Photo Pam Walatka/Special To The Town CrierThe mountains rise dramatically from the lake in Thailands Khao Sok National Park.

I heard Sarah say, “Mom,” and I woke up lying on a bench on a porch under the stars over a river in a rain forest in Thailand. My husband, Jerry and I were in Thailand visiting our daughter Sarah, who lives there teaching English. Sarah took us on a tour of Khao Sok National Park.

I was afraid the trip would be too much for my senior knees. I’ve been on a few adventures in my life, but this was the first time my thoughts kept returning to my knees.

Sarah had taken this tour before. “We’ll be roughing it like backpackers,” she said. Based on her description, we were equipped to climb wet rocks in a cave, hang onto a rope as we descended a steep cave wall and swim across an underground river.

One of my knees has a tendency to collapse under pressure, and I could picture myself tumbling down the rocks to my death – and perhaps taking someone with me.

My 66-year-old knees ache pretty much all of the time, but I wasn’t concerned about that. For most seniors, nagging pain isn’t even worth mentioning, it’s just something to endure. Pain is the price of admission to old age. I worried about falling down.

After a night in a “tree house” cabin, we rode on benches in the back of a pickup truck driven by our guide, Pom, to Khao Sok Lake, where we boarded an open, narrow, wooden boat.

The scenery, which had been lovely, became shockingly gorgeous. The mountains came straight up out of the lake with dramatic white limestone cliffs, surrounded by trees. There were gigantic cliffs as far as we could see, in all directions, like Yosemite taken to another order of magnitude and rendered in the style of classic Chinese art.

Sarah told Pom about her recent spelunking adventure on this same tour. Pom, flicking his eyes at Jerry and me, said, “This time we are going to a different cave.”

We arrived at our lodging: a group of tiny floating cabins made of bamboo, anchored to the edge of the lake. From the porch of the cabin, you could dive into clear, warm, deep water, and we did.

We got back in the boat after lunch, disembarking for a hike through the rain forest, looking for exotic animals and finding giant lizards.

At the end of the trail, we boarded a bamboo raft and rowed to the mouth of a cave. We strolled in and looked around. Then we turned around and walked back out. Imagine my relief and disappointment that I dodged the cave-climbing adventure.

Back at the cabins, we swam again, ate dinner, then tried to sleep on the rocklike mattress. We arose at dawn and boated to a cove to search for gibbons and monkeys, catching a glimpse of them. The best part was listening to their calls.

We boated back to the road, took the pickup to a bus stop and relaxed on the bus back to Phuket. Along the highway, we passed a group of people leading three elephants. The elephants’ knees looked like mine.

Pam Walatka is a longtime Los Altos Hills resident. Contact her at This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it

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