It's a Leechiful Life

The first afternoon in Khao Sok I just walked around a bit. I really liked the place. A few bungalows and restaurants, but all very quiet. A river running nearby my bungalow and a gorgeous view of some forest covered karst mountains just rising straight up. I ran into an american who I had been on the tour to anthong marine park with and she told me she thought there would be a band at this one restaurant, so I said I'd see her there. Later that night I stopped by, but it was a private company party for some thais from phuket who were celebrating the end of the high season. It must be how ragged I look or something, but I often tend to get invited into things by thais, and this was no different. It was quite the fun party. Lots of dancing to thai music and american hip hop (which I prefer to that eurobeat garbage). They fed me lots and lots of food and made me several cocktails. The party went on and on into the night b/c no one wanted to leave until the rain stopped.The next day I had booked a two day tour to cheow lake in Khao Sok NP. The lake is a huge lake, with thousands of islands and small channels because it was dammed in 1982, something I'm not all too pleased about as it destroyed thousands of acres of thailands oldest, largest, and most diverse rainforest (if anyone wants to know about my passion against building major dams like this just ask anyone from Dr. Varanka Martin's chemistry class where I had to write reports and argue my case against the 3 gorges dam in china as their alternative energy source). The lake also gave poachers easy access to the remaining forest that had been inpossible to get to b/c of the dense rainforest and cliffy topography. The dam also wiped out 49 species of river fish that could not possibly survive in the deep water low oxygen enrivonment of a huge lake. The government cited two reasons for building the dam, hydro power and flooding out studen communists who took refuge in the caves in the area. In the end, it was these hiding communists that we have to thank that the rainforest is intact b/c they successfully kept out all logging operations before the area became a park.Regardless, the area is incredibly gorgeous. In my group were there swiss students and two british backpackers. The hour journey on the lake to our floating hut camp was breathtaking. 1000foot tall limestone karst cliffs rising straight out of the water with jungle clinging where it can. The islands and mountains on the shore forming incredible shapes. So jagged and unbelievably steep. When you see a disney movie with mountains, this is one of the places, they must have gotten the idea from. Seriously stunning. We arrived at the floatingjungle lake camp and had a bit over an hour before lunch. There was a group of 13 dutch there already, and they told me it was about 45 minutes to kayak around the nearby island. Perfect I though, and set out to do it. I overestimated how fast they could go around the island and when I came to the first small inlet 1o minutes into the paddle that looked like a dead end, I figured no way could this be the way around the island, so I kept going. It turned out being the one, but I ended up paddling an hour more searching for the way around the island. Problem was, there were so many islands it was immposible to tell where one started and ended. I came to a huge bay and figured this must be it, so I paddled a couple of km's into it before realizing it was a dead end. At this point I figured I would get lost if I didn't turn around, so even though I figured at the time that the finish must be right around the corner, i turned around. Good thing I did, b/c that first small passageway was the one. B/c of this I missed lunch and the trip with my group to hike up the mountain to the view point, one of the highlights of the trip. I was bummed by this (especially since it was a beautiful sunny day) and had to settle with going with the older dutch crowd to tour a floating fishing village and swim into a cave that started in the lake. We got back to camp well before my group, so I spent the time swinging from this incredibly long and tall rope swing the locals had built from a big canopy tree. At the apex of the swing when you let go, you were at least 30-40 feet above the water. I also enjoyed just swimming and floating in the lake. The lake was so pleasant and warm. The dutch crowd, who was an older crowd spent most of their time just floating in innertubes or swimming in the lake. It was really just that warm. And the floating camp was so cool. These little huts just floating in the water, surrounded by the huge karst mountains and jungle everywhere. Very cool! There were some dead trees still standing from the flooding and I swam out to them and had fun climbing them b/c the consequence of falling from these tall trees was only flopping into the water. From that point on the dutch liked to call me tarzan from my escapades in the kayak, on the rope swing, and climbing the trees. When my group finally got back, Poo, our guide, said he thought I was in shape enough to jog up the mountain to the viewpoint so we could do it at 5am the next morning. This lifted my spirits quite a bit and made the delicious meal taste even better. Did a night safari where we didn't see much but a few tarantulas, some scorpions, and pit viper. We spent the rest of the night swimming around, and then floating and singing in the lake at Poo played the guitar from the deck area of the floating huts. Two steps from the door of each hut was the lake, so several times during the night to cool off (obviously no fan out there), I'd just lose the underwear and go skinny dipping in the moonlight. From splashes heard throughout the night, i could tell others did it as well. And the cool thing was it was quicker to get to meals from my cabin by swimming than by walking.The next day, I got up early and poo and I hustled up the mountain to the viewpoint. It was quite spectacular looking at the limestone cliff mountains and the lake below. We did it so fast that we still had to wait for breakfast when we got back. The day's adventure was to walk up through this cave. I've been through quite a lot of caves in my life, and i'd have to say this ranks pretty high up there. Not as good as carlsbad or the adventure of the caves in eagle or glenwood, but probably close behind. The cave was really long. It took a couple of hours to walk through it. The whole time we were walking up a creek, sometimes having to swim or wade, othertimes having to climb small waterfalls. The cool thing was that it was a cave where you didn't have to retrace your steps. We started where the river came out of the cave and ended where the river entered the cave. The water was freezing compared to the lake, though really not that cold. The cave had some narrow passages and then some huge rooms with nice cave formations. We saw lots and lots of bats and even a black cave toad. We had lunch at a different floating camp and then had time to canoe around again before the still spectacular boat ride back to the pier through the karst mountains. That night I just chilled at my bungalow in a hammock reading, listening to the rain pour down and watching all the frogs and toads hopping about.The next day I wanted to hike to two big waterfalls in the park. It was pouring in the morning, so I got a late start and didn't get hiking until around noon. This meant that I was only able to make it to one of the big falls. I was tempted to go for the other, but I feared darkness and even though I had my flashlight, the trail wasn't the best and rain was looming. Along the way, I saw 4 or 5 other "waterfalls." The thais religiously flock to waterfalls just like they do temples, so places will call anything waterfalls just to get thai tourism. In reality, these falls were just small little rapids. The way that thais classify waterfalls, the big thompon below lake estes and throughout the park would be one huge waterfall! They say you should take a guide on these hikes so you don't get lost and to see wildlife. Well, guides are quite expensive, especially for a single person, but I didn't get lost, and actually did quite well on the wildlife watching. Saw several species of lizards, a turtle sunning on a rock, and two species of monkeys (a black and a white one). And of course the leeches. I was up to about 63 leaches on my feet before I stopped counting and caring. They don't really hurt and it slows you down a lot to keep stopping to check for them, so I'd hike for a long time before removing my keanes to check for them. At one check, I had 14, big fat, blood drunk leeches on my feet. Quite gross. And when you pull them off, you bleed like crazy b/c they, unlike mosquitos which do the opposite, put an anticoagulant in your blood. So my feed had runny blood everywhere and were covered in leeches. Quite the site. The last few kilometers I walked in the rain before finally reaching my bungalow.This morning I talked with a british couple at breakfast who do lots and lots of travelling. They work for some insurance firm and have it worked out where they work hard for a year to a year and a half and then they get 6 months to a year off to travel. Anyways, they have been to lots of rainforest areas, but none in the wet season, so they just couldn't take all the leeches and decided to forego anymore hikes and just enjoy the area around the small town. There were just so many leeches!Today I made it to Phuket Island, thailands most popular tourist destination especially for package tourists.