City mouse in the country

We spent a few more days in the Khao Sok jungle, taking a Canoe trip down the river to see beautiful views of the karsts as well as swimming in the local river - which was an enjoyable swim as long as you kept moving or the flesh-eating fish would bite you. (Other swimmers had the flesh wounds to prove it.) We must have swam fast enough as we had no injuries to report. 

We had planned to stay here for 5 days, but found that most of the tours were a bit too intense for Zac, more geared towards the 20-something backpacker crowd, so we headed out to a nearby home stay on a lake. Here we enjoyed a short hike to a local waterfall. 

The house was located on a rubber and palm plantation so I decided to take advantage of all the palm leaves and spent the afternoon figuring out how to weave a basket, which also functioned well as a hat, as you can see below. 

Still in progress:

The final result:

I was quite proud of the result - you can learn how to do anything with YouTube!

After a few days on the lake, we headed to a fairly fancy resort that we had prebooked in Khao Sok, southern Thailand near Phuket. We aren't a family that heads out for winter beach getaways so we thought this was a good opportunity to experience it. The beach was a lovely white sand and the water very warm. This area was hit hard 10 years ago by the tsunami and many lives lost - thoughts of these people were never far from our minds. We visited the tsunami safety structures that have since been built as a refuge in case of future tsunami. 

View from our room:

While it was all beautiful, after 3 days in the jungle, 2 days on a lake, and 4 days on the ocean, we had all had enough of the slow pace and were ready to go back to the city. Bangkok here we come!