Down South

Hey everybody, we've moved down south with the trip, 12hour train ride from Bangkok to Surat thani, and a 2hour air conditioned bus ride to our resort in Koh Sok ANtional park. The four adjacent parks here form one of the biggest areas of protected wild life in S.E. Asia and it's very beautiful. We arrived yesterday morning, swam in the river and just chilled, almost everyone else went on inner tubes down the river, saw a few snakes and fish and lizards (and a monkey temmple) while i opted to go off on my own for a while and doa trek, it was great, saw some pretty neat stuff, got bitten by one leech and took quite a few photos.
In the evening most of us took a night trek to spot wildlife as a large proportion only comes out a night. we saw bats (which were flying around our resort like dog fighters) frogs, bugs, a flying lizard, an owl, a beautiful white snake (only small) some HUGE spiders with Huge webs, some mouse deer, and a Macaque (type of monkey)
Today we did some more trekking, we stopped and swam at a small set of waterfalls, dived off some rocks, and generally had a good time, after that the british girls who joined us in bangkok were going to go elephant riding so they turned around along with some others, while robin, kate, jyri (yuri), nicole and I went further up stream to find a waterfall, the route wasn't marked very well and at one point we were about to settle with seeing a less impressive waterfall, but I scouted ahead and the sign said we were only a kilometer off, so we soldiered on, with nicole as the exception who needed a sleep. after some more trekking we reached the river again, checked the map and discovered that we needed to crosss this big river, walk up a triutrary and then get to the waterfall, so we put all the cameras and valuables and some food into my bag, and tied that to the pulley system that was setup to take bags across the river, so we swam across, pulled my bag across ad headed up the river. It was getting close to that point where we would have to turn back, so after some deliberation we decided that if we couldn't hear/see the waterfall in 5minutes we'd turn back, so we trudge on trying not to slip taking everyone's cameras in with me. about 200m laterrobin can hear the falls, we catch up and can hear them too, so it's decided now we have to dee the falls and we march on, climbing up the hills where the river is too deep to walk in, jumping from rock to rock and eventually we see it, a magnificent waterfallzig-zagging down the rocks, it was very beautiful. we all took photos, jyri, kate and I swam and robin sun-tanned. I decided I wanted to get behind the waterfall which i felt sure had a open space behind it, got pounded and sent down steam the first try, and the second on the third and what i'd decided would be my last try I mangaed to find some grips on the rocks. The water was pounding white around my head so thick that I couldn't see anything other than the white blur or hear anything but the low roar. Using all four limbs carefully i managed to pull myself, crouching through the falls, I was right there was a space behind it that the water relented and I could stand up. after giving a few victory cries i headed back, this time standing, with my back against the wall bracing myself withmy legs, Kate took a pic of me like this and we headed back. so it was a really great experiece.
On the way back i almost lost the cameras to the water when I was walking with the water up to my chest and the bag above my head all of a sudden the rock i was walking on went into a 45degree angle and i had to tread water to the side and push the bag onto a ledge, alas my shoes were soaked.

Well we've had a great time, Ps i forgot to mention that on the nite trek i kinda fell into a spike covered tree and had a heap of spikes break off in my left hand and arm, luckily Claire is doing her 1st year of med school in cardiff next year and was a medic in the army for a while so she's been taking care of me, still some spikes to come out ho, i'm good, no infection, just a bit sore and stiff.

PPS Photos will come in a couple of days I got three spools developed and uploading a few shouldn't be too hard but it will be easier in Koh Samui.

Take care,
Mike