded the third overnight train of our tour down to the jungles of Koh Sok National Park which proved to be really good fun.
We spent our first afternoon relaxing down the river on giant inner tubes. The guy who organised it and joined s down the river kept pointing out the various snakes and birds along the river but unfortunately it was too wet to take my camera.

The Bungalows we stayed in where really basic but cool, you don’t get any hot water, but you do get monkeys playing on the roof and porch. I know which I’d rather have (although we did have to keep checking everything for snakes.

We spent the next day hiking around the actual national park although our fitness levels and the humidity proved to be our downfall again and we only really saw the most accessible parts of the park, only a few monkeys and waterfalls. We spent the afternoon playing in the river and on the rope swing.

The next morning was New Years Eve and we had to get up at 5am to catch the ferry to Koh Samui. It was soon apparent that the big black clouds in the sky were here to stay and the next 5 days we had planned beachy islands might not be as sunny as we’d hoped.