Ratchaprapha and Chiaw Lan Lake

Jul 2011


Some of the long boats waiting for tourists.
In season this place would be absolutely buzzing and out of season it is
a rather lazy and restful time for all.

The rain stopped for maybe 2-3 hours in 3 days and we took this time to drive to stunning Chiaw Lan Lake that was created by an enormous shale clay dam called Ratchaprapha with lime outcrops protruding from the lake to 960m.We had to employ the services of a long boat and a driver to go trough the lake.” Bobby” found an original one indeed! He looked like an interesting character and his boat (or his friends boat sometimes it is hard to follow) looked just as original as he did. He needed some money up front to buy fuel first. He had coupe of car seats in his friends boat an absolute classic.

The lake with it’s outcrops was breathtaking impressive and magnificent. There were also some caves but because of weather we could not walk trough them. I was happy about that! Who wants to walk in cold water on a cold day – a rarity in Thailand. The caves are normally partly submerged.

We also visited a small tourist village in a wonderful setting. Fed some beautiful pink fish and met the locals that were looking after the place We utilized our rain free period to the max. it started raining again just as soon as we got of the boat. We could clearly see the rain following us and were all giving our driver all the encouragement to go faster laughing and screaming….

Next day we decided to move on to Khao lak