Our accommodation on the edge of Khao Sok National Park was very funky - a series of bungalows meticulously decorated with a jungle feel, all surrounded by beautiful trees and flowers, and the main building was a restaurant/bar constructed from wood and teeming with decorations, mostly made from plants and trees, and at night it was lit up with a collection of lots of different lamps in a various colours. Plus the food there was great and everything was beautifully presented - every drink was topped with fruit and flowers and even the rice was served in the shape of a turtle and set on a banana leaf.

There are plenty of activites to do in and around the national park. We went tubing down the river but it hadn't rained for a week so it was very shallow and we were dragging our bums over the rocks in parts. We stopped at a deeper part that had a rope swing for jumping into the water - great fun Further along we saw lots of monkeys (long-tailed macaqs) clambering through the trees and a few snakes curled round the branches.

On the way back from tubing we visited a temple where lots of monkeys live; we had bananas for them and the monkeys came right up, climbed on the cars and snapped the bananas out of our hands before scampering off into the trees to eat them. It was fun to watch them - the baby monkeys clung onto their mother's bellies all the time; I could tell which ones were the 'big bosses' and there was one very frightened looking monkey that had fallen out with the rest of the group and lost most of its tail in a fight.

I went on a night safari through the jungle in the national park - I just had my little head torch but the guide had a powerful lamp and he was well-practised at spotting creatures for us to look at - frogs, chameleons, butterflies, bats, spiders (including one big hairy spider and one spider that was eating a dead cricket), a scorpion, a cricket, a sleeping bird, a lemur (small monkey-like creature) and several civets (I hadn't heard of these before - a bit like a larger version of a cat or a badger - they have dark fur, long tails, small heads, pointy noises, sometime with dark spots or a white stripe at the end of their tail). It was great fun - our guide was excellent and he stayed for a beer at the guesthouse after the trek. The staff there had found a big toad which they took great delight in scaring me with - Sarah and Peter from my group were happily holding the toad but I was having none of it!

The following morning Caoimhe and I were heading back to the national park to explore it during the daytime: we passed our guide from the night before on the road heading the other way on his bike and we chatted to him for a bit. When we arrived at the visitors centre in the park he'd come back there to point out the animals we'd seen the night before on the picture charts and to advise us where to go - so thoughtful! We walked to an area where the river widens into a pool that we could swim in - it looks beautiful, the turquoise water beneath the rainforest vegetation with lots of fish swimming in it. The water was very cold but it was happily refreshing as we were very hot and sweaty from trekking up and down through the jungle. We met an English couple and walked together for a while to see a couple of small waterfalls (they are quite generous with what they call a 'waterfall' there!). We saw some more frogs, spiders and insects (including lots of cool red-and-black beetles) and a small black snake; the highlight was a huge lizard, a least a metre long with big legs, it shuffled off when it heard us coming so we didn't get a very close look (probably a good thing!) but I was excited to see it nonetheless

The village we stayed in beside Khao Sok was tiny - our tubing guides were also the waiters in the restaurant we went to one night, which was owned by the same family that ran our guesthouse. The manager of our guesthouse loved my photos from the night trek so much that she took copies for their promotional material