Ban Chiao Lan

We woke again to the three gongs and made our way to breakfast before we left for our day trip to the lake. We were particularly looking forward to this as the pictures looked incredible however we were a bit sad when we realised you don’t actually stay in the floating bungalows on the tour we booked.

We all set out on a big open sided truck nicknamed the ‘Bone Shaker’ by DD and Julie to our first stop was another market in a village called Takhun. Much of the same hippy elephant trousers and dry bags for phones but we walked around all the same. Back on the truck our second stop was the very impressive Rajjaprabha Dam look out. Rajjaprabha Dam creates a man-made lake of 185sq km’s otherwise known as Cheow Larn Lake. Its purpose is electricity generation, irrigation, flood control, and fishing. To flood this large area 385 families were resettled and set up with rubber farms, land and money to help get them going. There were two viewpoints at the lookout, the first we went to was a great view of the lake. What we could see was only a very small fraction we found out later once on the lake. There are more than one hundred islands in the lake and it stretches over 60km from North to South. The other view point was of the dam and electric city.

Next stop was the pier where we all hoped on a traditional long-tail boat for about an hours trip to Elephant Hill's very own Rainforest. Apart from getting pretty soaked every so often the views on the lake and the sheer size of it were incredible. Once at the floating camp we stocked up on a yummy Thai spread for lunch.

Lunch over we had some free time to chill at the camp. We decided to take a kayak out to explore the lake in our own time and a little closer to the edge where we hoped to see some monkeys and other animals. Unfortunately the first couple to see monkeys got a bit too close and scared them off so we only saw the back of one retreating deeper into the trees. It was nice paddling around the edge of the lake for an hour or so though. We were also allowed to go for a swim off the end of the bar so once we were done feeding some HUGE fish from the back of the bar we took a quick dip in the gorgeous and surprisingly warm emerald water.

All done for the day we hoped back in the long-tail boat. This time it was my turn to get wet, sitting close to the side and soaking I got. So much so it looked like I had an accident when I got back on dry land. Back on the Bone Shaker we headed back to camp. For the evening we were done with documentaries and school kids dancing so we chilled until the cooking demo which today was a Papaya Salad and dinner.Lue lisää