Thailand- Khao Sok National Park

So I've been a bit behind on blogging for the last week due to being busy and sickness (it's bound to happen when your here). So my next few posts may be a bit random and of varied things throughout the week.

On Wednesday 17th we took a day lake trip around the Khao Sok national park, I had seen pictures of the beautiful rocks and cliff faces before so was pretty excited! We arrived and as soon as we got on the boat we found ourselves in torrential rain! It stayed like this for pretty much the whole day which made the views very different to what I had seen in the pictures! However it was still amazing too see, we got taken to the famous three friends rocks first, before going to land to hike to catch a bamboo boat to a coral cave. 

The coral cave was a lot bigger than I expected and the inside did actually look like large fry bits of coral. However the darkness and the spiders did make it a bit more scary. 

We then tracked back through the rain over the hills, to get back on the boat to head for lunch, by this point in the day everything was wet, it is weird being in a place where you are soaked but can still manage to sweat at the same time! 

They had many little 'resorts' dotted around the national park made up of little wooden huts floating on wood and barrels, we stopped at one for lunch and a swim and kayak in the beautiful and warm green lakes they water was 28 degrees! After this all I was looking forward to a nice warm shower, turns out ours didn't fancy being warm, so it was a cool one for us! 

Thailand- Over night sleeper train

16/06/2015

The over night sleeper train was an experience and something I am actually glad to have done, I probably got about 2 hours sleep, due to the lights being on all night, and the fact at the train swayed from side to side and jolted a lot! I tried to sleep for most of the night with my hoddie on backwards to block out the light but everytime I was drifting off the train jolted! If you happen to go on one, I would advise you to avoid the toilet as much as possible, everything goes straight into the tracks, and as the journey goes on the smell gets worse!

We arrived at Suratthani rail station to stop for some breakfast before getting a lift in the back of a truck for the 2 hour journey to the hotel, all I would say is it wasn't the comfiest! 

We arrived at the hotel and had the rest of the afternoon to chill and see what was around, after a dip in the pool and lunch we all decided to go Canoeingn. It was really good, we stopped to swim in the river and jump off a rope, we also got to see the amazing views of the Khao Sok national park. Followed by dinner and a few cocktails and pool in one of the few bars in the area.

Thailand- Canal Journey

15/06/2015
Still in Bangkok we headed out to the canals by public bus, luckliy for us it wasn't so busy! We got to the canals and I was shocked to see the amount of pollution in the area and river, especially as it is the Kings river! The water was brown with the sides were full of rubbish, we then got onto and long thin boat and were told to wear life jackets, worrying, the river is the last place I wanted to end up! The boat trip was actually a lot better than I was expecting, we saw loads of fish (God knows how they survive in that water), we also Water Monitors some were huge, they are like lizard kind of animals!

We then went onto the Pho Wat temple which was huge and we saw the largest lying down Buddha in Bangkok it was 46m long and 15m high! It was huge! 

We then walked around the rest of the temple and learnt a bit about monks, I did not know that they can stop being a monk in order to have a family and then become an monk again later in life, because as a monk they cannot touch females! 

We then got a proper Thai massage, she managed to click bones in my body that have never been clicked before! And then went back to Koh San Road for lunch before spending the rest of the afternoon in the pool before our over night sleeper train.

We then headed to the train station for our overnight train! It was a lot better than I was expecting, I had visions of hot dark and mouldy, but it was actually very clean, cool and light, I will update you on the next blog to how we slept...