An intrepid adventure!

After rather a stressful week of teaching I decided to skive the last couple of days and head to Khao Sok, a national park about an hour and a half away where we were in high hopes of seeing tigers, bears and being attacked by leeches! I went with the Canadian family and had fun times trying to find a guest house to sleep all 5 of them in 1 room. Eventually found somewhere and I had my own little hut to myself, rather cute (with no sink and a shower drain that was just a hole out to the ground below!). We had a great time elephant trekking through the jungle and then got to feed the elephants which was awesome! The drama all started when I attempted to go to bed that night..Just as I was about to fold in my mosquito net who should come crawling on the wall opposite but a not-so-friendly cockroach! My nice little hut became a hut of horror as I chased the little beast around the hut with a torch, discovering a pile of mouse droppings on the way, and the evil cockroach then proceeded to burrow in between the mattress and the bed! Even after spending about half an hour trying to get the mosquito net folded into the bed as tightly as possible I still had rather a sleepless night!

The next morning I had booked to go on to a tour of a massive lake about 60 km away. Met my new travel buddies for the trip, 2 rather good looking german boys (which brings my nice german count up to 5!) and jumped in the back of the pick up truck. The lake was amazing, it was so blue and had incredible limestone formations rising up out of the lake, thickly covered with trees and vegetation, like something out of a James Bond film. We even spotted some gibbons and a toucan! The afternoon involved a trek in the jungle and it was there I discovered maybe I'm not quite so intrepid as I would have myself believe! The jungle bit was fab but the last part of the walk involved going through some caves for about half an hour. Being slightly claustrophobic and not especially fond of bats, spiders and whatever else lived in these caves it wasn't really my cup of tea! We had to walk, crawl and eventually swim through the cave with flashlights in mouths, about a million bats above us and weird rock formations on either side. It was an experience! And it was only later when I finally reached the other side that I was told that 8 people had been killed there last year when the cave had flooded when it rained...eek. Think I'll stick to jungle hiking from now on!

Staying the night on the lake was fantastic, the water was so warm and there was only a group of about 10 houses so it was so quiet (apart from the german boys deciding to go midnight swimming). I went canoeing in the morning (slightly less extreme though did manage to almost get lost!), managed to find somewhere where all you could was deafening roar of the crickets, the calls of the gibbons and the water lapping against the shore, incredible.

So sadly no bears or tigers and it wasn't rainy enough for leeches but the bats were enough for me for the moment! I headed back to Khao Lak to find a beach and some R&R and it has rained all afternoon! Not very amused though I have got the coolest bike, it is brand new, orange and white and the acceleration is rather responsive! I strive to be cool enough to carry it off!