We left Bangkok by night bus for the Khao Sok National park, looking forward to escaping to the countryside again. The scenery here is breath-taking and bears a similarity to Yangshuo. The rockfaces are more sheer and an artificial lake makes the whole place feel like Neverland.

We really enjoyed exploring the rainforests here. We ventured in, following a path to the big waterfall, stopping at streams and rapids along the way. We were on the lookout for monkeys, keeping our voices down as we went. As we climbed back up from one stream, we were excited, but quietly so, to see a monkey in the tree. We watched it as it looked back at us, before it moved on. We then spotted a mother and her child, following the first and she was then pursued by another few from the same family group. It was really special. We also saw frogs, bats, a white-tailed eagle (see video) and evidence of wild elephants. This was all in spite of the fact that there were even more fellow tourists around, almost none of whom were Thai.

When meeting fellow travellers, their response will indicate what type of day they are having. The first is of the person who came here to get away from it all and is frustrated to find that everyone else had the same idea and their hopes of a fully authentic experience are crushed. The second is the holiday maker excited by their new surroundings who has abandoned any preconceived notion of what this was going to be and just wants to enjoy what is. We mainly tried to be the latter, but it did take us some time to let go of our expectations.