Khao Sok National Park

Khao Sok National Park tickets and tours: which one to book

Khao Sok is the rainforest park between Phuket, Khao Lak and Surat Thani in southern Thailand, two hours from Khao Lak and three from Phuket, and it is sold in two halves: the day tours to the village side, with bamboo rafting on the Sok river, a cave temple, an elephant sanctuary and a jungle walk, and the lake tours to Cheow Lan, the reservoir behind the Ratchaprapha dam, by longtail boat among the limestone towers, with the two- and three-day versions sleeping in the floating raft houses on the lake, which is the experience Khao Sok is famous for. The day tours from Phuket, Khao Lak and Krabi are long days with two or three hours of activity for six of driving; the tours booked in the Khao Sok village, where the guesthouses line the road to the park gate, are cheaper and start closer.

The bamboo rafting is a gentle drift on the river, sold with elephant visits whose ethics vary, and the jungle treks with a park guide walk the trails to the waterfalls and, in season, the Rafflesia flower. The lake tours from the Ratchaprapha pier include the boat, the park fee, the swimming, a cave walk or a kayak and the raft house; the overnight ones add the dawn safari for the gibbons and the hornbills. The park fee is paid at the village gate or the pier and is included by most tours. Independent visitors take the minivan to Khao Sok village, walk the trails from the gate on their own and book the lake from the guesthouses; the raft houses must be booked.

Visiting Khao Sok National Park: what you will see

The park was created in 1980 and covers 739 square kilometres of the Surat Thani mountains, the largest area of virgin forest in southern Thailand and a remnant of a rainforest older and more diverse than the Amazon, with limestone karst towers rising to 950 metres above it and the Cheow Lan lake, 165 square kilometres of drowned valleys created by the dam in 1982, at its centre. The lake is the park's spectacle: longtail boats cross green water between limestone cliffs and islands hung with forest, to the raft-house villages moored in the coves, the Three Brothers rocks that the guides call the Guilin of Thailand, the Nam Talu cave that is waded through in the dry season and the Pra Kay Petch cave, and the forest around the lake holds gibbons, whose songs carry across the water at dawn, hornbills, macaques and the elephants that come to the shore at night.

The village side has the trails along the Sok river to the Bang Hua Rad and Ton Kloi waterfalls through bamboo, liana and the buttress-rooted giants, with the wild jackfruit, durian and mangosteen that feed the animals, and the Rafflesia kerrii, one of the largest flowers in the world, blooming red on the forest floor between December and February. The park's mammals include the Malayan tapir, the Asian elephant, the gaur, the clouded leopard, the sun bear and, in the deep forest, a handful of tigers, none of which a tour will see, and its birds are the great argus, the hornbills and the pittas; the leeches and the monsoon rain of 3,500 millimetres a year are the price of the forest. The dam's lake drowned villages and the park's edge is a strip of guesthouses, but the interior is as it was.

Khao Sok National Park: best time to go, seasons and hours

The park is open daily from 8 am to 5 pm at the village gate, with the lake boats from the pier through the morning and the raft houses all year. The dry season from December to April is the best, with the trails dry, the lake clear and the Rafflesia in flower; the rains from May to November are heavy, with the waterfalls full, the leeches busy and the caves closed for flooding, though the lake is at its most beautiful in the mist and the tours run.

The dawn on the lake is the moment for the gibbons and the light. Allow a full day for the village side, two days with a night on the lake. Khao Lak's beaches are two hours west, Surat Thani and the ferries to Koh Samui two hours east, and Phuket three hours south-west.