Anurak Community Lodge

Khao Sok National Park protects some of the oldest rainforest on Earth, its limestone karsts and jungle-fringed Cheow Lan Lake home to gibbons, elephants and rare wildlife like the giant Rafflesia kerrii flower. When Anurak Community Lodge's founders were searching for a site here, local villagers suggested a disused oil palm plantation on the park's edge, land now mostly reclaimed as forest, with many of those villagers on staff as guides, cooks and housekeepers.

Nineteen rooms across raised bungalows and safari-style tents sit beneath palms and six hectares of tropical garden, each with an en-suite rain shower, mosquito netting and a balcony facing the karst scenery. Guests can join tree-planting on land being restored from oil palm, visit a nearby ethical elephant centre where walking with the animals replaces riding, and take a jungle dinner in a bamboo sala using local forest ingredients.