Khao Sok, Thailand: Floating Bungalow Adventure

I’m currently in Laos, writing this blog on a destination we experienced five stops ago while finally listening to Beyoncé’s album that came out a couple weeks back. I’m behind with both my writing and keeping up with really anything outside of my current “here,” but it’s easy to not have time for either. We’ve been bouncing around and filling our days (with some breaks in between, which is typically when I’ll sit down to write– then, or while we’re on whatever form of transportation we’re taking to the next place). Our life right now feels separate in a way, with us being on the other side of the world and 12 hours ahead of our people back home. We’ll wake up to discover things like the score of the important March Madness game that was played while we were asleep, and I’ll say things like “Hey, it’s Easter, Happy Easter” hours into Easter morning, because I’m so far detached from what day it is. This is neither good nor bad, just different. 

I’ve been really wanting to do a blog post on Khao Sok, our second stop in Thailand. This national park is about 2-3 hours north of Krabi. To get there, we took a shared minibus from Ao Nang with a group of fellow backpackers, including a guy who told us he got two hours of sleep the night before because he stayed up partying with a local and a group of girls who looked like they had spent 20 consecutive days in their sandals. The minibus dropped us off in Khao Sok village, which would be our home base for a couple nights before our lake adventure. The village is essentially just one road filled with hostels, tourist stands, lodges, and restaurants. Most travelers are just passing through here, as it’s the jumping-off point for the main attraction of the national park: Cheow Larn Lake. 

This is the main street in Khao Sok village, where you'll find the majority of the places to stay and eat in the area.

Visitors can arrange just a day trip to Cheow Larn Lake, which is an hour from the village, but I highly recommend a one or two night stay for those that have the time. You can organize everything yourself, but it’s much easier to go with a tour package if you can afford it. This includes one or two nights in a floating bungalow (what Cheow Larn Lake is known for), all meals and activities, and transportation to and from the village. It’s possible to book an overnight tour package ahead of time, but Cam and I couldn’t find any availability online by the time we started looking, so we took the risk of arranging transportation to Khao Sok and a place to stay in the village with the hope that we could book something once we got there. Thankfully, it worked out (added that to our list of vagabonding wins), and we were able to book a one-night lake package through our lodge in the village. Could I tell you the name of the floating bungalows we stayed in? Nope. Could I share the link to book them? Definitely not. To be honest, I’m not even sure they have a website. Upon reflection, Cam and I are fairly certain that our lake bungalows belonged to the national park itself (most others are through a private company). Sometimes you just roll with it, which is definitely what we did in this situation. 

A particularly picturesque view from one of the restaurants we grabbed a meal at while staying in Khao Sok village.

Instead of laying out a full breakdown of our 1.5 day Khao Sok lake adventure, I’ll just give the highlights: 

• Longtail boat tours and bamboo rafting: Cam made a comment at some point that Cheow Larn Lake looks like something out of Jurassic Park, and he’s absolutely right. Akin to Krabi, the lake has these beautiful limestone islands (Karst is the technical term) that are wild with greenery and scattered everywhere, and the water is a dark seafoam green that’s hard to believe. Khao Sok is also covered by mountains and one of the oldest evergreen rainforests in the world, which makes the lake feel extra otherworldly.
  

This photo was taken near the start of our journey to get to our lake bungalows, and the views kept getting better from here.

There’s no better way to experience the beauty of a lake than being on a boat in the middle of it, and thankfully we got plenty of that on our tour. Our group took multiple scenic longtail boat trips to explore the lake over the course of our 1.5-day adventure. We had a chance to get a closer look at the towering limestone cliffs and pass between them in picturesque spots like the famous Three Sisters. We also rode on a bamboo raft a few times, which was a particularly serene way to see the lake. The slower journey, removal of barriers (the raft is essentially just a bunch of bamboo tied together and nothing else), closeness to the water, and lack of phones out (for fear of dropping them in the lake) led to more moments to really take everything in, which I appreciated. 

We had the Three Sisters practically all to ourselves-- a reward for getting up at 5:30 in the morning for this longtail boat tour.

• Floating bungalows: This one is kind of a given, because it’s why most people go out of their way to visit Khao Sok, but the floating bungalows were a definite highlight. Cheow Larn Lake has a wide range of floating bungalows, from more rustic bamboo huts with just a mattress on the floor to more luxurious setups with air conditioning and a bathroom. As you might have guessed, we stayed in the former. Of our tour group of 20 or so people, we found out we were the only ones who opted for the bamboo huts with a shared bathroom, which I’d say fell somewhere in between a barebones camping situation and elevated glamping.

Our cute little bamboo hut was at the very end of the dock, which made for a more private corner spot but a longer walk to the bathroom.

There were some drawbacks to choosing the more basic bungalow (let’s call it a hut, because that’s more accurate), but there was always a positive that came with the negative. While we didn’t have air conditioning, we had a very hardworking fan. Did we still sleep on top of the mattress with nothing covering us all night because it was nice and toasty when we went to bed? Yes, but it was part of the experience (and only for one night). The hut had some gaps that made it more exposed to the tiny wildlife of Khao Sok, but we were provided with a mosquito net that, if you romanticize it, felt kind of like a fort once Cam got it set up. And, while it wasn’t the easiest thing in the world to access the bathroom and take a shower, my middle-of-the-night trip to go pee meant that I got to experience one of the prettiest star-filled night skies I’ve ever seen. We also felt some rocking while in the hut, but that just emphasized that we were truly sleeping in a floating bungalow!

There were maybe nine other bamboo huts next to ours (the nicer bungalows were on the other side of the shared bathroom and the common area where we ate), and they were all occupied by what we guessed were members of a large Thai family vacationing together. They had the time of their lives playing in the water in the afternoon and, later, many of them slept in the huts with their doors wide open. It was a lovely reminder that we were all getting this once-in-a-lifetime experience to stay on the lake. Whether from a bamboo hut or a lavish villa, we all got the same incredible view and the opportunity to step outside and jump in the same turquoise water. 

It was pretty awesome being able to put our feet in the lake and take in the scenery at the end of our first day, right in front of where we would be staying for the night.

• Wildlife viewing: The “safari” portions of the lake tour, one in the evening and one in the early morning, delivered way more than I expected. Khao Sok has dense rainforest home to all kinds of wildlife, and this extends to Cheow Larn Lake. The first time we pulled up to a patch of jungle on the longtail boat and turned the motor off I thought we had stopped for some monkeys or something (still exciting). Instead, we saw two elephants, a mother and a baby, come out of the tree cover and down to the water to spray themselves and get a drink maybe 30 feet away from our boat. We stayed for a while to watch, in awe that we were both seeing them and that they were so close.
  

Seeing this mama and baby was one of the best parts about our lake experience. Booking an overnight stay meant even more opportunities to see the wildlife in Khao Sok.

Our group did end up seeing some monkeys later; this was also kind of a crazy experience given the monkeys were casually chilling and climbing on the sides of some cliffs in the middle of the lake. The last wildlife viewing experience we got in Khao Sok might have freaked some people out, but Cam and I found it super cool: during our early-morning longtail boat tour, our guide pointed up to a couple huge trees that had turned black with what looked like swarming birds. A closer look revealed that it was hundreds of bats that were returning home from a night out to find a spot on the tree to sleep. I’ve never seen so many bats in one place. It felt like something out of a nature documentary. A photo couldn't do it justice, as I had discovered so many other times while trying to capture a scene in Khao Sok, so I just watched.

Additional Tips/Thoughts on Khao Sok:

• I didn’t mention this in the highlights, but most of the Khao Sok lake tour packages include a jungle trek as well as a visit to a cave. You also get a couple hours here and there to swim in the lake or kayak around the floating bungalows. 

• It’s probably best to stay at least a night in the village before and after the overnight tour. Cam and I ended up taking a night train to Bangkok the evening we got back from the tour, and that was a choice lol. 

• While Cheow Larn Lake is the crown jewel of Khao Sok, Khao Sok village also offers a number of activities that showcase the beauty of the area. We looked into hiking, but we realized you need to hire a guide to do that (the national park requires it). You can also go kayaking or tubing down the Sok River that runs through the village. 

• You will find not one, not two, not three, but FOUR locations of Chao Italian Ristorante Pizzeria in Khao Sok village. By the third night we couldn’t help our curiosity, so we had dinner at Chao 1 (yes, they’re numbered). Not the best pizza in the world, but certainly not the worst.