It's been a busy few days! We took a ferry to Koh Lanta, which was a beautiful island, but there weren't very many people. We stayed in a cute little resort and we had air conditioning! Such a nice change. We tried some local dishes, with Morgan's rice being served in a whole pineapple! We also learnt that it is customary to remove your shoes before entering shops or other people's houses, rooms, etc. and this was highly practiced in our next destination, Khao Sok. We arrived there after taking multiple vans crammed full of locals and tourists. Before we knew it, we were driving onto a very questionable looking ferry in our van! Super scary, but we made it across to the other side.
We stayed in a treehouse in Khao Sok. It was adorable, and even had electricity and running water. It was full of bugs but Morgan took care of all that. We did a self guided nature walk, explored along the river bank running just behind our treehouse, and ate papaya salad, a traditional salad with no papaya in it as far as we could tell.
Yesterday we celebrated Morgan's 20th birthday! We took a longtail boat around a huge lake set in limestone karsts. It was incredible. The karsts were all around and in the lake, and were stunning with the lush plants growing on them. We made it to this little beach across the lake, where we swam in the warm lake and had lunch with our group, mostly people from Europe. We were asked by some of them if we are rowers because of our muscular shoulders and arms!
After lunch, our guide told we were going jungle trekking for three and a half hours. It was raining and thundering, but as our guide reminded us multiple times, "No wet, no fun!" The jungle trekking was very wet, but not too challenging until we got to the cave. We were expecting just a small cave. Turns out it was 1km long running through a mountain. It was so dark in there, and we made our way through the narrow passages with flashlights. There was water running through the whole cave, which was mostly waist deep, and even over our heads at some points. We crawled up and down waterfalls, and saw some frogs and crabs in there. It was quite the adventure. "No wet, no fun" definitely held true. We made it out with only minor scrapes, and were then told by our guide that eight people died in there about nine years ago, and another two died a few years ago. The guides made a pact not to tell people until they exited safely! We made our way back to the camp for some fresh fruit and headed back on our one hour trip across the lake, and finally made it back to the treehouse.
We are headed to Koh Tao today. We were supposed to get picked up at 6am but our van didn't come until 7:15am. We missed our ferry so we are just waiting for the next one this afternoon! We are looking forward to some more beach time and will update again soon with pictures!