Rambles & Roves: floating bungalows.

After finally getting settled into our Thai town and school it was time for more adventure. There is a really great group of “farangs” (foreigners) in this town and people are always planning things to do. One opportunity we joined in on was a trip to Khao Sok National Park at the Rajjaprabha Dam in the neighboring province of Surat Thani. This weekend was one for the books or the blog (harhar). Here is a video of where we were: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBNumP5lku8. It was absolutely stunning and so peaceful. We woke up early Saturday morning and a group of about 40ish people met up at one of the schools nearby. We took a bus to the National Park and then a long tail boat to the bungalows. It was pouring rain the entire time, but the rain just added to the mysticalness of the place. There were limestone cliffs jetting out of beautiful blue/green colored water with tree tops sticking out all around. The bungalows were far from luxury, but still wonderful. They were tied to huge tree trunks floating in the water. The bathrooms were a hike up a muddy steep hill and the rain did not help the hike up. I made that hike SO many times with my wee little bladder. Anyways, we swam all evening and all day in the beautiful water and played lots of games, especially Jenga. The Thais that worked at the bungalows loved that game! There were also kayaks that Stephan and I took out in the rain multiple times. On the second day, a group of us went to the neatest waterfall on a long tail boat. When we first saw the waterfall, it just looked like a trickel of water. Then the Thais had us climb up the waterfall and it was just the neatest experience. It is too hard to put in to words how fun and neat it was. We were also trying to climb like the monkeys that the Thais are. They ran up that waterfall while we were slip sliding trying to catch up. It was such an adventure and it was something so different from the islands and beaches that one would normally think of in Thailand.