You Won't Believe This Is Thailand | The Complete Khao Sok Guide 2026

Sawadee krap my friends and welcome to Khao Sok National Park in southern Thailand. We are starting our adventure on one of the most beautiful lakes in the kingdom, the Chao Leon Lake in the heart of the national park. And it is so beautiful that it's almost unbelievable. And the best way to experience the lake is on a longtail boat which I got a private one for today. It's just going to be me, you, and my buddy Jared right here from the vineyard. So make sure to leave them a comment down below and say hello. But this is the best way to go out and really experience those wonders of Khao Sok. So let's hop on the boat and get this little lakeside adventure started. Wow. Now I've seen photos of this place and it does not do it justice. I'm literally having those wow moments every three seconds. These are massive cliffs. Some of them are taller than a thousand feet and they actually used to be at the bottom of the ocean. These were coral reefs like a million years ago and then there was some tectonic shifting and they actually sprang up to these heights around here. And while these are natural, the actual lake itself only exists because in 1987 they built a dam here and now there is 153 square kilometer lake in it. That's up to a hundred meters deep in some places. It's absolutely crazy and so beautiful. Cruising out here through the canyons and just seeing the other boats around. This place is so special and I cannot believe that in 25 years of coming to Thailand I have never been here. So wow. I wonder, I know we're making a few stops today. I think one is coming up and it is just absolutely amazing. Amazing Thailand. So we are at our first stop right now and we're actually at a floating bungalow hotel that you can see right here. I can only imagine how amazing it must be to be staying out here to wake up and come out to this. Just stunning. I wonder how much they cost. I've heard they're upwards of a hundred dollars a night, sometimes up to 300. But they have a very cool little, right here behind me, they're keeping fish here. And before we left at the dock you can actually buy some fish food. I think we got six of these bags for 50 baht and they are like piranha feeding frenzy right now. And right next to the floating bungalows they have some great little roped off swimming areas. This is also a great place to go out kayaking or canoeing. It's just, it's like nature. Nature is one of those powerful, amazing things that makes us feel so small. And when I'm standing out here surrounded by these cliffs, I feel tiny. And I think that's one of those things about Thailand that makes it amazing. Thailand is, it has everything. You know, you can be at the beach, you can be in the mountains in Chiang Mai, you can come to a national park just a couple of hours away from those beaches and experience this. This is like its own ocean and I just think it's so special. Well our time is almost up on this little man-made floating hotel platform island thing. And I'm just going to go and jump in the water quick. Then we are going to hop on the boat and head to our next destination. So apparently that was our last stop that we were just at with the floating bungalows. But there is so much more that you can do here and we only went out on a two-hour tour because we did a private one so it was a little bit more expensive. But you can do a shared tour for an entire day out here and they will take you caving, kayaking, swimming. You also go trekking where you can see wild elephant and gibbon monkeys which sounds amazing but I'm actually going to be taking you to do some trekking in just a little bit. But right now something that people often miss when they come here, the mistake that tourists make, is that there's actually two sides to the park here. There's the lake and then there's the jungle where Jared and I are staying. This park is 285 square miles around which is actually bigger than the entire country of Singapore. And we're staying over on the side that has the dense jungle with some amazing animals, trekking, night safaris, tubing, and so much more. So right now we're going to go and hop on the motorbike and head one hour back over to Khao Sok town where we're staying and check it out for ourselves. So I will see you when we get there. All right we are back in the sleepy little town of Khao Sok and the ride back here was stunning. Driving through all of those limestone cliffs along the road and renting a motorbike is a great way to experience that. I found them for the cheapest at 300 baht and up to 500 but it's totally worth it to do for a day. There's lots of little activities around here that you can do and just pulling off at the viewpoints is so nice. And the town itself is just one road that is kind of nestled in the shoulder of the surrounding jungle and mountains. It's so chilled out here. There are lots of places to get massages, restaurants. You can sit down on the water and have a coffee on the river or lay in one of those little fisherman nets above it and enjoy some food. And my go-to spot for breakfast is Little Wild. They do breakfast and brunch all day, some amazing iced coffee, and they even make me a custom English muffin. Look at this thing. So delicious. I've been here absolutely every day and it's amazing every time. There's also lots of Thai food around town and a surprising amount of pizza. I mean like more pizza than I see in New Jersey. And there's one place that's like the pizza dynasty here called Chow Italian Pizza and they have five locations. And you might think that's weird but their pizza is actually really good. And I know you're thinking, Adam, you're eating an egg McMuffin and pizza. But the pizza is a workaround because they do Thai fusion. So they have five different Thai curry pizzas that are all curiously delicious. My favorite was the Massiman curry pizza. It has little potatoes and stuff on it. And the red curry shrimp pizza. That was amazing. And there's actually something shocking about this town. So prepare yourself. They don't have 7-Elevens here. I know, I know. It can't be Thailand if there's no 7-Elevens. They do have other convenience stores where you can pick up the essentials. I've dubbed them as 5 and 6-Elevens depending on how good their stuff inside is. So I actually was like, is this even Thailand? And then luckily I saw a dog in a soccer jersey with a giant golden necklace on and was like, okay, this is definitely Thailand. But while we're talking about convenience stores, I wanted to mention how convenient it is to actually get here. You can fly directly from Bangkok into Suratthani in 45 minutes and then be out here in an hour and a half. You can get a bus from Phuket in three hours directly here. Or do what I did. I came from Koh Samui with a one-hour ferry to the mainland and then a three-hour minibus ride out here in a really comfortable transportation. So it's definitely worth it. It's totally easy to get here. And this should be on your list because I feel like if you haven't come to Khao Sak, you haven't been to Thailand. Let's keep going. There's also lots of tour companies along the road where you can book excursions and fun things to do. They even have some unique stuff like tubbing. I've never done that before. They also have bamboo rafting and a very rare and unique elephant tour. One of the great activities you can sign up for is tubing. It's 500 baht for two hours with a guide and they take you in a truck down through the town to the river where you hop in and then it is just relaxing floating down the river. The jungle is all around you. You can see the limestone cliffs towering above and we even got to see some monkeys on the side of the river as well as a few different snakes. It's just really nice and then you have people that are kayaking and canoeing down the river as well. It's such a peaceful place to come and a great activity to do in the afternoon on one of your days here if you just want to chill out because it's pretty amazing. And all around the area they have beautiful waterfalls where you can come and just chill out, climb up, take a little shower in the cascades and really soak up all of this amazing nature. It's also a great place to go and do some frog hunting because the frogging here is good. And there's also some great little viewpoint restaurants where you can come and have a little beverage and get a view. And if you're looking for a great place to watch the sunset and get a panoramic view then head over to 99 Camp and Cafe. You can actually stay here or just come in and get a drink and some food and they have three levels of views that just wrap all the way around. And as far as accommodations go they have something for everyone. You can do camping, hostels, high-end resorts or the mid-range hotels like I'm staying at in the Treetops River Huts which has some great rooms that I'm staying in with Jared. We have a little porch in front and they also have a really nice swimming pool that you can just go and relax at. The other great thing about it is that we are actually the last accommodations before you get to the National Park which is just right here steps away. So let's head in and check it out together. Now this is what I am talking about. What a gorgeous jungle and when you enter it's 200 baht for the fee for 24 hours and you sign in they'll give you a map and you can either go for a hike by yourself which is easy during the day. Today we're actually doing a guided tour with Jaja who's taking us to do some bamboo cooking out in the jungle which I'm super excited for. But if you want to go out at night you do need to have a guide with you and Jared actually had a great one named Mint who took us out on two separate tours. The first one we did the herping tour where we went out and spent the entire night walking through the jungle looking for snakes and spiders insects and whatever we could find and he found so much. This guy is amazing at his job. We saw seven different kinds of snakes. I don't even know how many types of spiders and there was even a articulated python that we saw in the river going along and he actually came out up onto the trail so we could get some good pictures of him. It was very nice of him. And the second type of tour we did with him was a nighttime canoeing tour where we went down the river for four hours and he is so good at his job there too. We actually saw underwater pythons. He was finding cat snakes in the trees and putting them in the boat for us so we could get photos. It was just so beautiful and so peaceful and one of the really nice things about this particular part of the jungle is that they have a nice cut out road so you can walk on it and you can do it in flip-flops or shoes and it's not really a problem and it's really hard to get lost which is great because you know I always get lost. Oh I like this sign. Beware of wild elephants as opposed to the elephat tour that I was telling you about before. This is like a ginger leaf and then people they call rhino leaf in Thailand. So this is our wrapping for the food we're going to cook in the bamboo. Very cool. And we're definitely passing people as we're hiking farther in but I feel like it's getting less and less people like most things. The farther you go the less that there's going to be and if you really want to get away from the crowds you can do three or four day treks out here and just like jungle life it but this is jungle survival but yeah I think this is good for me. Nice not too hard hike. I'd say so far it's been like six out of ten. You know some ups some downs. It's a little bit rocky but you can definitely do this pretty easily. Jared and I were reading that this some people say this is more diverse than the Amazon but I find that kind of hard to believe and right now we're passing station four with a waterfall. I'm sure it's beautiful. Oh we're actually going to the waterfall. I like it. Let's get in there. Now if you are going to leave the main trail make sure it's on one of the marked ones because people do get lost out here every year and I care about you so be careful in the jungle. It's beautiful but also a dangerous place. I love that sound the sound of the crashing water and I thought that we were looking at this waterfall but actually right across in the jungle across from me is the waterfall that's coming down and feeding into this which then feeds into the next waterfall. So we have a trifecta of waterfalls right here so I am already waterfalling in love with this place and I think nature again I mentioned it this morning it's just so powerful it's so beautiful and when you when you're really like immersed in it like this it's just one of the most special feelings that you can get when you're out traveling. So let's go head back to the trail see what else we can find and hopefully we're eating soon because I am getting hungry. I'll see you over there. So we walked 50 meters from where we just were at the waterfall and we're at our little cooking grounds at one of the ranger stations and we said we can go and get cold drinks and go swimming right now so I think we might as well just go do that it sounds so good and I am so hot I don't know if you can see the sweat beating down my head wiping it out of my eyes but it's totally worth it so let's go and jump in maybe grab a cold beverage together. That felt so good I'm so glad that I decided to jump in definitely do it when you're here wear your board shorts and the sun is starting to set right now which means it's almost time to eat so let's go and head up start a fire and do some rustic bamboo cooking. All right we got our veggies some potatoes what's this banana flour banana flour doesn't smell like a banana we also have some rice right here and we were supposed to be having barbecue chicken but he forgot the chicken so I think we're just having barbecue tofu instead All right so his brother's here and he gave him a piece of his chicken to cook so we are not chicken-less. Cooking is going well so far right now we're taking the chicken all of the veggies putting them down inside of a piece of bamboo and then he's taking some Thai yellow leaf vegetable and putting it in on top adding water and then we're going to cook it on the fire and have a delicious little curry. I can't wait I hope you're as excited as I am as you can see the light is getting low because the sun is going down and the food is cooking right now it smells absolutely delicious but I don't think I'm going to be able to record us eating our meal that's going to be too dark so I will see you tomorrow from our place I'll show you some photos of our dinner and we can talk about the day and some tips so you can get the Welcome back everyone it is the next morning I'm sitting on my beautiful little porch with the nature all around me so nice here I'm so glad that I discovered Kelsock thank you Jared for inviting me along to check this place out that you come to every year but anyway last night was so cool we didn't end up eating until about 7 30 so I couldn't have recorded anything anyway but we had a couple of little mishaps besides the chicken being forgotten one of our little bamboo cooking pot things caught on fire so we thought it was going to be a bad one but luckily it was just the rice and it survived because we had wrapped it in the bamboo leaves or whatever kind of leaves that they were and the food was actually pretty good you know we had these little half cut pieces of bamboo as bowls the rice the coconut curry we had some vegetables that were really nice it was it was definitely fun and when we finished there were actually two little porcupines sitting right next to us foraging through the underbrush so cool and then we did a hike back through the woods where we got to see or through the jungle where we got to see a whole bunch of snakes spiders scorpions and other stuff which is why this tour is so great because you get to do a day hike a waterfall cooking and then a night hike on the way back so if you only have time for one tour this is definitely a good one and it was only 1500 baht which is like 45 dollars to go out and do all the things that we did so definitely worth it and we didn't get back until 10 o'clock so it was a long long but fun and definitely unforgettable experience and i have you know a few tips for doing any of the tours here you definitely want to wear shoes because you're out in the jungle and there's insects and stuff walking around it's also uneven terrain mosquito repellent is a huge one make sure to bring along some water and your camera if you have an extra little light to bring it really helps to capture the the things that you're going to be seeing and just enjoying the experience take your time take a slow walk don't rush through the really soak it in and you really are immersed in it you can hear the sounds kind of like when the cicada are going it's like shaking you and yeah so so wonderful and i think that three or four days is probably the perfect amount of time to come and stay in khao sakh unless you're like a huge nature person and you're going to be doing some treks for multiple days or elephant experiences and stuff like that because there's not a lot around except for the nature so i'd say spend one or two days over at the lake and then one or two days over here because there's plenty of stuff to do at night if you want to go out and drink and hang out in the bars lots of restaurants like i was telling you and really friendly people i my friend was even getting like a straight edge razor shave at one of the it's like a rasta barbershop pod shop slash tattoo parlor so it was pretty hilarious but he said it was really good and yeah i can't believe i've been coming to thailand for 25 years and i never came to this place it's so convenient too because it's right next to the island so you can be on ko tao scuba diving in a few hours or over on samui phuket in a few hours or even a lot of people i met were coming from the full moon party on kopen yang and then coming from the craziness to the chillness of this place so put it on your list you are missing out if you have not been to khao sok and i'm so glad that jared introduced me to it so kapung kap jared anyway if you enjoyed this video please give me a big thumbs up comment subscribe and don't forget uh bling bling bling bling bling bling the khao sok kapung kap and i will see you soon have the best week