Floating On Cloud Nine: Khao Sok National Park, Thailand

The thin dead tree trunks that stick up from the glass surface of Cheow Lan Lake are the wise old shamans in Khao Sok National Park in southern Thailand, standing strong and unwavering in the flood surrounding them. We went to meet them after we left Ko Lanta, taking a car ferry to get back to the mainland and then two buses through the popular beach towns of Krabi and Khao Lak in order to land at the door of the national park.

Seeing these ancient-looking trees as we made our way deeper toward the center of the Lake on a low-lying boat, we became mesmerized by their branches, rotting away more and more with every passing year while bearing witness to the history that came before us—before we were there, before the park was there, before even the Lake was there. In fact, the massive 185-square-kilometer, artificial Cheow Lan Lake, sitting inside the 738-square-kilometer national park, was only created in 1987, when the Ratchaprapha Dam was completed to provide for hydroelectricity, irrigation, and recreation. With the annual rains, the valley basin filled up like a bathtub, trapping some animals on the tops of land masses that are now islands in the Lake, and killing thousands of trees, including the tall ones that we still see sticking out of the water today. Many villagers and animals were forced to resettle in order to avoid isolation and ultimate starvation on these new stranded islands (villagers have since been compensated with land, rubber plantations, and monthly stipends).

Today, nearly three decades later, Khao Sok National Park has grown into its new lakeside landscape. Believed to be over 160 million years old and thus one of the world’s oldest rainforests, the large park surrounding the lake is still home to bears, boars, tapirs, deer, gibbons, monkeys, snakes, elephants, many types of birds, and even some large exotic cats (including tigers). Paired with the dramatic, largely untouched limestone karst mountains rising up from the lake bottom, reaching upward as high as 960 m/3,150 ft above water, the Lake creates an unreal landscape found only in fairytales. (We know we have now said this many times about many places in Thailand and Vietnam, but it’s all truly that beautiful!)

We explored this unique environment from our home in a floating lake bungalow for three days and two nights, meeting up again with our friends Ty and Anna in the bungalow next door (making it the third country where we've met up in). While our actual huts were quite rustic—again without electricity during the days and no furniture other than two comfortable mattresses on the wooden floor—the true treat of staying in a floating bungalow was opening our door in the morning to welcome the sunrise, reflecting off the luminous water immediately outside our doorstep. (To be fair, not all the lake bungalows are rustic; there are also some fancy, $500+-per-night floating huts on the Lake that we did not stay at. In fact, one of them features a floating freshwater pool, which seems frivolous, because the entire Lake all around us is literally a giant freshwater pool!)

Kayaking, swimming, and floating on the Lake allowed us to get to know it intimately. We relished the fresh taste of the calm waters and the mystery of those shamanic tree trunks as we glided past. We shuddered with both excitement and fear as we could never touch bottom—no matter how deep we dived—thinking about how far the lake bottom was below us. We steered our kayak into small quiet cul-de-sacs where the water meets land, on the lookout for wildlife. One afternoon, we docked at a large island and went on a fun jungle hike and cave trek, sharing air with thousands of bats and spiders and swimming through subterranean rivers inside the dark underbelly of the mountain. In these swims, we often had to squeeze through narrow crevices in pitch black, where we couldn’t touch bottom and had to briefly rock-climb underwater. At nights, we enjoyed fresh-caught lake fish and card games with good friends.

The key activity, however, was the “boat safaris” run by the bungalows twice a day, once at sunrise and once at sunset. We went on four total safaris, holding out hope for spotting gibbons, which we had been wanting to see since Laos, but alas, they continued to evade us, even though our guides—aptly nicknamed “Bangkok,” “Tuk Tuk,” and “Kit Kat”—had just seen some the morning we arrived. We did come across many macaque monkeys, some dusky leaf monkeys, monitor lizards, boars, and beautiful hornbills. Michael became quite the spotter for the group, often eyeing some movement in trees 200 feet above us and pointing out the monkeys before Kit Kat could even stop the boat.

Though the purpose of the safaris was to spot wildlife, the true unsung hero of these trips was really the Lake itself. It is beautifully large and expansive, such that we never saw other people or boats besides our own group; we felt like a tiny floating branch in the water, bobbing up and down as the Lake eased us into nooks and crannies up against the karst mountains. Our group remained quiet when trying to spot animals, but that only rendered clearer the sheer silence of the Lake. In looking for motion, we had found stillness.

Finally, perhaps the best part of our time on Cheow Lan Lake was accomplishing a long-standing goal while literally falling headfirst into the Lake over again and again. Within our first few hours of arriving, our friend Ty had done a backflip off the bungalow dock, which then prompted us to ask him to teach us, leading to a two-hour backflip lesson! Karen in particular had always wanted to learn how to backflip, and the deep depths and still waters of the Lake made for the perfect learning platform (not to mention Ty’s patient teaching skills and the incredible backdrop around us). After several botched attempts and way too much water up her nose, Karen successfully locked down the general body movement of a flip by the end of the two-hour lesson. Michael…made progress, going from looking like Neo in The Matrix in a midair fight as he flailed his arms, to slightly less flailing and with slightly more rotation. (See flipping videos below.)

Months later, our stomachs are still doing flips and butterflies as we remember the ethereal light and stillness of Cheow Lan Lake and Khao Sok National Park. The shaman trees had heard our wishes.

Karen & Michael

Khao Sok National Park, Thailand, January 31 - February 2, 2020