500 Rai Floating Resort Review

The last time we visited Thailand for Christmas, we spent a week in Phuket with kids. Now, 5 years later on our second family trip to Thailand we were looking for an experience to top that. When we discovered the 500 Rai Floating Resort in Khao Sok National Park, we knew we had a Christmas trip to Thailand we wouldn’t soon forget. This 500 Rai Floating Resort review is based on our 4 night stay over Christmas with our two kids (aged 8 & 10).

This post contains compensated links.

What is Special About the 500 Rai Floating Resort?

We were so excited about staying at the 500 Rai Resort with our kids as it is a family-friendly luxury resort in Khao Sok National Park. Widely regarded as one of Thailand’s most beautiful destinations, Khao Sok National Park is filled with rugged karst, limestone mountains. The centerpiece of all this raw wilderness is Cheow Lan Lake.

A massive, manmade lake, Cheow Lan Lake has some of the most epic scenery that Thailand has to offer. The 500Rai Floating Resort is a luxury resort of floating bungalows located deep within the national park. 

500 Rai offers a wide-variety of family-friendly accommodations, a full restaurant with both Thai and Western food, and a generous selection of activities to enjoy. Guests can sign up for on-resort activities such as sunrise stretching to towel folding classes. Off-resort activities include wildlife safaris (for wild elephants, bbuffalo, etc.) and cave exploration. 

There are so many reasons for families to stay at the 500Rai Floating Resort in Khao Sok National Park. Read on to discover more about our 4 night stay at the 500 Rai Resort with kids.

This is not a sponsored post – we paid our own way, so you can enjoy this completely honest 500 Rai Floating Resort review.

Getting to 500Rai Floating Resort in Khao Sok National Park

One of the best things about the 500Rai Floating Resort is how remote it is. This, of course, does mean that it’s a little difficult to get to. The easiest way to get to the 500Rai Resort is to begin your journey in the nearby city of Surat Thani – also known as the gateway to the eastern islands of Ko Samui and Ko Tao. 

After a fun 3 days in Siem Reap with kids, we flew into the Surat Thani airport and then took a Grab (the Thailand Uber equivalent) into the city. We stayed at the fun Blu Monkey Hotel, primarily as it had a family room with two adjoining rooms. 

We arranged a private transfer through 500 Rai from the Blu Monkey Hotel to the Ratchaprapha Pier on Cheow Lan Lake. Our driver was there promptly at 8:30 am and we were on our way. It took us approximately 75 minutes to get to the dock. (After our stay at 500 Rai, we used 12Go to get from Ratchaprapha Pier to Koh Lanta).

From there, it was a 90 minute longtail boat ride to the 500 Rai Floating Resort. The scenery in Khao Sok National Park on the way to the resort was simply incredible.

The towering karst limestone mountains powerfully jutting out of the lake water is a sight to behold – the beauty reminded us of the world-famous Ha Long Bay in Vietnam, or Railay Beach (which we visited during our family trip to Ao Nang, Thailand). 

One thing to note is that we got soaked on the way to the floating villa, as did our bags. We travel with our carry-on Cotopaxi bags, which come with rain covers. Try to store your bags at near the front of the boat, and whatever bags you bring to the resort, be sure to bring a rain cover if necessary.

Our Villa at the 500 Rai Floating Resort

Given we were staying at 500Rai over Christmas, we decided to splurge a little bit and rented a villa. Our villa was such a cute little space – it was perfect for a family of four for a four night stay at 500Rai.

The main floor consists of the master bedroom, with a comfy queen bed (which was more comfortable than most of the very hard beds common elsewhere on our family trip to Thailand). There’s also a little room for luggage storage, as well as a partially outdoor bathroom and shower (with lots of privacy, but also some fresh air). 

A very steep set of stairs (a ladder really), takes you to the loft area of our floating villa at 500Rai. There’s not much to this space aside from two mattresses on the floor and an oscillating fan. 

There are windows on every wall, allowing you to soak in the majestic Khao Sok National Park and Cheow Lan Lake views from every direction. We left our patio doors open most of the time, allowing us to sit on the bed and enjoy the fresh air and incredible views of the national park. 

For the times that we needed it, power and air conditioning were available to us 24 hours a day (some of the other accommodation options here do not have 24 hour air conditioning). We also got 2 hours of wi-fi a day, which we didn’t come close to using. 

One of the mottos of 500Rai is “Disconnect to Reconnect”. It sounds a bit corny, but it’s so easy to disconnect here. I barely thought about touching my phone during the day. We’d log into wi-fi only after the kids went to bed.

The Food at 500 Rai Floating Resort

We couldn’t have been more impressed when we arrived at the 500 Rai Resort in Khao Sok National Park. Our longtail boat pulled into the resort a little after 1PM, and under a minute later, we were sitting at our table in the main, open-air dining room. They had a 6 course meal of Thai food ready and waiting for us. We were floored – how cool is that?

Our stay at the 500 Rai Floating Resort was full board, meaning that breakfast, lunch and dinner were included. The meals were a set menu, so we basically just sat down and they served us our meals. It was a fun way to try a wide variety of Thai dishes, many of which we likely wouldn’t have ordered ourselves.

Meal Plans at the 500Rai Resort

Although we chose to purchase for one of the resort’s meal plans, it seemed like most guests here chose to order a la cart off the menu. To help you decide which option is right for you, you should be aware that most food items here cost approximately 4x what they do elsewhere in Thailand. 

For example, fruit smoothies here cost 190 Baht vs ~ 50 Baht elsewhere. Thai curry dishes cost 400 – 800 Baht here vs 100 Baht elsewhere. 

The meal plan, of course, isn’t cheap either, so you’ll have to decide which option is right for you.

Breakfast at 500Rai

Breakfast at 500Rai is a combination of a la carte menu items and a small buffet. The a la carte menu has a good selection of both Thai and Western options. Despite having many options to choose from, our breakfasts looked the same every day. 

We all ordered pancakes from the a la carte menu. They were small pancakes, and only 2, but they were delicious. We topped up our breakfast with toast and jam, cereal and fruit juices.

Lunches at 500Rai Floating Resort

Our first lunch was the 6 course Thai meal I mentioned above. It included fish, chicken, veggies and pork. When we informed them that our son didn’t like Thai food, they promptly brought out a plate of fish n’ chips for him. 

Lunch #2 was another large set menu of Thai food. One this day we had stir fry mixed vegetables, spicy pork spareribs soup, spicy fried chicken balls, chicken Tofu soup and stir fried fish. The kids ate chicken nuggets and French fries. For dessert we had Lod Chong, which were green noodles floating in very sweet coconut milk. Delicious! 

Lunch #3 was at the KhaoSok Eco Raft resort as part of our Coral Cave day trip. We enjoyed a delicious full-body (complete with head & tail) fried fish, green curry chicken, mixed vegetables, steamed rice and a Thai omelet. 

For our final lunch, our waitress informed us we could freely order off of the main menu. This was a nice treat and a fun change of pace. Our son stuck with his go-to Western meal of chicken nuggets and French fries (which in his defense, were actually really good quality and tasty). 

Celine and I ordered some appetizers to share – a plate of Betel leaf wrapped salad bites (which we had tried the night before and loved) and some spicy chicken strips. For our main dishes, the rest of us ordered Massaman chicken curry – which was delicious.

Dinners at 500 Rai Floating Resort

Our first dinner at 500Rai was after our wildlife safari. It consisted of stir-fried kale, fried fish balls, green curry chicken, Tom yum soup and fresh fruit for dessert. The kids didn’t want the set menu of Thai food, so they each got a generous portion of chicken nuggets instead. 

Dinner #2 was after our kayak touring outing, so we had worked up an appetite. On this night, we had winged bean salad with shrimp, stir fried veggies in oyster sauce, hot and spicy soup with spare ribs, chicken wings in Thai herbs and green fish curry. The kids had chicken nuggets and French fries again for dinner. We had a plate of fresh fruit for dessert. 

Dinner #3 was our Christmas dinner. Our son had chicken nuggets and fries again, but our daughter ordered fusilli alfredo, which was delicious! For our Thai meal Celine and I started with an incredible appetizer – Betel leaf wrapped salad bites – which could be one of the most delicious things we’ve eaten at the floating villa resort so far.

The main meal consisted of southern stir-fried minced chicken with curry paste, prawn and vegetable soup, fried fish with turmeric and stir fried broccoli. 

As with our final lunch, we were also able to order off the full menu for our final dinner at 500Rai. Our son, as usual, ate chicken nuggets (yes – that’s 7 meals out of 8 that he had chicken nuggets), while our daughter ordered a linguini with white sauce. I should note that there were multiple Western food options available – our kids just really loved the chicken nuggets. 

Celine and I had Thai chicken wings and spicy chicken slices as appetizers, then split green curry chicken and cashew chicken for our main dishes – both were excellent. 

For dessert, the staff were excited about a special dessert for the kids. It turned out to be deep-fried bananas with vanilla ice cream. It took quite a while to arrive, but it was worth the wait.

Things to do at 500Rai Resort with Kids

One of the reasons we were so excited about our stay at the 500Rai Resort with kids, was the long list of family-friendly activities. We love wilderness and wildlife, so we signed up for some off-resort activities, in addition to all of the fun things to do around the floating bungalows.

1. Wildlife Safari

We signed up for the wildlife safari for our first night at the 500 Rai Floating Resort. Khao Sok National Park is known as a wildlife hotspot in Thailand, with wild elephants, monkeys, an abundance of birds and more. 

Our longtail boat left the resort precisely at 5PM. We were happy that they had child-sized lifejackets for our two kids. Before long, we were a long way from our resort, exploring one of the many arms of Cheow Lan Lake. 

The boat ride itself was incredibly beautiful. The misty, layered mountains which surround Cheow Lan Lake are all covered by a dense jungle. It was a great time of day for pictures as the sun was starting to set and the light was golden. 

We’ve been extremely fortunate on some of our wildlife tours on our travels – for example in Manuel Antonio National Park with kids. But, the amazing thing about nature is that it is completely random, and some days you get outstanding wildlife sightings, and sometimes you don’t. 

Sadly, our wildlife safari in Khao Sok National Park was one of the times where we just didn’t have much luck. We did see a beautiful hornbill bird (like a toucan) hopping around up high on a tree branch, an assortment of large predatory birds, and some other colorful, unidentified birds, but that was about all we saw. 

Again, with scenery as amazing as in Khao Sok National Park at sunset, it was hard to be too upset. It was still an amazing outing, although we were all disappointed not to see the wild elephants.

2. Swimming in the Lake

Every villa at the 500 Rai resort has a bamboo dock leading right into the clear, fresh, warm waters of Cheow Lan. We spent hours every day just playing and swimming in the lake. 

The water was so warm and clean, it was a joy to be in. Wearing a lifejacket in the water is mandatory in the Khao Sok National Park, but this was actually a good thing. Not only did it put our minds at ease while the kids swam, but it made it easy and near effortless to spend hours at a time in the water. Our kids would get up on the dock and jump in over and over. 

Swimming in the fresh waters of Cheow Lan Lake was one of our favorite things to do at the 500Rai resort. 

3. Swimming in the Pool

Despite having an incredible lake literally at our front doorstep, the 500Rai also offers a small swimming pool. I expect this is for people who do not wish to swim in lake water. The swimming pool has a vinyl bottom and a filter cleaning the water. 

The swimming pool at 500Rai went largely unused during our stay. We played in it for a little bit, just to see what it was like, but we quickly realized that swimming in the lake was way more fun.

4. Stand-up Paddleboarding

There are two stand-up paddleboards available to use by the main swimming pool. They are a bit banged up, but they still float. We took the SUPs around the protected area around the resort. The kids had fun jumping off, trying to make us fall in the water too.

5. Kayaking on Cheow Lan Lake

Every villa at 500Rai has a kayak attached to the dock. Several times a day we’d go for a paddle around the protected area around the resort. As usual, the kids love to use it as a diving board to jump into the welcoming waters of the lake. 

One afternoon, we signed up for a kayak touring excursion. Our guide led us further afield, following the shoreline looking for monkeys, water buffalo and perhaps even elephants. 

We ended up seeing a few hornbill birds and a wild chicken, but that was about it. The scenery around 500Rai is so spectacular, that we just enjoyed looking around, soaking in the incredible beauty of Khao Sok National Park.

6. Thai Dessert Class

Our family loves mango sticky rice (in fact it’s the main reason we are returning to Ao Nang with kids right after our stay at the floating villa resort). So when we saw that 500 Rai offered a Thai dessert class, we eagerly signed up! 

Unfortunately, we didn’t get to make mango sticky rice, but what we did make was the next best thing. We made the dessert we were served for lunch on our arrival day, which turned out to be called Bua Loy. 

Bua Loy are Thai rice dumplings in coconut milk, and they were the perfect dessert to teach the kids how to make. They were each given an empty bowl and were told to scoop a bunch of sticky rice flour into it. They then poured some coloring into the rice flour and hand mixed it into a thick dough. From there, they had to roll the dough into a ton of really small balls. 

Afterwards, the chef boiled the rice dough balls and then the kids transferred them into a warm concoction of coconut milk, palm sugar and salt. 

The Bua Loy the kids made was every bit as delicious as the one served to us by the resort!

7. Pa Ka Rang Cave & Hike

Our second paid outing off-resort was to the Pa Ka Rang Cave on Christmas morning. Our tour began with a 45 minute longtail boat ride to the northeast of 500Rai to their sister resort, “Khaosok Eco Raft”. As usual, the karst mountain scenery surrounding the lake was breathtaking. We dropped off a staff member and continued on to the northern end of the spoke of Cheow Lan Lake. 

Lake to Lake Hike

Here, we disembarked from the longtail boat and began our 1.6 km hike to a lake on the far side of a hill. At the beginning of the hike, our guide mentioned that we may see wild elephants and that there may be leeches. We were all so excited about the elephants, that we didn’t really pay attention to the leeches part. Big mistake. 

The hike through the jungle began normally enough – it was a beautiful, dense jungle. The sound of birdsong filled the air and we were all hiking along with great energy and a spring in our step. We saw a huge pile of elephant poop on the trail and allowed ourselves to daydream about the possibility of actually seeing an elephant on the hike to Pa Ka Rang Cave.

Then.. there was some commotion on the trail ahead of us… one of the hikers in our group discovered a leech on her leg. As she stopped to get it off, another person discovered one, then another and so on. It was quite the scene! Our guide was frantically running around spraying the leeches with mosquito spray, so they’d let go and fall off easier. 

Thoroughly freaked out, we continued hiking and this time I looked more closely at the hiking trail and I could actually see the leeches all over the hiking trail. It was an awful feeling – we were walking on our tip-toes and lifting our feet as fast as we could to avoid any more leeches. 

At one moment, our guide was trying to point out some monkeys in the trees above us, but nobody wanted to stop long enough to look. It was an awful, awful hike through the raw, fresh jungles of Thailand. Needless to say, I didn’t stop for any more pictures on this part of the hike!

Bamboo Raft

We arrived at the second dock and thought we had found relief from the bloodsuckers, but nope – they were on the dock too. At least we could see them coming and were able to try and kill them – not an easy task. 

I should mention, that we are seasoned jungle hikers. Our kids even managed to hike to the Lost City in Colombia, but we’ve never endured discomfort like this anywhere. (I later asked a guide about the leeches and she said they were likely really bad due to the overnight rain). 

When we finally boarded our bamboo raft towards the Coral Cave, we finally started to relax. We even saw a cute little frog who was a stowaway on the raft.

Coral Cave 

When we reached the Coral Cave, we got off the raft and walked a short way up a hill to the cave entrance. The Pa Ka Rang Cave was a small, but very beautiful and showy cave filled to the brim with stalagmites and stalactites. 

There were many beautiful formations within the cave, including many which looked like baleen teeth of a whale. There was also a notable formation which looked like a single elephant and another which looked like a hundred elephants. 

Sadly, the Coral Cave was quite small and didn’t take us more than 15 minutes to explore. We were all dreading the hike back to our longtail boat on Cheow Lan Lake.

Running Back to the Boat 

When we reached land, we literally drenched our feet in 30% Deet mosquito spray. We then took off in a sprint – we must have completed the hike back in less than half the time it took us to get there! This strategy worked, as I was the only one who got a leech on the way back. All told, between the 4 of us, we got 10 leeches over the 3 km we hiked. Not cool…

Wild Elephant Sighting! 

Once we were safely on the longtail boat headed back to the 500 Rai Floating Resort, everyone’s spirits were lifting. The leeches were finally behind us. Then something amazing happened… Our boat driver killed the engine and our guide pointed to the bushes on the nearby shoreline… wild elephants!! A Christmas miracle! 

Incredibly, there were three wild elephants grazing just a few feet from the shoreline – including one little baby elephant. Watching these majestic beasts rip down bamboo trees like they were toothpicks was an incredible sight. After an unsuccessful wildlife safari the other day, to finally get to see wild elephants was a dream come true. 

Prior to the wild elephant encounter, we would have said that the leeches completely ruined this outing and it was not worth the rather large expense. But, the elephants changed everything – if you don’t leave the resort and don’t go out on these adventures, you won’t ever have a chance to see a wild elephant. 

I’d still recommend you try the nice water-based, leech-free wildlife safari first, but if you need another opportunity, then perhaps the Coral Cave is the second chance which will pay off? 

8. Reading and Card Games

We are typically very active when we travel and rarely, if ever, have time to just sit and relax. 500 Rai Floating Resort is a special resort that encourages you to do just that. We each brought a selection of books to read (our 8-year old son read The Last Kids on Earth, while our 10-year old daughter read Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus). 

In addition, we spent hours just sitting on our bed, enjoying the national park lake and mountain views, while playing card games. We had packed Happy Salmon and Exploding Minions (a fun, spin off of the super-popular Exploding Kittens game). We chose to bring card games as they pack small and can be enjoyed for hours on end. 

9. Morning Sightseeing Boat Ride

Every morning at 7 am the 500 Rai Floating Resort offers a short, 1-hour sightseeing boat ride around the island. On the morning we took the sightseeing boat ride on Cheow Lan Lake, the air was calm and the sun was out – just a beautiful time to be out on the water. 

Our guide stopped our boat in the middle of a peaceful cove. At first, we thought it was just to enjoy the calming sounds of the birdsong in the air, but then one of the massive trees in front of us started shaking. A family of monkeys, including a tiny baby monkey, was playing in the trees above us! 

A few minutes later, a playful gibbon joined the fun and climbed a large tree and then just hung down from one of the branches. What a fun wildlife sighting in Khao Sok National Park!

10. Painting and Drawing Class

We have very artistic kids, so we thought they’d enjoy the painting and drawing class offered by 500Rai. I’m thinking the resort forgot about us signing up for it, as we sat in the common room for about 30 minutes until they came out. 

We were a bit surprised when the instructor came out with a handful of coloring pages which looked like they just came off the printer. He took our kids to a nearby table and colored with them using pencil crayons for an hour. 

When we signed up for this course, we envisioned all of us learning to draw something – maybe even a simple drawing of the beautiful landscapes surrounding the floating villa. But, to spend an hour coloring? I wasn’t impressed… but then reminded myself about how good the staff has been to our kids for the entire stay.

How Long Should You Stay at 500 Rai Floating Resort

As mentioned, we stayed at the 500 Rai Floating Resort for 4 nights. As it turns out this isn’t very common, in fact most guests of the 500Rai were only here for one night. I imagine this has something to do with the cost of staying here… 

If you can afford it, I’d recommend staying at the 500 Rai Floating Resort for at least 2 nights. If you only stay one day, you miss out on a lot of what makes this place special – taking the time to decompress and relax. 

To us, the best time of each day was between 10 am and 1 pm. The departing guests get on a longboat back to the pier at 10 am, and the new guests don’t arrive until 1. This gave us 3 hours of having the place almost to ourselves. This was our prime lake time – we would always be out swimming, kayaking, SUPing, etc. You’ll miss out on this if you only stay one night. 

As for our stay, I’m glad we stayed 4 nights at the 500 Rai Floating Resort, but we could have easily shortened it to a 3 night stay. 

500 Rai Floating Resort Review – Final Thoughts

We stayed at the 500Rai Resort for four nights over Christmas with our kids as we wanted to stay somewhere special on the big day. Although there were a few quirks here and there, we loved our family stay at the 500 Rai Floating Resort. 

To begin with, the staff were friendly and the food was very good – two very important components to any resort stay. In addition, the Villa was a great set-up for our family of four and we couldn’t get enough of the Cheow Lan Lake and the karst mountains beyond. We had a ton of fun enjoying all the activities the resort had to offer and were ecstatic to see wild elephants on one of our outings. 

Overall, we were very satisfied with our stay at the 500 Rai Resort with kids. We would recommend it to any family who enjoys beautiful nature, wildlife, adventure and scenery. The 500Rai Resort has a lot to offer families and we are confident a stay here will be a family vacation you won’t soon forget.

If you’d like to keep following along on our Thailand family holiday, our next stop after the 500Rai Resort was spending New Years on Koh Lanta with kids.