Central Thailand, Khao Sok

My mind is rewinding to Easter to when we were actually here, so bear with me:

Khao Sok is one of the oldest rainforests in the world and one of the most renown National Parks in Thailand. Basically LonelyPlanet says that it wouldn't surprise them to see a T-Rex appear out of the dense vegetation and seriously, it's true. This place is humongous. Mountains of every shape and shade of green make the place look like a giant, jagged crater.

We stayed in this bungaloo that was pretty cool, at the meeting of our friend, Afka from Belgium (we called her Africa, ha). The town was basically a bunch of bungalos and a bunch of foreigners, including a Canadian who has been coming to Thailand his whole life and now runs 40-day tours all over Thailand, not a bad job, runs it from his Mac (he would).

He recommended a day trip which we took and made it the most expensive. Bah! But it was cool, we took a long boat through this lake that was as big as an ocean but these limestone mountains jutted out of it like it was their day job. There were tons of em, making the lake have channels and routes to weave in/out of these formations. It was a pretty cool 2 hour boat ride, minus our return trip when we ran into a storm, VERY cold and it stung like nobody's business.

Came back and pulled the cliche trip of all, elephant riding. As touristy as it seems, it is actually incredible. You can sit on the neck of this huge animal and feel it actually work, walk, and waggle down the dirt trail. Our elephant had so much swag that it was hard to stay on her! Met some locals at this swimming stream and we jumped off the cliffs with them, very funny to see them point to a high cliff and say, "You do....dead" (as they held their hand to the neck and sliced it).
But other than that, got on a bus and headed to Bangkok (Needless to say, we were pretty tired on our ride to the capital). Not bad at all, a good break from the islands, but absolutely not a relief from the perpetual heat of Thailand.