Queen of the jungle?

I have just experienced one of the most exhilarating and yet frightening 2 days of my life. I'm seriously not exaggerating here. We're talking total jungle mania, up close and personal with mother nature and Cliff Hanger esq moments - literally.

Emily (who I met on KPN) and I arrived at Koah Sok Riverside Resort in Thailand's Koah Sok after a 9 hour boat and bus journey from Koh Tao. The staff where amazing. Super friendly, real characters, very amusing. Or, Yuan and B (our guide) were fantastic. Food was sublime - best prawn Tom Yum soup to date! The cabins were rustic but had a certain charm to them. Ours overlooked a beautiful river. The scenery was dramatic. A complete contrast from the sandy beaches and turquoise sea of KPN and Koh Tao.

Now, before I get a ton of emails saying 'what did you expect going to the jungle' just hold your horses for a moment. Obviously I anticipated insects. I was more than prepared to go trekking (brought cotton trousers and trainers for the event) and get close (ish) to mother nature. What I hadn't expected was mother nature and her beloved creatures to be literally under my feet nor to witness a near death experience.

We arrived late at night. My rucksack was so heavy a guy kindly tried to help me with it and nearly fell over in the mud! I was in a foul mood. I was hating my rucksack and loathed the thought of trying to negotiate the steps to reception surrounded by a mud bogg. Thankfully the guy managed to hoist the evil rucksack onto his back. We sorted out our room and had dinner. So far so good.

The next morning I was woken up by what I can only describe as the sound of 100 car alarms going off. Except it wasn't 100 car alarms going off as I was in the heart of the jungle. It was creatures. Insects. I later learnt beetles make this noise. Flying beetles. It sounded like the day of the triped. I was shitting myself.

Managed to make it down to reception and we headed off on our trek with B. A leisurely trek where the path was very well trodden, saw tons of insects, camilions etc and even stopped off for drink and fag along the way. 'This is my kind of trekking' I thought to myself as I sauntered off to use the loo. All fine. Dare I say I was even cocky about the whole jungle 'thang' until I assumed position over the squat loo and looked up. To my utter horror there was a spiders web the length of a car above me. Now I've seen arachnophobia. My biggest fear is being helpless and having a dirty great big spider fall on top of my head, into my lap - in fact anything relating to a spider scares me shitless. I literally froze. Suffered massive stage fright and legged it out of there.

I had to wait another 3 hours until I could relive myself. It was agony. I was nearly in tears and could barely speak. Seeing the waterfall (whole purpose of the trek) was the hardest part. Made my eyes water and it wasn't at the scenery!

Anyway, after the trek on foot we when to the elephant sanctuary for a trek riding elephants too. It was totally brilliant. Definitely a highlight of my holiday to date. Then on to a temple to feed monkeys. I didn't feed them though. Horrid little creatures they started biting people and I couldn't be bothered with having to go to hospital because of a monkey bite!

Anyway, that evening I was dropping off to sleep when I heard a pretty big noise. Not quite too sure what it was as I was nearly asleep. Didn't really pay much attention to it either until Emily asked if it was me. Then it happened again. Sounded like it was on the roof. Sounded like it was a big animal. We both lay there listening out for it again. My imagination ran wild. Then I heard a purring sound. 'Oh. my. god.' I thought. 'There's a wild cat like thing on the roof and it's probably hungry and angry.'

With slight trepidation I told Emily that I'd heard purring. She muffled a laugh and said it sounded like a mophead. To this day I'm convinced it wasn't. Embarrassed I managed to drop off to sleep.....