Khao Sok National Park, Thailand

October 19 – 21, 2025

Khao Sok National Park is in the center of southern Thailand and encompasses Cheow Lan Lake with dramatic cliffs. It is actually not a natural lake – the lake was formed by a dam built in 1982. Now much of the national park is only accessible by long boat as the cliffs and land that stick out from the lake are too steep to hike or walk. We spent a night in the town of Khao Sok before embarking on our 2-day, 1-night excursion into the national park with Smiley Lake tours.

Market stop on the way to the national park:

Unloading vans and getting ready to board long boats:

On our long boat – took about an hour boat ride into the park to arrive to our floating bungalows!

Everything was floating on the water – our bungalow (bathroom and beds), dining area, and water activities:

Went to a popular photo spot and got hit with some rain, but still awesome views:

Explored a cave on the lake:

Saw loads of bats and spiders (our tour guide holding a spider):

Breakfast view:

We went on a nature watching cruise in the morning and saw a few hornbills (you can see in the image below if you zoom in just below the top of the trees, left of center). Hornbills look similar to Central/South American toucans from afar – though they have a horn-like feature on their beak and have white feathers at the ends of their wings:

We hiked up a waterfall, called a ‘sticky’ waterfall because it is grippy rather than slippery from water/algae. The waterfall base is calcium carbonate, creating a porous material that isn’t slippery:

Headed out of the national park. Next stop: Bangkok! Took a long boat -> taxi -> Grab (SE Asia version of Uber) -> flight to get to Bangkok the same evening