Thailand
Khao Sok National Park
Floating bamboo huts on an emerald lake where gibbons howl through prehistoric mist.
The mist lifts off Cheow Lan Lake in slow coils, revealing limestone cliffs that were ancient before the dinosaurs. Khao Sok National Park in southern Thailand shelters one of the oldest evergreen rainforests on earth, and your bamboo rafthouse sits directly on the emerald water, with nothing beyond the deck but jungle canopy and the dawn howling of gibbons.
Khao Sok covers 739 square kilometres of primary rainforest in Surat Thani Province, split by the vast Cheow Lan Reservoir that the Ratchaprapha Dam created in 1987. The flooding drowned valleys and left vertical karst towers rising straight from still water — a landscape with more of Ha Long Bay about it than anything else in the country. In the undergrowth, Rafflesia kerrii, among the largest flowers on earth, opens its rank metre-wide blooms in the cool months. After dark, boat rides sweep the shoreline for civets and slow lorises, and the floating accommodation runs from simple bamboo platforms to stilted rooms with private decks over the lake.
Solo
Multi-day lake trips put you in a rafthouse with a handful of strangers and a lot of water — kayak at sunrise, trek the swamp forest, reset completely.
Couple
A private floating room with sunset over the karst towers may be the most romantic wilderness stay in the country — after dark it is the water and the forest doing the talking.
Family
Longtail lake tours, gentle nature trails and gibbons calling across the canopy keep children hooked; several raft houses have family rooms on the water.
Friends
Share a raft-house deck after a day of kayaking limestone canyons and jungle trekking — the remoteness does the bonding for you.
- Floating bamboo rafthouses sit directly on the lake — you fall asleep to water lapping beneath the floor.
- Kayak routes thread limestone canyons where gibbons call across the canopy at dawn.
- The rainforest here is among the oldest evergreen forests on earth, with trails gentle enough for children and deep enough for days.
- Raft camps sit far down the lake — evening boat rides go out looking for civets and slow lorises.
Sour curry with catfish and pickled bamboo shoots, ladled out on a raft-house deck.
Whole fried fish as the centrepiece of a floating set dinner, eaten while the mist lifts.
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