Khao Sok National Park shelters one of the world's oldest evergreen rainforests — a 160-million-year-old canopy predating both the Amazon and the Congo.
The 738-square-kilometre reserve, established in 1980, protects Cheow Lan Lake, a man-made reservoir created by the Ratchaprapha Dam in 1982, whose 165-kilometre shoreline is now fringed by limestone karsts that rise 960 metres above the water. The park sits at the intersection of three climate zones, producing annual rainfall exceeding 3,500 millimetres and supporting over 5 percent of the world's plant species within its boundaries.
A Khao Sok tour from Krabi covers the 110-kilometre journey inland from the Andaman coast to the park headquarters in Klong Sok, where the transition from coastal lowland to highland rainforest is visible in the shift from rubber plantations to dense dipterocarp forest. The conservation fee — 300 baht per person, per zone — funds trail maintenance and ranger patrols across two distinct visitor areas: the headquarters zone, with its network of footpaths beneath strangler figs and giant lianas, and the lake zone, accessible only by longtail boat. The limestone formations contain caves that served as guerrilla hideouts during the Communist insurgency of the 1970s, their interiors now home to Eonycteris spelaea bats and Taphozous melanopogon colonies numbering in the thousands.
Cheow Lan Lake's ecology reflects its dual identity as both reservoir and refuge. The flooded valley submerged lowland forest in the early 1980s, leaving tree skeletons that still break the surface near the western shore. The lake supports wild elephant populations that descend from the surrounding hills to drink at dawn, and the park's 48 mammal species include clouded leopards, Malayan sun bears, and the last viable populations of Malayan tapir on the Thai peninsula. The rafflesia kerrii, a parasitic bloom measuring up to 80 centimetres in diameter, flowers sporadically between December and March on the slopes above the dam. Visitors arriving on khao sok tour from krabi tours gain access to kayaking routes through flooded canyons, where the water depth reaches 95 metres and the acoustic isolation amplifies every birdcall and drip from the canopy above.
10 hr
