From Krabi we were heading to Khao Lak, this isn’t as visited of a place on the standard tourist routes but is very well known for its surfing or diving scene depending on what time of year it was. We were also just looking to check out somewhere different too. There weren’t many public bus options from Ao Nang or Krabi so instead we booked a minivan through our hostel for 400B each. We were picked up shortly after 10am along with other people from the local hotels going to various different places. We were driven to the companies ‘bus station’, where we then were given a little sticker depending on where we were going and just unloaded onto the wooden benches as the rain started to pour down. There we just waited as more and more shuttles dropped off confused people that were just told to wait, with everyone assuming the minibus that had picked them up was taking them to their destination. We ended up waiting about an hour and a half before we actually departed, combined with people heading to Khao Sok.
After about 40 minutes on the road there was a 20 minute rest stop to use the facilities, pick up any provisions or get lunch from the vendors there. We decided to get some lunch, choosing a spicy pork and bean dish with rice and a side of fried chicken for good measure. (60B each). The journey after this was a few hours where we went through dense greenery and stunning hills surrounding the khao sok national park. After dropping people off our driver whizzed along down to meet the highway and ended up dropping us off right where we needed to be just as he was about to offer us a transfer for 100B each. We would happily walk the 10 minutes to our hotel in Bang Biang area of Khao Lak.
We checked into our brightly coloured hotel, Casacool, and found our room which was nice enough for a couple of days. Dave wasn’t feeling great after the journey but we found ice cream and drinks at the local 7/11 before checking out the Tsunami memorial nearby. We didn’t visit the museum but walked around the site and saw the police boat that had been carried over 2km inland on the wall of water that completely decimated this area. Seeing the sculpture of the size of the wave was incredibly humbling and it is good to see these areas have somewhat recovered from something that was so devastating.
We walked down the main street of Bang Biang area to the beach. There are a few different areas for Khao Lak and I think we picked where quite a few of the resorts are as a lot of the restaurants were very western orientated and pricey. We made the most of it being dry though and walked along the beach. The water was very choppy, which is what makes it good for surfing down the coast this time of year, so we just walked along and enjoyed the sunshine for a bit. As it was too early to wait for sunset we headed back to the room for a while to read and do notes and so Dave could cool off in the aircon. In the evening the local night market was running. It was impressively big in terms of clothing and souvenirs but did have a few street food stalls/restaurants at the front of it. We ate at cat cat, who were lively welcoming people to their stall just having basic thai basil chicken with egg (100B each- still not cheap!).
The next day Dave was feeling rough. We made it down to our included breakfast where we had a basic but very tasty spread. There was lovely bread (rare in Asia) for toast with pineapple jam, eggs cooked to order and a massive selection of local exoctic fruits enough for a whole army- various melons, rambutan, mangosteen, dragonfruit. We ate as much as we physically could when Kai then brought out another fruit to try a longclaw? which is very local to the area and full of flavour. After breakfast Dave really wasn’t feeling well and had to go back to sleep. So we had a nice quiet morning with me doing some admin whilst he slept. At 1ish we made it for a gentle walk to 7/11 where we picked up cheap lunch to eat in the room so then Dave could see how he was feeling. By late afternoon Dave was feeling more himself and we made the most of what was left of the day by hiring a scooter and heading off to explore the local area as it was a lovely sunny dry day (250B 24 hours).
Our first stop was Namtok Sai Rung- a local waterfall where you don’t pay for entry. There was a nice restaurant set up by the river and an easy path up to what was a roaring waterfall. There was a small pool underneath it that was quite cold so we had a dip whilst we were the only people there. After cooling off we sat by the river and had drinks enjoying the jungle scenery around us and watching the fish and turtles swimming about. After spending all morning in the room it was nice to be out and about.
From here we visited white sands beach and coconut beach which were harder to find than anticipated but lovely. We didn’t stay long at these as the tide was high so there wasn’t loads of beach. Our last stop of the day was heading to Memories beach. This was much more of a trek than anticipated with the road to the beach from the main road being about 2km and full of potholes and sand- it just kept going. But so did we and we eventually pulled up at memories beach bar. This is the beach that is well known for being good for surfing. Ripcurl has a surf festival here each year and they even have a shop on the beach. The sun was just starting to set so we had a lovely warm glow over the beach whilst we watched the surfers for a while. It got quite cloudy and food was expensive at the bar so instead of staying for dinner/ sunset as planned we made our way back to the hotel and just went out for a late, cheap dinner at one of the more local restaurants on the main highway road. (60/70B for fried rice and pad thai).
Our last full day in Khao Sok there was lots of rain. We went down for another epic breakfast and spent quite a long time talking to another guest who was originally from England but now lived in Thailand. When it eventually looked like it might have dried off we headed out on our scooter. We only got about 10 minutes down the road before the heavens opened again and we snuck under the shelter of a local garage, who offered us chairs to wait out the rain. After about 15 minutes it stopped and looked dry again so we decided to try and get out still. We turned off down a gorgeous link road heading to Takua pa old town which went through some incredible scenery and the road itself was new and windy enough to be enjoyable. We made one stop along the way at a gold buddha with impressive dragon stairs up to it which gave some nice views over the local area. After this we carried on to Takua Pa.
Takupa Old town I think in high season has a local walking street on Sundays but today it was very quite. The aesthetic of the place was gritty, with interesting architecture and lots of Chinese lanterns and shrines around it. There was a lot of street art and it was a small but different place to walk around. We found a small coffee shop- Kopi Kuapa that looked nice and had some iced coffees to cool down (75 B each). Mine ended up being an old style coffee with palm sugar which was delicious.
There was not a lot of selection of places to eat lunch in but we found a local restaurant called Blue corner where we had crispy pork and pad see ew (160B all together). We were glad to be undercover at this point as it had once again chucked it down for a good 20 minutes. Once it was dry again we set off back to our accommodation. The rain didn’t hold off for long though and we made it about 10 minutes down the road before we had to hide undercover at a local house again, this time for a good 20 minutes. When it had slowed down significantly we tried again, getting another 10 minutes before hiding in a closed down coffee shop. Thankfully that was the last time we had to stop and we made it back to town in relative dry after this. It was definitely a bit of an ordeal and we were much later back than planned but we managed to hand the bike back with no issues. We had a very quiet evening after where we packed up ready for heading to Khao Sok tomorrow.
Thanks
Alex
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