Waking up desperately needing the loo but being too scared to go into the bathroom on my own I waited for Tobes to wake up too!

Right outside our bedroom window was a huge wild banana tree and a stunning green hummingbird was visiting its flower. After a bit of breakfast- eggs, bacon and toast!! We found out the National Park entrance was only a 15 min walk away, we were convinced we could navigate the park on our own without shelling out for a guide. So we donned our sandals, packed the guidebook we'd found at the hotel and set off to see some nature. Only 2 mins down the road we spotted some enormous grey-black caterpillars and we stopped to take photos, then we noticed the 100s of croaking and mating green frogs!! The start of the rainy season had obviously given them their cue and there were sooo many, like tiny excited school children we hopped about with our cameras like mini David Attenboroughs in the making capturing these beautiful frogs. Then we saw in the tree above us another hundred copulating frogs and this time a huge, hanging, white foamy mass of frogspawn resembling an enormous ball of snot dangling from a branch. Each frog was busy dropping off its eggs and directly below was a small puddle full of tiny frogs- frog soup!

Eventually we dragged ourselves away and made it to the park. Just before the entrance I spotted an old lady selling pineapples mentioned in the guide book, she was one of the last 8 survivors of the last true village in Khao Sok. The others all died due to some sort of epidemic but her father, a doctor, made her family eat coconuts filled with an earthworm and boiled and miraculously they survived!

Entry to the park was 200 baht or 100 baht for a student and the ticket lets you in for a whole 24 hours- unfortunately we didn't find this out til too late! There were pretty much only two routes, we headed to Wing Hin waterfall 3km from park HQ. we were keeping a lookout for everything! Eventually we spotted frogs, an iguana, a spiky headed lizard, some bright orange caterpillars (must identify!) and horrible leeches!!! A lady walked past and pointed at Toby's ankle and to our surprise a huge, blood filled leech was hanging there. It was my task as dutiful girlfriend to remove it, I got it off but blood kept streaming down his ankle because of the anticoagulant they use. I looked down at my feet and two tiny leeches were attaching themselves to my toes! Unimpressed with our choice of footwear we made it to the waterfall and almost ran back to HQ.

We found a short walk through a forested area all on cement walkways so we explored for a bit and saw some monkeys in the trees (later identified as stump tailed macaques).

Both very hot and sweaty from the extreme jungle humidity we headed back to the cottage to discover our shower was cold river water! After a spot of dinner we met the owner's little boy, Christian and his gorgeous little puppy 'Robert'. An amazing kid as he speaks three different languages, his Mum is thai and Dad is Belgian and he also learns English at school! He was eager to show me and Tobes his Disney on ice magazine. We enjoyed watching the puppy chase Christian around and around, particularly funny when the puppy got so excited he stopped and vomited on the restaurant floor- lovely! After the boys had finished sword fighting each other with flowers and we discovered Christian had to be up at 5.30am to catch a bus to school 2hours drive away we headed back to our cottage. Only to find a huge fruit bat hanging from the terrace roof, amazing! We decided to stay one more night and fly to Bangkok from Surat Thani.