A Rambling Writer Rerun: Thailand, part 14: Khao Sok National Park

Continuing your virtual vacation with Thor and me, join us in a hike through the oldest evergreen rainforest in the world.

NOTE: Due to health issues, Thor and I haven’t been able to do much travel the past few years, so here’s our Thailand trip from 2020. We were lucky to squeak through the pandemic flight closures that February of 2020 as we returned from our three-week trip. Now crazy times just keep getting crazier. So escape for a few minutes from our new American dystopia to a country as beautiful and colorful as a dream! I’ll interrupt the reruns with occasional book reviews or Geezer Adventures…. (This blog series began 3/15/2025.)

If you’ve been following this blog series, you know that Thor and I were staying in a treehouse in Our Jungle House on the edge of the Khao Sok National Park, and visited an elephant refuge nearby. The next day, we hopped onto a “taxi” — a pickup truck outfitted with wooden benches — for a short ride to the park entrance. The park covers 285 square miles and rises to a height of 3150 feet at limestone peaks. It shelters wild elephants, tigers, bears, boars, and monkeys, along with 188 species of birds and countless insects. (Surprisingly, we weren’t bothered by mosquitoes there.)

We were welcomed at the entrance by a replica of the largest flower in the world at 31″ diameter, which blooms here once a year: Rafflesia kerri. We didn’t see an actual bloom, but since they apparently have a nasty, fetid odor that attracts pollinating flies, we were content with the replica:

The main trail enters through an impressive bamboo forest. This part of the park borders tourist development, so there’s a barbed-wire fence until you get deeper into the park. We saw some locals slipping through gaps in the fence, and we figured they had a right to enjoy the park and a cooling river swim without paying the entrance fee.

The rainforest is believed to be older than that in the Amazon. Because of its location, the area wasn’t as affected as the rest of the world by geologic upheavals and the ice ages over the last 160 million years, so most of the forests in Thailand were maintained until recent drastic human incursions such as logging and mining. By the 1900s, most of Thailand’s forests were destroyed by logging. Then, in a lucky twist of fate, from 1975-1982, a group of Thai students who had joined communist insurgents holed up in Khao Sok caves. Armed and keeping the Thai Army at bay, they also prevented loggers, miners, and hunters from destroying this precious sanctuary, until it was declared a protected park. Poachers are still a problem, but the government is doing its best to protect the forest and its wealth of species for the benefit of the rest of the world.

The first animals we saw were a group of long-tailed macaques like the ones living around Our Jungle House.

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You will find The Rambling Writer’s blog posts here every Saturday. Sara’s latest novel from Book View Café is Pause, a First Place winner of the Chanticleer Somerset Award and an International Pulpwood Queens Book Club selection. “A must-read novel about friendship, love, and killer hot flashes.” (Mindy Klasky). It’s also a love letter to the breathtaking wilderness of Sara’s native Pacific Northwest. Sign up for her quarterly email newsletter at www.sarastamey.com