KHAO SOK NATIONAL PARK

Khao Sok National Park: A Must For Any Traveller

Whenever you travel or visit somewhere new, people often ask ‘what was your favourite place?’. It’s a question that’s difficult to answer most the time, because each place has it’s own specific charm and memories, often non comparable to the previous. The same is true for my trip to Thailand, but there was one part of our journey which was like none other, and a part of our travels that I would recommend to anyone visiting the country. And that was Khoa Sok National park.

An overwhelmingly beautiful part of Thailand, around 3 hours north of Phuket and Krabi by car. Forget luxe resorts and white sand beaches, Khoa Sok National Park is jungle and lakes through and through, making it a sight and adventure definitely worth experiencing.

We spent a whirlwind 24 hours in Khao Sok, affording us two nights in the Jungle and a full day exploring the National Park itself. It was enough time to get to see the beautiful park, but if we’d have known more about the adventures to be had, we might have planned an overnight trek in the park itself to really experience the park in all its glory. Travelling up to 3 hours by boat to a completely untouched part of the park where you can see elephants in their natural playing grounds, trek for hours to the peak of the parks mountains and camp over night in the wilderness. A trip not for the lighthearted from everything we were told, but an experience like none other.

Sadly we had slightly less time to play with, so we opted for a full days exploration of the park rather than an overnight trek, but it was still an incredible experience and a true highlight of our travels I might add.

Our day was spent exploring the lake in a quintessential Thai boat, trekking through the jungle for a few hours, meeting the National Park locals in their natural habitat (floating shacks on the lake – an incredibly humbling experience), taking a bamboo boat to explore historic caves and finally a few hours spent eating freshly prepared food in a raft house and swimming in the vast lake itself (an experience to remember). We saw monkeys and hornbills during our trek, but perhaps the most memorable part of the day was swimming in the 40ft deep lake during a heavy rain storm … something i’ll never forget.

The National Park doesn’t need to take too much of your travel time, but spending a day or two in the thick of the jungle and exploring the wilderness is really something special. I couldn’t recommend Khao Sok National Park enough … our day trip cost 1500 baht (around £35) and was worth every penny. We didn’t stay in the Park itself (although if you were to, booking a raft house would be my recommendation), instead we booked a couple of nights at Our Jungle House in the Happy Nest tree house, a fab base for any stay in Khao Sok and a chance to feel at one with nature without camping in the wilderness itself (the jungle house accommodation is an ideal balance between living in the wild yet still safe and comfortable).

Have you visited any of the National Parks in Thailand? What do you think of Khao Sok?