Adventures in Thailand: Khao Sok Jungle Treehouse
Okay I’m really excited to re-live this part of the trip. Most places we only stayed for one night at a time, but we booked two nights in the Happy Nest Treehouse at Our Jungle House in Khao Sok for a little relaxation before the end of our trip. Another of Jessie’s picks that I could really get behind!
The treehouse we were staying in had two floors. The top floor had a sink, two single beds, and a full bed. The main floor had the bathroom and a full bed. Both floors had decks, but the top one was really small so we set up our loungers downstairs instead. We were right on the river, lined with impressively tall limestone cliffs. Early in the morning you could hear the monkeys whooping to one another, but we managed not to have any visitors during our stay.
There are several treehouses as well as some huts throughout the property. There were 3 trails, if I remember correctly, around the grounds. We enjoyed walking around them and learning about the plants and animals (they had informational signs around). Overall it was such a tranquil place, and the fresh air was amazing.
We had all of our meals at their own restaurant, which has a bar up top as well. We loved watching all of the lizards crawling around on the ceiling and walls during our meals!
We even had one really massive lizard visit us for dinner one night.
The next night we had a much tinier, but braver, visitor who decided to indulge in our dessert. He popped out between the wood in the table, and we were mesmerised watching his little tongue roll out to lap up the chocolate and powdered sugar!
To maintain the focus on nature, they only have wifi at the restaurant/reception area, but not out at the actual treehouses. But there’s endless activities to fill your time as they have a long list of options to choose from. We really wanted to go tubing down the river, but unfortunately due to the time of year, it was much too shallow.
The first day, I chose to get a traditional Thai massage, while Jessie chose to do the Rafflesia flower hike (I was super jealous as it sounded so cool but I didn’t think I’d be up for an intense hike with my congestion). My massage was done in a hut in the middle of nature, which was really lovely. We had our fair share of massages during this trip, and one thing I learned was that they could simultaneously be the most relaxing massages and the most aggressive and slightly alarming!
On our second day, we chose to do the river canoeing together. This was similar to our sea canoeing experience where we had a guide paddling us around and telling us about the area.
Our guide here was one of my faves from the trip! He was very soft-spoken, but wanted very much to speak more English. He explained that he watches YouTube videos and practices his English that way. He lived nearby to the lake, and told us about how he’d go fishing there every day for his meals, and about his dog at home. There was another couple doing a tour with us in a second canoe; the guides brought us to an area on the bank of the river where we could swim and have a tea and coffee break.
This was right after we had seen a large group of the monkeys in the trees, so we went off in search of them while the guys made tea and coffee. We came back to find that they’d boiled the water in a stalk of bamboo, and our drinks were then served in makeshift bamboo mugs with bamboo spoons! (They actually let us keep these mugs as souvenirs then)
We saw a lot of animals along the river. Different types of birds, red tailed fish, which we got to feed (below), monkeys, black snakes, and even a massive komodo dragon, which we thought for a second was an alligator because of its size!
For me, this was a top moment from the trip. It was relaxing, but we got to see so much. We also really lucked out with the weather because it was still really warm but cloudy, so we weren’t overheated or too cool.