タイのオーバーランディング：水上村、隠れたキャンプ、そして象

タイのオーバーランディング：水上村、隠れたキャンプ、そして象

Our second week overlanding in Thailand takes us deeper into the country’s south. We discover stilt villages built in the most unexpected places, limestone cliffs rising straight from the land, an ancient martial art once taught to royalty and how an invitation from a fellow Land Rover enthusiast brings us new experiences in the Thai jungle. The wheels of our trusty Land Rover can only take us so far this week. To truly understand this region, the journey must continue on the ocean, lakes, and rivers. We are Nick and Matild, and we’ve left everything behind to travel the seven continents with our land defender, the Albatross. Europe, North America, South America, Antarctica, Australia, Asia, and Africa. A world tour for real. We want to see it all. This is day 1,288 and we are in South Thailand. This is the next Meridian expedition. Welcome to another episode, an experience expedition. And this time we are in Thailand, Thailand. We were camping up on the hill in the palm plantation and it got so hot from 7:00 in the morning. The sun was heating on the car and it makes it impossible to sleep. So, we had to come down here to do this video. In Thailand, it’s uh I don’t know if it’s like all like it’s probably like this all year, but it’s like super humid and super warm. It’s not obvious on the camera. It looks like we’re doing all this cool stuff, but half of the time we’re like, “Oh my god, it’s so hot.” And we have the AC on. But anyways, Thailand is awesome. Last week we had a great time. And this week we’re excited to go see more things. So there’s a Fanga National Park, Stilt villages, and communities that we want to go see out there. And then go towards Phuket, probably mostly the the beach area rather than the town, and then start heading north towards Bangkok. And that there’s a lot of things still like islands, off-roading, I’m hoping, tons of other things. So yeah, I’ve been surprised last week by all the surprise we got on the way. Like cool temples, cool views, cool everything. All right, let’s go. Boom. This week, our journey takes us around Fong Gap and down to the busy island of Puket. Then we’ll head inland to explore Caos National Park, where a friend will show us some of its incredible wildlife. But first up, we need to find a boat. We think we found a boat. We were trying not to get those big tours that go all over the bay and just get a little commutes that go to Copani, which is this still village. And we think we found someone who agrees to just bring us to Copani and back. Yeah, there’s got to be people like villagers and residents that go back and forth almost every day. So, there has to be a service for those people and we would be very happy to pay and join these guys on their boat cuz that way we get the full real experience rather than the tourist boat. So, looks like we found somebody who’s kind of in between that. So, let’s see if it works out. Yeah, look here. This one is 100. No problem. About Oh, 1 hour and a half. You bet. 1 hour and half. Slow boat. Ah, slow boat. Yeah, this one. No, big one. Uhhuh. Yeah. 1,000 bar. Yellow. We tried to negotiate to get one of those little boats to be cheaper, but no, they didn’t want. So, we’re going to get one of those bigger long tails. They look really nice. And it’s a whole team job. Wow. What’s your name? Name? Nan? Yeah. Matild. And you? Nakha. Nakan. Nakha. Nakha. Okay. Okay. We just arrived on the island and you have little shops, little houses and boats all under this giant cliff. We just made it onto the island. First things first, fresh Coca-Cola cuz it is hot and it’s all over the world. And it’s all over the world and it says we’re not affiliated but it usually says it’s happiness. Anyway, yeah, we’re on the still house village. It’s called Copany. And I guess we’re just going to go walk around, see what there is, and then have a little lunch. We put the drone, shot the drone everywhere. So, it looks awesome. And uh you can see like the people, they literally have these still entries to their houses where they keep all their fishing gear and a lot of just gear for mostly for fishing. Then they have the boat ready to go. Then they go out, do a bit of fishing, come back, and then sell it to the restaurants. And then they arrive to the island. They take their little electric scooter around the island. Yeah, that’s funny because it’s true. It is pretty large. If you go all the way to the other end, I guess this is faster. But you do not want to fall off. That would suck. Everything like a real town here. They’re just building a new house, cleaning the street. I found a fishing net. So, we just ended the mosque of the island. Why is there a mosque here? When I mean there’s some Muslim in Thailand, but here in particular, the first inhabitants of this island were fishermen from Java in Indonesia. So, they were Muslims, but when they came here, the law in Thailand was that non Thai people were not allowed to own land. So they they never could settle on the island itself. They built stilt houses everywhere. And when the law changed, they were able to like settle partially on the island and the mosque was built. Crazy story, you know. Crazy story. And that mosque in there is all marble and it’s two stories up with a tower. And Matilda saying it’s actually sitting on the island and not on stilts because otherwise I think it would sink. Yeah, that would be sinking. They had just wooden houses on the the island is over here. And this is why we’re still good. But you walk 50 m that way and it’s no good. No good. Okay, let’s go. Wa. What is this? They’ve got a whole football field. A floating football field with an awesome view. This is really cool. So, the story is that in the 80s some kids wanted to play football. So they started to take like wood scraps and like fisherman equipment and they built a football field and they ended up one of the best team in Thailand for the young too. What? And they played barefoot because they were used to it. Oh, I I would too here all the time. Yeah. The local club, it’s called Penny FC, Pride of the Sea. It’s pretty exceptional. So cool. Big question is how many football balls were lost in the Adaman Sea from this field. A lot. I bet if you had grown up on Pany Island, you would have played football. Definitely. I’d be I’d definitely try to play for the club. Yeah. Pan FC. Pan FC. Everything is moving because everything is floating. So even the football field, you can see it. It’s very light, but it goes up and down. And that’s the school. That’s the school and the new football field. in total. Three football fields. We love football. We’re fascinated by life in Copani. Despite its strange location, the village functions surprisingly normally. Scooters, electricity, garbage collection, pets, schools, restaurants, and shops. We leave Copani and begin our drive to Phuket. Knowing we’re heading into more touristy areas, we take advantage of the journey to explore smaller tracks and see what the countryside looks like of the main roads. As the rain starts, the atmosphere becomes truly special. It is so beautiful even under the rain. This part of Thailand is really, really nice. It’s like with all the limestone cliffs everywhere. Now we got the rain, massive rainbow, and we’ve got all the palms and coconut trees. It’s like it’s so big and awesome that you don’t know what to look at, you know? Heat. Heat. Look at this gorgeous place. We have all of the layers of towers and then a giant cliff above our head. Wa. And then the palm trees and everywhere road turning into river. Eventually, we’re back on main roads and arrive in busy Phuket, surrounded by resorts and hotels. You can imagine our surprise when we found our campsite for the night on a prime island location. We’re actually really surprised in a positive way. We thought Puket will be super hard to camp because it’s very touristy, but they have a huge uh tsunami hazard zone. It’s called like this. So I think after the big tsunami in 2004, they decided to keep all of that clear from hotel. And so we had I don’t know kilometers and kilometers of beach where we can set up camp. People said there was no problem. Yeah, fingers crossed the cops won’t come. But yeah, looks like we’re set up and we got a private beach practically all to ourselves. Nobody around. We got the waves, the sunset. I think we’re can’t ask for for better. And all that for Z, baby. I know. Wow. and Nico wanted to surf. And here we are. Phuket is Thailand’s largest island, immense and the heart of the country’s tourism industry, developed since the 80s. Yet, we start to realize that Thailand has this unique ability to remain authentically itself, even in the most visited places. Wherever we go, we adapt and make the most of it. Puget is one of the main surfing spots in Thailand. So, Nick went surfing. Let’s go watch a match of Muay Thai. Welcome to Thailand, Muay Thai. What is Muay Thai? Some sort of boxing or fighting. And today looks like there was a Turkish, a Russian, or I forgot. But there’s there’s fighters. There’s fighters. If we have to be in crazy puket, we thought let’s embrace the weirdness of busy streets. Uh weed bar. Yeah. Massage bar of every sort. Lots of music banging everywhere. And Muay Thai. Let’s go. All right. Go see Muay Thai. Yeah. We’re going. We’re going. Yeah. We go. We go. Dubai already together. How many people? Muay Thai is an art form. It dates back centuries. Some records trace it back as far as the 13th century and it was once taught to royalty and even included in the national school curriculum. Forget heavy punches. That’s not how one wins. Mai means the art of eight limbs. Only clean unblocked hits count. The best fighters are incredibly precise and dangerously fast. Mai also fuels a massive betting industry worth around 40 billion bats. It’s national passion and its fighters are revered. Heat. Heat. Heat. Heat. We left algo part on the street and we’re kind of stuck. Motorcycle here. Motorcycle there. It’s going to be a tight tight exit. I’ll help you. Yeah. Stop. Stop. What? Yo, Mat, we’re going to pee pee island. Yeah, for my birthday, Nick got me two nights on one of those amazing islands in the sea just here. It’s called Pee Island and there’s some diving beautiful turquoise water, beautiful limestone cliffs. So, I’m really excited. This is exactly what it looks like. So, we got some of these sharks. Got a bit of scuba diving over there. And what do you see? Shark. Look at these fish. Yep. Hopefully, we’ll see that guy. That’s strange. Nice. And I bet we’re going to see a lot of these. Okay, let’s go. Let’s go. The rainy season waters may be a bit rough, but it doesn’t take away from the magic. And I challenge you to find anything as breathtaking as surfacing from the water only to face massive cliffs towering right above you. Wow. Cool. We’re going down to a shipwreck 20 m. All right. And for Matild’s birthday, it’s time to go diving. And there’s a little bit of a team, so that’s cool. All right, let’s go. This is where we slept. So much wind last night. So much salt coming out of the ocean. But this is a spot pretty good. And as you can see here on Albo, it is all salty. You can see it’s like, look at that. All salt. And then when you come here, it made the car look super shiny because all of that. Oh, look at that salt. We’re now leaving the coastline. Uh, so that’s also why we do the cleaning because we’re not going to be next to the ocean for a little bit. We’re leaving the west coast of Indonesia, which is next to the Adam Sea, and we’re heading slowly to the east coast through the inland. The little guys of the cleaning shop are so cute. They were checking out the car and they said we were on social media and they got super excited. So, photo time. One more. One more. He’s hiding. Say hi. Everyone. Everyone. Okay. One, two, three. Around that time, we received a fascinating invitation from a fellow Land Rover owner who had seen our videos. He invited us to mountainous region far from the crowded beaches, offering to show us his jungle camps and his elephant sanctuary. Too intrigued to refuse, we accepted and headed north. We approach Cow sock. The landscape changes. The hills grow steeper. The roads twist and climb and the air turns cooler. Welcome to Elephant Hills. Oh my gosh, we just arrived in Elephant Hill camp. So, there’s this guy called Robert who sent us an email maybe 10 days ago and said, “Hey, I’m following your channel and I have this hotel camp with elephants, uh, rescue rescue elephants, and we would love to invite you over to our camp.” And we said, “All right, sweet. Let’s go.” And it’s also a region we want to come and visit. So, uh, we said, “Let’s do it.” So, he said he’s got multiple defenders. And when we arrived here, obviously, we parked right next to his 110 with an alley cab pop top. And when we parked right next to it, we didn’t see until literally just now, but it says, “Welcome to Elephant Camp, Nick and Matild.” We had a bit of a out of body experience where we’re like, “Nick and Matild.” Ah, Nick and Matild. It’s so cool. I love it. It’s so nice. All right, we’re very excited. Let’s go meet Robert and the team. Defend the people. That’s awesome. Our host hasn’t arrived yet, but we follow one of the camp’s guide onto the river running along the camp. This is usually not our style of travel, but this invitation was too good and way too kind. Plus, he’s a follower of the channel. And Robert has asked his team to welcome us like kings. Look at this. It’s amazing. Welcome to the camp, Nick and Matild. They made a little elephant out of leaves. And look at those. That is too good. Cute. I almost don’t want to break it up. No, I don’t want I want them to look at us. Our first stop in this region is going to pedal down the river. And the river is called Cao Soap. Cao means mountain and soap means meant dead body. They changed the name now, but originally 8 years ago it meant dead body because there was an epidemic of small pox and a lot of villagers died because of lack of access to health. Eventually, they changed the name because it was a bit of a morbid story, but that’s still the story of the region. And cow, the mountain is because we’re surrounded by limestone mountains. And this we really see them all around. It’s super pretty. It’s probably my favorite thing about uh Thailand so far. From there, we follow our guide to the elephant sanctuary owned by our host. That’s cool. We’re on the river now. You better spot the animals. Nick is really good at animal spotting. What’s your name? Sun. Sun. Nice to meet you. It’s so mysterious those cliffs. Two snakes, four monkeys, and some dragonfly. That’s not too bad for now. Yeah. Still looking for the big crocodile. Still looking for the crocodile, but apparently we can look for a long time cuz there’s no crocodile. Yeah, we’re looking for the tiger. Little bit poison, but little bit poison. The other one was not poisonous. Yeah, this one we leave them on the tree. The camp of our friend Robert also hosts those beautiful Asian elephants. They used to work in the logging industry. It’s a tradition that existed for a long, long time in Thailand. Men and elephant have been working together for centuries. Nowadays, obviously, the whole methods to tam the elephants is very controversial because it involves a lot of like pain for the elephants. Those ones were already tamed and now they get to retire in this place where they’re fed, they go to have a bath, etc. They get some rest here. 69 years old. You’re older than my mom. Today, Thailand has about 3,700 domestic elephants and roughly 3,000 wild ones. To understand their story, we have to go back in time. Thailand has domesticated elephants since at least the 13th century. They were and still are royal and religious symbols. For centuries, the kingdom’s wealth was partly measured by how many elephants it owned. They served in agriculture, the military, and royal ceremonies. The sanctuary trains veterinarians in elephant health care and sponsors mobile vet clinics providing free care to domestic elephants still used in agriculture. Elephant here is actually blind and they have no idea that I’m trying to feed it. If I put this here, it doesn’t even know that I’m here. So, this one doesn’t even know that I’m putting food out here. She doesn’t know at all. So, what you need to do is go tap it on its nose so that it knows. And there we go. Just tap tap on the nose. A I don’t know who’s happier, you or the other side. I think we both are. Yeah. We’ve been welcomed like family at Elephant Hills by the entire team. We’ve gone to see the elephants that are part of the sanctuary program. We’ve traveled on the river. We still didn’t meet Robert who kindly invited us here and the man behind these huge conservation projects all over Thailand. He’s supposedly coming. That’s his car. And there’s a second car here. So, we’re going to wait for him and ask him how we got all of these ideas. And then they’re sending us to a lake in the middle of the jungle. And that’s where we’re going to sleep tonight. It’s another of their projects and it sounds really fascinating. Good morning. So, we’ve been invited here by Robert. And Robert a few days ago sent us an email, maybe even a week ago, and he said, “Hey guys, I’ve been following your your videos. You’re going to be in Thailand at some point. Why don’t you guys come and stay at my safari camp? We have one here down south and we have another one in the north.” And we said, “Well, you know what? We’ll be there in a few days.” So, thanks for having us. Awesome. Great to see you both. And I’ve seen you on the videos for for so long. I followed you around the world and then it suddenly clicked that Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, like wow, you’re going to come to Thailand. So, welcome here. It’s really great to meet you. An achievement, right? Not many people Everybody dreams about it, but you’re doing it. I’m really feel privileged to meet you. And we’re really lucky to be here. So, he’s got a Defender 110. Does it have a name? Uh, not yet. No, it’s just just been rebuilt. So, we’re about to christen it. There’s a few little things to finish it. Yep. He doesn’t have one defender 110. Yeah, but I do have several. So, how did all of the safari camp start and that’s a cool story. This company started out in Saudi Arabia. Um, I I come from England. I have a degree in agriculture and I went to work on an agricultural project in Saudi Arabia and then I had a Land Rover 110 V8 in the sand dunes and in between working on the agriculture project I used to go and explore all around in the desert everything and I thought this is amazing seeing the world with a four-wheel drive and going to places other people can’t see. After four years in Saudi I met a lot of I worked with Thai people in Saudi Arabia and they told me to come to Thailand. I wanted to go to Africa, but I ended up here. The first couple of years, I drove all around Thailand, right? I It was amazing. Land Rover in a Land Rover. It was fascinating. It was really, really good. And then I think maybe I go back to work in Africa or get a job. But I think ah I I’ll start a little tour company with Land Rovers, taking people to see nature, the jungle, this kind of thing. And although I’d worked in Saudi and saved a lot of money, I invested in the stock market. In October 1987, the stock market crashed and I lost all my money. So I started from zero with one old Land Rover and passion for Land Rovers and like in the jungle. I thought I’ll do this for a few months till I can get a job. But that was nearly over 35 years ago now. And everything you see here, it’s all come from a passion from Land Rovers. Right. Well, thanks for having us. Really cool. And now we’re going to go to the other place which is so he’s got a spot here in a safari camp in Elephant Hill, but he also has a safari camp on a lake early 1980s. It goes to about 60 kilometers. There’s a lot of rainforest, there’s wild elephant, there’s tiger, there’s the wild Asian ox. Gibbon Hornbill is an amazing place for wildlife and we’ve been there for quite a few years now and we’ve noticed that with poachers and people disturbing the wildlife and now that you can see wildlife a lot more than you could when we first went there before they were hunted. Now the tourists look at them so it’s working really well. Cool. So we’re really excited to go there and then maybe we’ll see you up north in Chiang Mai in the bush camp. Okay. Later this year. Yeah. Robert, congrats for all the work you do here. It’s a really amazing place. Thank you so much. Okay. And thanks for having us. We just left the Sapphire camp. Thank you so much, Robert, for having us. It’s been an awesome 48 hours. Now, we’re going to your next base camp, which we’re very excited to see. The memories are for life and and honestly, it gives us goosebumps the amount of of kindness that is given to us. It was super inspiring meeting Robert. Uh especially like hearing about his life. He just followed his passion and eventually built everything he has here in Thailand in a country he loved with like following his values. He set up those mobile elephant clinics. So thank you so much just for the inspiration lesson. This week has brought us even deeper into Thailand’s wilderness. Choland Lake is an immense man-made lake covering about 185 km, flooding what once were five villages. Some say the dam’s location was chosen partly because the area had been a hideout for communist student revolutionaries, impossible to locate in the dense jungle and cave networks. Hallelujah. We’ve arrived at the lake camp of Robert and the place is absolutely amazing. We took a little channel off the main lake and we’re now full in the jungle. Look, I just found this out. They’re using vehicle four-wheel drive prop shafts to connect the bays of the tents to the walkway here. It’s funny little little details that not many would notice. I think Land Rover lover one day, Land Rover Lover Forever. Yeah. I mean, I don’t know if it’s only Land Rover. I feel like it’s different brands, but just a little wink to the the setup. A the under of the shark was felt until 51. Oh, you know wave shark. Mhm. We’re leaving the camp already after a little swim. We’re still halfway the idea. Sam is bringing us to the jungle. What are we going to see, Sam? We’re going to see the bat cave. Bat cave. We have the torch for everyone right here. That’s cool. Maybe we see other things in the cave. We might see some monkey, some snake, and big spider. Cool. Thank you, Sam. See that cat? It’s a baby apparently, but it lives with the rangers. You’re blessed, Nick. Oh, man. Oh, yeah. Just pull it off. Spray. Do you have the spray? Yeah. Lucky, Nick. You’ve been chosen. I think he’s in already. Already? Yeah, I think so. Yeah, he’s in. You’ve been chosen, but Sam is going to help you. Thank you. Those are the offerings. Coca-Cola and water. An old Coca-Cola with a straw and two bottle of water. Spirit house. Spirit house. Wow, the cave is beautiful. We found big spider. So, this is poisonous. This looks so bad. This one is really scary. They’re everywhere. They’re huge and around every corner. Let’s go. Saying goodbye to the camp for now. Surrounded by nature. All we hear is birds. Four different types of birds. Do you hear anything else? A monkey. Yeah. So we hear the gone monkey too unfortunately near to us or around us. Not much. Robert sends us to his lake camp. Perfectly blended into the environment to leave as little trace as possible. Caves, snakes, bats, spiders, monkeys, gibons. The place is alive with wildlife. Never saw the wild elephants we were hoping for, but our amazing guides retrieved footage from the trap cameras they had set out around the park. Incredible glimpses of the creatures that call this jungle home. It’s hard to thank Robert enough for his invitation. His team is made up of some of the most knowledgeable and passionate people we’ve met and we learned so much from them. We thank all the staff here for honestly making the experience so good. They took care of us just like we were their own. They always came to us and said, “Hey, do you guys need anything? Hey, there’s this activ activity over there. Hey guys, take a canoe and go cuz there’s monkeys over there.” So, uh, we have to thank everybody here at Elephant Hill on mainland and on the lake. And it’s time for us to leave. It is raining. We’re going to take a quick group photo and then off we go. Okay. Well, I’m sure it’s okay. I will check after we are ah the one in Yes. Thank you so much. This is you are the manager of the lake the lake resort here. Yeah. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank youa. Thank you. We see each other in January in Chiang Mai. This week has brought us deeper into Thailand’s history, nature, and culture than we ever expected. Every day, we’re more amazed by this country. Next week, we head seriously north for an entirely new adventures, and we have something very exciting to announce. Yeah, we’re using the the wipers to dry a few socks. Boxers, the the snorkel for the swimming suit, side mirrors for more swimming suit, radio antenna for some shorts and shoes. Oh, baby, I just want to tell you that. No, no, no. Oh dear.

Our second week overlanding through Thailand takes us deep into the country’s wild south — where the road meets the sea, and every turn reveals something unexpected. Between rain-soaked trails, limestone cliffs, and floating villages built above the tides, this leg of the journey shows a side of Thailand few ever experience.

From the chaos of Phuket to the calm of hidden lakes, we learn that even in the most touristic corners, Thailand still holds its authentic rhythm — in its people, traditions, and daily life. Along the way, we discover the ancient art of Muay Thai, the energy of the islands, and the raw beauty of the rainforest.

An invitation from a fellow Land Rover owner, Robert, takes us into the dense jungles surrounding Khao Sok National Park. There, in his remote Elephant Hills camps we immersed ourselves into Thailand nature.

Home

This episode is about more than just the drive — it’s about connection: to nature, to people, and to the unexpected paths that open when you say yes to adventure.

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Episode 162 | Filmed 16th October 2025 | Phuket, Thailand

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WHO ARE WE?

Join us as we travel the world on an expedition throughout the 7 continents, crossing about 88 countries, making new friends, meeting the locals, exploring cultures, traditions, foods and every corners of the continents. Join us!
We are traveling in our Land Rover Defender, our tiny home on wheels for the next 5 years.

5 Years | 88 Countries | 7 Continents | 300 000km
Nick; 31 y/o, French/Italian. 🙋‍♂️🇫🇷🇮🇹
Mathilde; 31 y/o, French.🙋‍♀️🇫🇷
Albatross; 12 y/o, UK. 🚙🇬🇧

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@NextMeridian.Expedition

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