Two days camping in the jungle in Khao Sok

Most people see Khao Sok from a boat. This is the one where you walk into it and stay there.

Over two days you head deep into the rainforest with a local jungle guide, learn how to read the place on the way in, cook your dinner inside bamboo over an open fire and sleep in a hammock between two trees.

No hotel, no aircon, no phone signal. You, a tarp, and a forest that does not go quiet at night.

The guides are Khao Sok Natureskills Tour, a local team from Khao Sok itself. You book through Seek Sophie, the platform they sell their spots on.

Walking in

Day one starts with a trek through Khao Sok National Park, roughly three kilometres of proper rainforest towards Bang Hua Rat Waterfall.

The walking is not the point though. Your guide stops constantly: edible plants, wild herbs, animal tracks, the trees people actually use for things. With a bit of luck you hear or see wildlife moving above you, and you would have walked straight past all of it on your own.

Lunch happens at the waterfall. After that you carry on to the spot where you are sleeping.

Actual survival skills

This is what separates it from a normal jungle walk. You learn things rather than just look at things.

How a guide spots a track, which plants are worth knowing, what you can build out of what grows around you, and how to rig your own hammock so it is still up at three in the morning.

Be clear about what it is not: this is not a survival course where you get dropped somewhere and left to it. It is a proper introduction to skills people here have used for generations, taught by someone who uses them.

Dinner cooked inside bamboo

Once the camp is up, the cooking starts, and there is no kitchen involved.

You help prepare a traditional jungle dinner where bamboo and fire do all the work. Bamboo grows everywhere out here and it turns out to be a perfectly good pan. Then everyone sits around the fire and eats it, in the middle of a national park.

The night safari

When the sun goes down, Khao Sok changes completely. Head torch on, back into the trees with the guide.

This is when the animals you never see in daylight start moving: insects, spiders, frogs, snakes, and whatever is making the noise you cannot place. Your guide picks out sounds and shapes you would have missed by a metre.

Walking through one of the oldest rainforests on earth in the dark is a different experience from walking through it at noon. Not scarier. Louder.

Sleeping in a hammock

After the night walk you head back to camp and get into a hammock strung between two trees.

Do not expect a quiet night. Insects, frogs, birds and a long list of things you cannot identify, all going at once, all night. That is the point. You are not camped at the edge of the park, you are in it.

In the morning you wake up to birds and, if you are lucky, gibbons somewhere off to one side. There is breakfast and fresh coffee before the camp comes down, and you are shown how to leave the spot looking like nobody was there. Then you walk back out.

What is included

• Local jungle guide
• All camping kit and a hammock
• Head torch
• Jungle dinner, breakfast, fruit and coffee
• Drinking water
• Night safari
• The jungle and survival activities
• Pick up within the stated area around Khao Sok Village

The national park entry fee is not included. Bring cash for that.

What to bring

You carry your own stuff, so leave the big backpack at your guesthouse and take only what you need: a small pack, proper walking shoes, light clothes, a rain jacket, a dry set of clothes, insect repellent, sunscreen, toiletries, any medication, and a small dry bag if you have one.

Your phone is fine for photos, but there is no signal in there, so anything you were planning to look up, look up first.

A completely different day out from Cheow Lan Lake

Say Khao Sok and most people picture the floating huts on Cheow Lan Lake, and that trip absolutely earns its reputation. This is not that.

There is no boat and no lake. You go in on foot and you sleep between the trees. If you have the days for it, doing both is the strongest thing you can do here: one night on the lake and one night in the forest.

Why we send people here

Because it is the only way to see Khao Sok without an engine underneath you. You walk through one of the oldest rainforests in the world with somebody who can read it, and that changes what you actually see: where you see leaves, your guide sees tracks.

Good to know before you book. You sleep basic, there is no bathroom, you will be wet and dirty by the end of day one, and the forest is genuinely loud at night. If you sleep lightly, bring earplugs. Handing over one night of comfort is the whole price of admission here.

If waking up inside a rainforest, cooking over a fire and going out with a torch after dark is what you came to Thailand for, this is it.

Book your jungle camping

Trekking, survival skills, wildlife, bamboo cooking, a camp fire and a hammock, over two days.

See and book the two day jungle camping

What is the one thing to sort out beforehand?

Pack light. You carry everything yourself through the jungle, and after two kilometres in that heat the gap between “might be handy” and “actually needed” becomes extremely obvious.

Two things that do have to come: proper walking shoes, because the path is not really a path, and a dry set of clothes, because you are getting soaked either by the rain or by yourself.

And adjust your expectations about the night. You are in a hammock, in the dark, with a rainforest going at full volume around you. Most people sleep badly and then call it the best night of their trip. Both of those things are true at the same time.