Khao Sok Lake Tour

Hi All!


Some photos for your viewing pleasure...this is the newest addition to our Thailand Adventure Tour program this season.

It's a full on lake tour, of the Khao Sok National Park in the southern peninsula of the country. It's one of the last habitats (protected) in Thailand where wild elephants roam, Malay bears munch, barking and lesser mouse deer run free; and where dusky langurs swing from below the same canopy-top trees the rare white-handed gibbons sing from :)

It's also the best place to see the incredible Great Hornbill flock, sometimes in groups of 20-30 birds at once!





The trip is one of my favorite days on the tour: we start with trekking; bamboo rafting to a remote cave; caving in a monolith over 75 million years old, that was once part of a coral reef system 5x the size of today's Great Barrier Reef; then lunch at a beautiful floating restaurant from which we spend the rest of our afternoon kayaking around the lake (165 square km!).

at the floating restaurant...



Pi Dam, our guide for the lake tours this season, and a great friend!












I took some photos for you guys, hope you enjoy!









Love,
Stef


monoliths, littered along the Khao Sok lake....








glamour shot! on the bamboo raft to the cave...









Queen and May, two Thai tour leaders I work with...oh and Kieran in the background there!

From Stef in Bangkok: city of angels....and trouble!

6/13/2008

Hi Guys!

I'm in Bangkok right now, on my way back to Chiang Mai tonight to meet my second group this season....and to start a whole new 2 week adventure tour!

I'll be saying goodbye to my first group this afternoon, and I can honestly say I'll be sad to see some go. I'll also be glad to see some go....

Thanks for all the birthday wishes, I've been partying hard the past 3 nights in a row in honor of my ageing (aging??). The day before my birthday was coming off of the 3 day hike we do up to the indigenous hill tribes in the northern mountains. We went white water rafting, and the water was so high (class 5!) I got thrown out of my boat with about 20 other students a few hundred times...best rafting trip ever! That night we went to a bar/club called riverside for drinks, live music, and....tequila shots....yugh!

The next day, my birthday, was the 13 hour overnight train to Bangkok so I slept the tequila off and caught up on some much needed downtime. The day we got into Bangkok we went out that night again to a nightlife hotspot in the SW corner of the city called Khao San Road. More live music, cover bands, beer towers (4 liters of beer at once!) shooting pool, and dancing....good times good times, until....the PING PONG SHOW!

At 2:30 in the am I saw a group of 12 or so of my students wandering off into the night, very very drunk. Somehow they got the bright idea to go to a ping-pong show, and even though I told them the girls were all Burmese sex slaves, they still wanted to go 'check it out!' I wasn't getting through to them, so I started grabbing them and dragged them to another dance club, telling them that the ping-pong shows were all closed for the night (which of course is a total lie...)

Point is, disaster averted! They were too drunk to fight with me, so we went to a dance club for another hour or so until they were too tired to stay out anymore.

Bangkok....always trouble in Bangkok.....

The past few days have been rough celebrations for my birthday, and end of tour with my students. Looking forward to sleeping on the plane tonight and catching up on my reading....I'm definitely feeling older, and my body is definitely not up to the same party stamina it used to be in college!

Safe and sound, and still deliriously happy in life :)
Stef