We are finished up in Asia now and I will briefly recall our last 10 days here.
We visited the National Park of Khao Sok, which was said to be quite nice and up in the mountains, a change from the beaches were have been the past couple of weeks. Definitely up in the mountains, and definitely much warmer than the beaches as the Andaman Sea keeps you cooler.
Khao Sok has a small village around it to accommodate travelers. The village although quite small, has quite a large opinion of itself. Prices in this village are very high, almost double of that in which we had been staying, and the treks and tours they offer are the highest priced of any we have seen in Asia. That being said we still opted to do a one day Lake Tour, which included long tail boat tour, trekking in jungle and caving. We began the day with a van ride to the lake. This lake was man made about 28 years ago, when they constructed a dam and then subsequently flooded the valley to create this vast lake. They use this dam for the creation of electricity for a wide area. We then boarded a long tail boat and made our way out to the floating bungalows, passing amongst beautiful limestone karsts along the way. The journey took about 1 hour and was interesting to see that there was still tree stumps protruding from the water after all the years the lake has been here. Lunch at the floating village, before we head a short distance from the village to a trail that leads to the cave. We trek about 45 minutes through the jungle to the cave. Our guides said it will rain soon and we must not delay in the cave as you are not to be in the cave when it’s raining, the water rises very quickly and is quite dangerous. Beautiful stalactites and stalagmites, very large spiders and frogs were in the cave along with areas in which we could walk easily and others that required us to swim. We went along in the cave for about 1km before we came to the end and daylight once again. The most exciting part of this trek happened just as we were finishing our trek back to the long tail boat. The rain began just as we reached the boat, and rain it did. Not like the rain we have in Seattle, but rain like you turned on the fire hose full force. We made it back to the floating village, soaking wet of course, and were able to watch the storm as it passed. Jeff decided it would be nice to take a swim! He said, “It feels like a hot tub” you’ve got to try it. So Tim joined him in the lake! After about 45 minutes of downpour it stopped and we boarded the long tail boat to make our way back. As luck would have, with just about 5 minutes before we reached the dam the rain began once again!
Khao Lak
After our short stay in the National Park we moved back to the coast. Khao Lak was our last stop before heading back to Bangkok. Khao Lak sits on the Andaman Sea directly north of Phuket. As you may remember, a large tsunami hit the coast of Thailand 26 December 2004, and Khao Lak was the area of greatest loss of life that occurred in Thailand. We visited the Tsunami Museum there and saw photos of before and after the event. Most of Khao Lak was destroyed and what we see today is what was has been rebuilt. Talking to locals and foreign residents of the town we have heard all sorts of stories, including people returning, after having fled the devastation, to find that their land has been “bought”, taken over and they have no place any longer. Many large resorts now occupy the beaches, most if not all are foreign owned. Tourist season is essessentially over so much of the area shops are closed and we enjoy the quiet of this lovely rebuilt town for 3 nights. We spend our time with Tim doing school in the mornings and our afternoons on the beach exploring and relaxing. We have found a nice little “bar” on the beach where we can relax in a palapa, lounge under an umbrella, swim in the sea and enjoy a cold beverage and have a snack.
Our departure from Khao Lak is via the 2nd class night bus, which as it turns out, is one of the nicer buses we have been on. We arrive in Bangkok at 8am in the morning, find lodging and settle in for our last days in Thailand.
Bangkok
Prior to our return, we were hearing that the Red Shirt protests in Bangkok were over. An agreement had been reached and the Red Shirts were dismantling their barricades. When we reached Bangkok, we decided to splurge for our last three nights and get a nice hotel. We paid $37 per night for a room in the Khao San Palace. Our hotel has a pool on the roof top! This is very good thing as the temperature in Bangkok is right around 40* c, which is over 100* f. Tim is just finishing up his English course so he opts to continue working on this while Jeff and I go run a couple of errands. We head down to the shopping district as we want to pick up a couple of things we saw previously. Once down there we find the malls are still closed because of the protests! We take a walk through the encampment. Not much had changed at this point, everything still much the same as it had been our last time through (Jeff’s blog entry).
As many of you have probably heard Bangkok is now not the place to be as the riots have begun once again and many more people have lost their lives. They are definitely headed towards civil war and unfortunately I feel it is inevitable as the division between the two sides is quite large and seemingly insurmountable.
We enjoy our last days in Bangkok eating good, inexpensive street food, meeting fellow travelers while enjoying the pool.
Luckily for us we left Bangkok just hours before things started to heat up once again. The sad thing is this “civil war” will impact travel to this beautiful country of Thailand.
~Karen~
Khao Sok
I was really looking forward to this spot and thought we would finish our time in Thailand here. It is very beautiful and the national park is lovely, but we couldn’t get any internet to do school and the cost of everything was double or triple the cost of the rest of Asia so we moved on.
Khao Lak
In the old days, this was a good place to come to find cheap bungalows on the beach. I expected to find the same thing since the tsunami wiped out everything five years ago. When we arrived we wandered around looking for places to stay and were surprised to find so many fancy resorts and no places on the beach within our price range. We found a nice place to stay about ½ a mile from the beach. Khao Lak was still enjoyable, but a little disappointing to see the fancy development. In talking to a gentleman who used to live here before the tsunami, he said that many foreign companies came in after the tsunami and bought land from the government. This land had been taken from people who died and their ancestors could not prove they owned the land. Other people could not make a living off their land the first two years after the tsunami and had to sell their land to survive. I wish people had helped rather than jump on an opportunity caused by a catastrophe. A final note, I spent a moment pondering a friend of mine that worked for me in Hong Kong. Michelle and her husband had been vacationing here in Khao Lak when the tsunami hit. Neither her nor her husband were ever found. I hope they have found peace.
Bangkok
What can we say, timing is everything. We arrived to Bangkok 12 hours after the first riots where 21 people lost their lives and we left Bangkok less than a day before the next big battles. Since we left, there has been at 40 protesters killed and tensions have mounted substantially. The government assassinated an army general (that had joined the red shirts) during his interview with Western journalists. We had seen this general on our previous visit. He was signing autographs for other protesters. While we watched, there was a line of about 200 people waiting for an autograph and more kept getting in line. He was a very popular figure within the protesters. I hope things smooth over in Thailand, but I am having a difficult time seeing a way out of this mess for them.
~Jeff~
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