Khao sam roi yot national park

I woke up really early, before sunrise, unable to sleep. I thought as well I’d make use of the opportunity to go down to the beach and see the sunrise.

There was not too many people there, just a few sand crabs and a few birds. Really calm and quiet.

After this, I definitely couldn’t go back to sleep so I went for a coffee at one of the restaurants that I, and the others have come to like.

Passed breakfast, Grey passed by and asked if anyone were up for a day trip to the Khao sam roi yot national park. There was absolutely no wind that day and no chance of kitesurfing, so it sounded like a great idea to me, and it was.

We took the scooters down the coast, it took a while to get to the first checkpoint (where you enter the park) that was about 40 km away. We passed lots of great nature and village life on the way.

 

The first stop on the trip was a massive cave in one of the lime stone hills. We rented a lamp for 50 bath, climbed up through the forest to the cave entrance, got in there, and started to explore it. It was really big, and the trail we took was something like 200 meters long, with small narrow passages, big halls, and very damp air. A bit further in we encountered a group of 50 bats hanging from the roof. Quite cool!
Apart from the air being damp, it smelled like someone smoked weed in there, or maybe that is just what bat shit smells like.

This kids sandal was one of the casualties the cave caused. I found it about half way through. I hope the kid got carried down the mountain again, as there were some pretty sharp rock on the way down.

Finally, the exit. We got out and headed back for the entrance to get back down to our scooters. On the way down, we heard some danish tourists crying out for help, “hello! do you know the way down?!”. Well of course we did! Not the shortest though, we took them on a pretty long detour through the dense forest. At times, you almost had to fight your way thorugh it, that’s how dense it was.

       
Once back on our scooters we continued on towards a beach that we had seen on the map. On the way we passed this temple that was under renovation, and took a detour in to the village to catch a glimpse of how the people lived. An old lady passed by, pulling a carriage that seemed at least 100 years old. It made me feel like I was in a different age.

 

    
Finally, we made it to the beach. It was awesome! White sand, palm trees and practically deserted. The peace, beauty and tranquility of it is hard to describe with words. It was just simply stunning.

There were some traces of human activity apart from the restaurant located a little bit further inland. Something that looked like a traditional hut and someone’s left shoes in a tree.

 

 

 

After lunch we just continued on down the road and got to another temple. This one had a much nicer setting though between two lime stone hills covered with lush forest, and it was guarded by a hoarde of long tailed macaque (monkeys). 

 

 
Look out for who?

A little bit further down the road there was a trail to get up on one of the hills to a view point. 15 minutes and 132 altitude meters of climbing later, we reached the top and this magnificent view. We stopped there for at least 20 minutes to take it all in. The thai landscape is incredible with all the nature and its intense colors.
In the mid bottom of the picture you can see the temple from the earlier pictures.

We got down from the hill about when it was dark to make the long drive back home. You wouldn’t believe the amount of mosquitoes you get here at night. I must have killed at least a hundred of them, my t-shirt was just filled with them!

 
At the end of the day I had yet again the dish that has now become my favourite. Fried squid in red curry. Pak nam pran is known as squid city, the fishing boats are pulling up huge amounts each night, so it is really fresh and tasty.
The pinapple juice was great too, there’s a countless number of pineapple fields around here.