When the Ratchaprapha Dam filled in the 1980s, 385 families were moved out of the valley and given land on higher ground to rebuild on. They became the lake's boat drivers, its guides, its resort owners. This afternoon is spent in that village, not observing it but eating in it, floating through it, and walking into the forest behind it.

Lunch comes first, deliberately. You arrive off a hot road at midday and the first thing that happens is that you sit down in the shade by moving water and eat properly: southern Thai dishes laid out on banana leaves at a long table beside the river.

Then the water. Not the famous lake, but the small green channels behind the houses where the village's ordinary life happens. You are poled along on a bamboo raft at the only speed that lets you see any of it: someone swimming at the edge, birds, often monkeys in the branches, rocks standing in the river, and the old steel suspension bridge the villagers built to cross their own home. You can get in the water if you want to.

Behind the village is a forest the villagers have their own name for: Turtle, after a giant turtle they say lives in it. Inside are trees whose size stops the conversation, the herbs the village still collects for medicine and cooking, and a cave that stays cool however hot the day is, with light coming down from an opening above.

A short drive up, and the whole storey is in front of you at once: the dam, the village the dam created, and the sun going down over both. That is the last thing that happens. You are back at your hotel by 18:30.

Hotel pick-up and drop-off from Khao Sok and Cheowlan accommodation included. This afternoon does not enter the national park, so there is no park fee. Never more than 15 guests, with a local English-speaking guide. Runs Mondays and Thursdays.