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Somehow Khao Sok National Park is still flying under the radar as a major tourist destination. I can assume it won’t last much longer though, with picturesque Cheow Lan Lake becoming more instagram famous. The limestone karst formations towering from the turquoise water, surrounded by lush jungle is becoming an image synonymous with Thailand.
While the Southern islands are a beach bum paradise, Khao Sok National Park takes the outdoor adventure card. I mean, I love the turquoise beaches of Krabi as much as the next person, but I’m a freshwater girl at heart. Give me a jungle and a leech-free swimming hole and I’m in my glee. Which is why I was so excited about Khao Sok. Without even considering Cheow Lan Lake, Khao Sok National Park has enough hiking trails, rivers, and waterfalls to keep an outdoor enthusiast busy for days.
We arrived in Khlong Sok, the main hub in Khao Sok National Park around 9 am after an overnight boat/bus from Koh Tao. The bus dropped us off on the ‘highway’, at the intersection with the road that leads into town. Cabs and pickup truck shuttles wait for the buses to arrive. The pickup shuttles have a deal with most of the accommodations in town. They drive you to where you’re staying, and the accommodation pays the driver.
Either way, I recommend staying at Coco Hostel. It was in the middle of town (town being one street), there was a solid group of people, it was cheap, and the breakfast was reallly good.
We got to Coco Hostel as the tour groups were all leaving, so the decision to DIY Khao Sok was basically made for us. Thankfully there was a room available, so we checked in super early and grabbed a quick bite to eat at the bakery downstairs. Always a plus when the hostel/cafe combo is an amazing bakery.
We decided to hike to Ton Kloi Waterfall, so we walked the 10 minutes down the road to the entrance of the park, paid the 300 baht entrance fee and were on our way. There are maps and all that in the information centre which are pretty good. We were using maps.me and if you’re going to try to DIY a hike, DEFINITELY download it.
We’ve now done a few hikes where guides were recommended, and this was no different. You can hike by yourself for the first 3 km until you reach the ranger shack, and then after that it’s supposedly only with a guide. But, from what I read, even though this guide requirement is posted around, it’s not actually required. The guides post the info around so you’ll hire one. So, we just continued on past the ranger station, and nobody stopped us.
To be entirely honest, this was one of the more difficult hikes I’ve done using maps.me. The trail has minimal signage, and I don’t know if it was just me but I woul swear the signs actually point you in the wrong directions. Small paths veered off from the main path constantly, and the trail goes in and out of a canyon, so the GPS kept getting confused about where we were. We ended up going down to the river at least 10 times thinking we had reached Ton Kloi Waterfall, and then the GPS would catch up and we’d have to clamber back up the gorge.
We set out on what we thought was going to be a 14 kilometre round trip hike. Butttt, with us getting lost a couple times, it took a fair bit longer than expected. Oops. We finally made it to the waterfall, much lighter in drinking water than we expected. The one upside to trekking to a waterfall with no signage, no one else is going to be there. So refreshing diving into the chilly water after the stifling hike in. Also, leech free water. I must of checked myself a thousand times on the hike in, terrified of finding a little sucker in my bikini bottom (horror story from a past adventure).
We hung out for a bit, but then had to scurry to get back to the entrance before dark. It gets dark pretty quickly when everything is shaded, and it was definitely a bit eerie walking through the jungle as the sun was setting.
You can visit Cheow Lan Lake a couple different ways. There are organized day tours, overnight tours with a stay at a floating bungalow, or you can DIY it. The tours vary in length and offer a few different excursions, so you can go trekking, caving, etc. We were only going to Khao Sok for 2 days/1 night and wanted to spend a day at Cheow Lan Lake and a day hiking, so we decided to just figure it out on our own.
We rented a motorbike in town, and left at the break of dawn for Cheow Lan Lake, to hopefully beat the tour group crowds. I was a little sketched about driving on what’s basically a highway, but it was a beautiful drive. The jungle is pretty wild in parts, and with the massive peaks coming out of the trees it was like a scene in Jurassic Park. We reached Ratchaprapha Marina and headed to the information centre. So it’s not quite as well known since most people come in group tours, but you can rent boats directly at the lake. You can’t buy a ticket for a group tour though.
We weren’t realllly feeling the boat safari or caving that the tours offered. We only really wanted to hang out on the lake and chill at one of the floating bungalows. Cheow Lan Lake is 185 square km, so you can choose where you want to go and for how long. Distance/time = price. The key is to find people who are also looking to build their own boat tour. We thought finding people was going to be way easier than it actually was.
After an hour of bopping around the visitor centre, asking everyone who looked like they were just standing around if they were already on a tour, we spotted a group of 4 who were looking as creepy as us. We teamed up with the 4 of them and booked our boat for 3 hours. We were on our way!
Cheow Lan Lake is gorgeous. Turquoise water and limestone crags, surrounded by dense jungle. We spent the day roaming around the lake, and then at one of the floating bungalows. The bungalow our guide brought us to featured some floating log diving boards, which we took ample advantage of for the afternoon.
When we got off the water we were in a bit of a rush to drive back to town. We had 2 hours to get back and get our things to catch our Krabi shuttle, so we were cutting it close. Plus, the drive was gorgeous, so I planned to stop and grab a couple snaps of the lush jungle.
It’s hard to miss Family Restaurant, you can smell what they’re cooking from basically anywere in town. They slow roast chicken and pork on massive spits outside the building. Helps that it’s one of the first restaurants you walk past when leaving the main Khao Sok National Park. We were absolutely starving after our hike when we walked by, and it pulled us in. I cannot even begin to describe how delicious the slow roasted pork and papaya salad was.
Fresh baked bread and homemade jam! Also, they make their own coconut icecream which was amaaaazing after hiking all day.
Khao Sok National Park is two-ish hours from Surat Thani & Krabi and three hours from Phuket. Local buses run the route, along with tourist shuttles. I went to Khao Sok via overnight ferry from Koh Tao to Chumphon and then the local bus. It was around a 4 hour bus ride. (If you’re leaving from the islands, it’s cheaper to get a joint ferry/bus ticket to Khao Sok than to get them separately).
From Bangkok, it’s easier to get to Surat Thani via bus/plane/train, and get a bus or shuttle from there to Khao Sak National Park.
Khlong Sok, the main hub of Khao Sok is fairly tiny. It consists of basically one street, and the entrance to Khao Sok National Park is just a straight shot down the road. Everything is extremely walkable, but if you’re looking to get out to Cheow Lan Lake on your own or explore more of the surrounding areas, there are motorbike rental spots in town. If you’re not comfortable driving a motorbike, your accommodation can help you out with booking a taxi.
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