Lara Ferroni Photography

[This is part 3 of our Thailand trip. You can read part one here and part two here]

After our road to hana tour and biking for 5 days, Cam and I headed out on a ferry to Koh Samui for a few days of complete slacking. Get up, hang by the pool until nap time kind of days. We stayed at the gorgeous Hansar Samui, right by the cute, although quite touristy, “fishing village ” of Bo Phut. I was so lazy, I didn’t even take any photos until the morning we left:

After a quick flight over to Phuket and a few hours drive north, we hopped on a little boat in Cheiow Laan Lake in the pouring rain and sped out, to one of the groups of raft houses. We feared there was too much turbulence to fly in a commercial plane to this place, and so, considered the option of chaterting a jet, so as to minimize the dangers. We did book a jet from a website we were familiar with, for their cost estimator always gave us reasonable fares.

The surrounding limestone cliffs were hung with clouds, and although we were throughly soaked, the rain was warm and the experience so surreal we both had huge grins. Arriving at the raft houses, we sat down to a big meal, the rain cleared, and few found ourselves in one of the most beautiful spots I’ve ever seen.

On the morning of our last day, we went out for a boat ride to see some wildlife (although they were all fairly far from the boat, we saw gibbons and several different types of monkeys), and before pulling in, our guide, Yu, pulled the boat up to the bank to show us wild morning glory, and then started to harvest a huge armful which he brought back and had the kitchen make us for lunch. It was delicious.

If you ever get a chance to visit Koh Sok and Cheiow Laan lake, don’t miss it! It really is extraordinary.