Timeless Thailand: Floating Raft Houses in Khao Sok National Park

Yes, Thailand can look like this (which was taken in Koh Samui)

 Sure, Thailand has some wildly gorgeous white sand beaches with cute Australian bartenders making vibrant fruity cocktails and shacks on the sand where you can buy the best noodles of your life for two dollars. But my favorite part of the country is Khao Sok, a national park comprised of a dense tangle of jungle a little over 300 miles south of Bangkok.

Because we visited Thailand on our honeymoon, we uncharacteristically stayed at five star hotels all over the country—and this is a place to do that, because even the bougiest places have rooms for under $200 a night. But there are no JW Mariotts in Surat Thani, a hub town built mostly of parking lot that tourists only buzz through on their way to either the jungles or the islands, so we stayed at a concrete box called the S Tara Grand. It was $30 for the night. When we walked in, there was an illustrated sign that said “No Smoking No Pet No Durian.”

Overall, very good advice, I think

We got hour long foot massages at the spa in the lobby, occasionally visited by a little gecko. Then we had some (delicious) noodles and a large Chang beer in the restaurant, which was empty except for us and a young Thai couple with a newborn, and turned in early to prepare for our adventure the next morning.

This was Christmas Eve. It was surreal and funny and magical and there was blessedly no durian.

is this what heaven looks like?

At six the next morning, a van picked us up at the hotel to drive into the jungle. The driver wished us Merry Christmas and offered no explanation for the teenage girl asleep in the front seat. About an hour into the ride, he dropped her off on the side of the road, and as we drove away I watched out the back window as she began to set up a food stall. (Getting into cars with strangers and riding until they motioned for us to get out was a real theme in Thailand. In these situations, I usually say something to Jared like, “At least if this is how we die, it’s an interesting story,” which I do not think he finds particularly reassuring.)

After some time and a stop at a Thai 7-11 for coffee and teeth-crackingly crunchy snacks, we pulled up to a Jungle themed treehouse hotel very well camouflaged in the middle of the jungle. Here, we had breakfast and then got into another van driven by a stranger who told us to call him “Big Man” (it was an appropriate moniker), who turned out to be our guide for the ensuing adventure. We drove to Cheow Lan Lake, left the vast majority of our worldly possessions in the back of the van, and got into a long tail boat. It was pouring rain as we took off into a magical world out of Fern Gully or Jurassic Park; Khao Sok is older than the Amazon.

Two hours later and soaked to the bone, we arrived at our floating raft houses. A thatched roofed, open walled dining space opened off of the long-tail boat parking lot. Two bright yellow kayaks floated in the green water, and a long line of wooden huts stretched along a rough-hewn walkway built of planks lashed together with rope. Inside each hut was a queen-sized mattress and a tent of mosquito netting. The bathroom was up a hill and we were told there were only two hours of electricity a night.

Big Man builds some ducks

Almost immediately upon arrival, Big Man loaded us back into the long tail boat and we headed out on a hike. After snaking through muddy trails, we came to a cave, which he helpfully told us would have water “to here,” indicating his waist, “to here,” indicating his chest, and “to here,” holding his hand above his head. I spent 45 minutes feeling like a badass aquatic version of SpiderMan, shimmying up pitch black waterfalls and swimming between slick boulders, before Big Man shined his flashlight on a wall to kindly illuminate a spider bigger than my head. And then we entered the bat cave.

hard pass on the bats, thanks

There were just millions of bats hanging around stalactites. I did not prefer the bats myself, but Rosa, the seven year old German girl in our group, plowed ahead gleefully at Big Man’s side.

A haiku:
Dirty hand, cold Chang
It's Khao Sok in a nutshell
Yes please, I'll take two

After two more hours of hiking, which included Jared wiping out down a muddy hill and finding a leech setting up shop on his ankle, and me being a super cool and fearless lady explorer who would charge anywhere through this verdant jungle as long as the bouncing seven year old and a guide doing the whole hike barefoot led the way, our long tail sliced back through the still waters to our huts. We drank some Changs on our tiny front porch and then dove right into the water for a swim. Toucans and macaques spotted the prehistoric trees. For dinner, we shared a whole fish with a Parisian couple who explained the underground Paris rap scene to us in French. It was still Christmas. At 10pm, our two hours of electricity expended, the string lights clicked off and we fell asleep in the middle of a profound darkness.

Heady Spotting in Burlington, Vermont

what the insides of a vermont themed treasure chest might look like

A friend taught me an excellent word recently: schnapsidee. It’s German (clearly), and means “booze idea”—so, one of those plans you make when you have had a few pints. They always seem fun until the next morning, when suddenly they seem to require A LOT of energy. The key to turning schnapsidees into reality (and in turn into great stories) is someone who will hold you to your word. And so, on the coldest weekend of this or any recent year, a plan hatched over Grimms at Proletariat in the East Village became a drive from New York City to Burlington, Vermont in search of the elusive Heady Topper.

Heady is one of those beers that inspire a sort of mania. Its deliciousness is storied, and it’s not distributed outside of a 25-mile radius from where it's brewed in Waterbury. Plus, the brewery is closed to the public, and retailers limit the number of cans you can buy (sometimes it’s as low as one four pack). Stores all over Burlington still sell out of their weekly delivery within hours, so you have to know who is getting Heady and when so you’re ready to pounce. Um, or walk in calmly like a normal person.

Our first morning in Burlington, it was negative ten degrees. If you have never been in negative ten degree weather, I am jealous of you and you will probably live longer than me. Negative ten degrees makes your ears feel like brittle glass. Jared’s beard frosted over immediately. Really, the only good thing about weather like that is you can drink all the beer and eat all the cheese you want, and tell yourself it’s protection against the cold. We had a ridiculously delicious brunch at the Penny Cluse around 11am, where we ordered two Heady Toppers. “Each?” our waitress asked, because she was a reasonable and excellent waitress. But no, two Heady Toppers to split between the four of us, because we had a big day of Beer Field Trips planned. (When this blog takes off and makes me very famous and wealthy, I think I will start a travel company called Beer Field Trips. Let me know if you’re ready to invest.)

cute husband at Winooski Beverage Warehouse, not so into photos

Our first stop was Winooski Beverage Warehouse, where I felt a sort of glee that I usually only experience during very large tap numbers in Broadway musicals, or in Parisian bakeries. Shopping for esoteric beers is my very favorite kind of shopping (although recently I have been really into buying rugs, and now we have so many rugs we have started hanging them on our walls.) I was dancing through the aisles of the Winooski Beverage Warehouse, but fortunately no one could really tell because I was wearing so many layers.

Then it was time to make one of the most important and remote American beer pilgrimages one can make: to the hallowed Hill Farmstead brewery in Greensboro Bend, Vermont. Greensboro Bend is an hour and a half from Burlington, which is to say, it’s out there. It started to snow as we drove, and we entertained the idea that the brewery might actually be closed due to weather. Don’t ask me why we didn’t use our Power of The Internet and Phone Communication to determine if that was actually the case; our brains and the world wide web were both frozen.

Hill Farmstead tasting flight

We should never have doubted the cross section of hardened Vermonters and serious beer freaks, because Hill Farmstead was packed. It’s a concrete warehouse in the middle of the field that is supposed to be gorgeous in the summer, but in the winter just seems like a long way to walk through howling, cutting winds. Inside, you take a number to wait your turn for growler fills; the next number was close to 700. They were currently serving number 430. There were so many people in this place that the windows were open to cool things off, even though that handy Snapchat filter that puts the temperature on your photos told me it was currently -16.

After an increasingly snowy and dark drive back to Burlington, we called an Uber because we all live in the future and went to dinner at The Farmhouse Tap & Grill, which is an excellent establishment that used to be a McDonalds and now has one of the craziest beer lists you could ever hope to stumble across. There is also a hidden log cabin themed bar called The Parlor in the basement where you can play darts. Don’t all leave for Burlington at once!!

Then the next day was Valentine’s Day, so we bought twenty five Vermont cheeses and ate them all. It was the best Valentine’s Day ever.

a small representation of our cheese haul

eureka!

Our drive home on Monday did take us eight hours, but on our way out of town we hit every shop on the Monday Heady Spotter distribution list, until we found our mecca at Shelburne Meat Market, where each couple bought a case (!). As I rationed them carefully for the next two months, I was pretty schnapsidee-lighted. (Gonna go give myself a real good talking to about that pun, bye!)