The day Matt left to fly back home, we also left the island of Phuket and drove north a bit to take up residence in a treehouse just outside the Khao Sok National Forest. I am going to do a big photo dump and caption them as I go. If I try to put them in chronological order, I may never get this done. Before I jump in, I have to mention that the Belgian guys who run this place and their small staff are far and away the kindest and most attentive staff I have even come across. The were great.
The grounds of the treehouse resort were beautiful.
How cool is this bathroom?
When we weren't on an adventure, we ate all our meals here. It's a large, covered, open air area housing the front desk, lots of tables, casual seating area. The food was crazy cheap and sooooo good. The best part was the fresh fruit platters full of the juiciest, tastiest melons, pineapple, dragonfruit, mango, bananas, passionfruit. Yum. We ate lots of Thai food. The owner even made us a "normal everyday" meal so we could see what most people ate most days instead of resorting to the tourist go-to: Pad Thai. But Pad Thai is so good. Even if the locals don't bother with it. Also, we learned that french toast drizzled with hot Nutella = amazing.
After we checked in and dropped all our stuff off in our treehouse room, We walked down the road to one of the entrances to the National Forest. We saw several groups of monkeys. Some were shy and stayed up in the trees. Others, the same as the ones on monkey hill, came down to check us out. You know to look up when you hear the splat, splat of fruit falling. Monkeys are eating above us.
I don't know what kind of fruit this is, but they loved it.
Makenna wanted me to take this picture for Kim. "Now that's a big leaf." I hope she gets the inside joke.
The bamboo was so cool.
Out of order. We walked by a small rubber plantation on the way to the forest.
Another type of monkey. Too bad I didn't have my better lens for distance.
"Grandma would be proud of us cause we are reading all the signs."
We eventually got to a river with some some falls. It's the same river that runs behind our place and either comes in or out of the massive lake we visited a couple days later.
I am leaving out more than half the monkey pictures, really. We were all just excited to see them without the zoo fence.
We didn't come across any wild elephants, but we think we found some footprints and definitely smelled some proof of their recent presence.
Oh look, a monkey!
Find the lizard. We saw loads of them, but only if they moved first. There were skinny ones, like this one. There were also some that were quite large.
Cool bug.
Bigger lizard with cool color stripes.
It's so GREEN.
So many Tarzan moments. They had so much fun swinging.
It is so humid, these plants just suck their water out of the air with their dangling roots.
Ready for breakfast.
From the elephant's back. Jess and I rode together. Isaac and Makenna were together. I was surprised that the trail was winding and steep. They were very sure-footed.
For the last 10 minutes, their owners/trainers had Isaac and Jess climb off the seat and onto the elephants' head/neck.
This is REALLY out of order. Our taxi guy pulled off the main road on the way north to show us this police boat that was washed more than 500 m onto shore from the Tsunami. There were two, but they removed one and made the other into a memorial. Miles and miles of houses, and shops were washed away.
On the bed in the treehouse.
Oh look, more monkeys.
So good. It doesn't get any fresher. Taste Explosion. Possibly even better than chocolate.
We would cheer the dozens of lizard all over the walls and ceiling in the main area each night at dinner to eat more mosquitoes. I asked Eric--Belgian--what the locals do because despite our bug spray we were getting eaten. He said nothing. "It only takes 3-4 years to develop an immunity." Oh man. He has been in Thailand for 13 years and he doesn't even notice the bugs anymore. I don't know that I could make it.
We loved the fish mascot: Mr. Brain.
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