Khao Sok National Park Thailand Travel Guide

Khao Sok National Park sits right at the heart of southern Thailand. It consists of a mix of dense jungle, an enormous freshwater lake and jagged limestone rock formations. It is one of the most beautiful places in the whole of Southeast Asia and so far it is my personal favourite location in Thailand.

The national park sits ever so slightly off the main tourist trail and requires a little bit of effort to get there, which might be why so many visitors to Thailand choose to give it a miss. I want to show you why it should not be skipped and share my tips about how to get there, where to stay and some things to look out for when visiting.

I was motivated to make this trip because I had seen a lot of misinformation about Khao Sok, which made it seem like an exclusive resort that was out of reach to most tourists. In addition, most information online about Khao Sok is focused on the floating lake houses, skipping over the jungle section of the national park.

In my opinion, this is a huge missed opportunity because the Khao Sok jungle is the natural habitat of elephants, monkeys and a whole bunch of other native Thai wildlife. It is just as interesting as the more famous lake section, and it is worth making part of your trip.

Getting to Khao Sok National Park

First, let us talk about how to get there. If you are coming from Bangkok or the northern provinces, the closest airport to Khao Sok is Surat Thani, which is about an hour and a half drive away from the park. You can get a taxi, which will cost around 1500 baht, or take the public bus for around 250 baht.

Alternatively, it might be more convenient to visit Khao Sok after visiting Phuket or Krabi to the south. In that case, it is about a three-hour drive by taxi for around 3000 baht, with much cheaper public buses available too.

My biggest tip when visiting the park is that you should make sure to stay in the different parts. Most people only stay on the lake, which does admittedly have some of the best scenery in the park, but just to the south is the ancient rainforest.

The rainforest gives you the chance to travel deep into the heart of the Thai jungle, and it is probably the best place in the whole of Thailand to catch a glimpse of some of the native wildlife. I recommend heading to the jungle first because this is likely to be the more challenging part of the trip, so afterwards you can take it nice and easy on the lake.

Exploring Khao Sok Jungle

When I stayed, I did a trek in the jungle to Ton Kloi Waterfall. This was a full-day trek with a guide, which took us to a waterfall right in the heart of the park. During the trip we saw wild macaques who seemed pretty curious to meet us, wild boar, beautiful dragonflies, spiders and flying lizards.

This was actually the longest and most challenging trek available and has to be done with a guide because the forest is so dense that it would be easy to get lost. There are plenty of shorter and more accessible routes to take if you are not used to hiking or you just want to take it easy.

If you are there between November and April, you might have the chance to see the Rafflesia flower. This is the biggest flower in the world and can only be seen in a select few places around the world, with Khao Sok being one of them. I have heard this hike can be quite challenging, though, so be careful.

Finally, to have the best chance to see the most wildlife, I recommend either doing a night safari or staying in one of the locations just outside the park. I stayed in a place called Our Jungle House, which was surrounded by nature.

When we woke up, there were plenty of monkeys playing across the river beside our room. But be careful: on the way back to our room at night, we bumped into this three-metre-long reticulated python.

Staying on Cheow Lan Lake

After spending a night or two in the jungle, it is time to head to the lake. You obviously need to book your accommodation beforehand. You cannot just show up to the guest houses on the lake, otherwise it might be a long swim back.

One thing I see a lot of other travellers get wrong is the price of the floating guest houses. There are a lot of places on the lake that cost around 300 baht a night, although there are some cheaper options available. My personal recommendation is Smiley’s Lake House. This costs about 2500 baht per night but includes transport, four meals and a number of different boat trips around the lake. There are no other restaurants to swim to, so you cannot eat anywhere else.

The accommodation itself is completely fine. To be honest, I do not really understand why anyone would come to a place as beautiful as this and feel the need to splash out on a fancy hotel room when the views are the same for everyone else, no matter where you stay.

Your hotel will be able to arrange transport to the pier for you. At that point you will meet a representative from your lake house accommodation, and they will take you to one of the traditional Thai long-tail boats. Before heading to your accommodation, you will do the first tour of the lake.

Cheow Lan Lake is actually a man-made lake created during the construction of the Ratchaprapha Dam, which was built in 1987 to give electricity to the whole of southern Thailand. The lake is about 70 square miles, and to build it they had to evacuate the whole area, moving whole villages in the process.

The boat trip will take you to see a number of different rock formations around the lake. The highlight of these is the Three Sisters, where the boat will most likely stop for people to take photos.

Once you land at your accommodation, there will most likely be food ready to eat, and you will then be given the afternoon to spend relaxing by the lake. Most accommodations will have kayaks and snorkels to rent too.

I strongly recommend taking advantage of the extra boat trips that your hotel will offer. With Smiley’s, we did one in the evening to watch the sunset on a deserted island. On the boat trips you get to spend time with experienced guides from the area, who will be able to tell you a lot about the local wildlife and have plenty of interesting stories about the lake.

In the evenings there is not much to do but drink a beer while watching the sunset, and I highly recommend waking up early to see one of the most beautiful sunrises you will ever see. In the morning we also took another trip to see some of the great hornbill birds and wild gibbons. Unfortunately, we were only able to catch a glimpse of them from a distance. It was here that you could see some of the signs of the forest area that the lake used to be, with the dead trees protruding out of the lake.

Visiting Khao Sok National Park will be a life-changing experience for many. After visiting, I would recommend heading south to Phuket.