Thailand

Tarantulas, “Cobra Maybe” and One Very Persuasive Guide

Justin Jamieson went looking for a waterfall in Koh Lanta and found a tarantula, a possible cobra, and far too many questions about elephant poo instead.

Yob stops so suddenly I nearly walk straight into him, boots sliding in the red mud, arms pinwheeling like I’ve just discovered interpretive dance.

“Wait,” he says, crouching low beside the track, one hand hovering over a dark, suspicious hole in the bank. He shines his torch into it like a man about to introduce you to something he’s genuinely proud of. “Big spider.”

Of course it is.

The jungle is already doing its best to melt me. It’s early, but the heat has weight to it, pressing down through the canopy, turning the air into something you chew rather than breathe. My T-shirt is glued to my back, my socks are wet, and something small and committed has been biting my ankle for the past ten minutes. Somewhere deeper in the forest, a monkey lets out a long, echoing whoop that sounds less like wildlife and more like a warning.

And now this.

Yob leans closer to the hole. “Maybe tarantula,” he adds, helpfully. “Sometimes come out at night. Very big.”

I stare at the hole. The hole stares back, which is unsettling given it doesn’t technically have eyes.

“Great,” I say. “Love that for us.”

This is how I find myself in the jungle interior of Koh Lanta, a place most people associate with hammocks, sunset cocktails and the dangerous idea that you could probably get away with one more Chang. Out here, there are no hammocks. There is only mud, humidity, and a local guide who appears to be actively trying to introduce me to every creature I’ve spent my life avoiding.

Yob stands up, grinning, and gestures for us to keep moving.

“Come,” he says. “Maybe cobra also.”

Of course there is.

Yob is wiry in that effortless, jungle-forged way that makes you immediately aware of how soft your own lifestyle has been. He moves through the forest like it’s his living room, stepping over roots, ducking under vines, barely breaking stride. Every few metres he stops, listens, points, explains. Birds, insects, plants, tracks. It’s a running commentary delivered with the enthusiasm of someone who’s spent his entire life here and still hasn’t got bored.

The rest of us are less graceful.

“Big spider here also,” Yob says, veering suddenly off the track to inspect another hole.

“Different one?” I ask.

He nods seriously. “Bigger.”

I’m not sure I needed a scale.

He crouches again, shining the torch in, narrating like a nature documentary with a slightly chaotic script.

“He live inside. Very strong. Hairy. If you touch…” He pauses, glances back at us, and smiles. “Better not touch.”

There’s a collective lean backwards from the group, like we’re all connected by an invisible elastic band that’s just been stretched a little too far.

I find myself weirdly fascinated. There’s a part of my brain, clearly not the one in charge of survival, that wants to see it. A proper tarantula. Out in the wild. Just… not here. Not now. And definitely not with me being the closest human.

“Maybe he sleep,” Yob says, peering in one last time. “We find another.”

Reassuring.

The track narrows as we push deeper in, the canopy thickening until the light drops a notch and the air cools just enough to notice. We follow a thin ribbon of stream, crossing it on slick rocks that shift underfoot, grabbing onto roots that feel like they might either save you or send you face-first into the water.

“Careful,” Yob says. “Sometimes cobra here.”

He says it so casually it takes a second to land.

“Sorry, where?” someone behind me asks in a squeaky voice.

He gestures vaguely at everything. The grass. The roots. The entire concept of the jungle.

“Here, here… everywhere,” he says cheerfully. “But no worry. He more scared of you.”

That’s not as comforting as he seems to think.

We push through a stretch of waist-high grass. I lift my feet a little higher than necessary, like that’s going to make a difference if something decides to have a go.

In my head, there’s a running commentary.

Cobra maybe.

Cobra definitely.

Cobra absolutely under that exact root you’re about to step over.

I step anyway, because turning around and sprinting back to the start feels socially unacceptable at this point.

“Relax,” Yob calls over his shoulder. “Only sometimes.”

Great. Love a statistical comfort.

We stop mid-trail again, this time for a break. Yob drops onto a rock beside the stream, pulls out a small pouch, and begins rolling something with practised ease.

Within seconds, he’s lit it, the smoke curling lazily up through the thick, damp air. It smells earthy, a little sweet, and entirely at odds with the idea that we’re supposed to be on some kind of wholesome nature walk.

It also feels completely right.

We sit, dripping, breathing, letting the jungle hum around us. The constant buzz of insects, the distant calls, the soft rush of water over rock. It’s a sensory overload that somehow settles into something close to calm.

Yob takes a drag, exhales, then points casually to a pile beside the track.

Elephant poo.

A decent pile of it.

“Elephant come here before,” he says. “This… psychedelic.”

I blink. “I’m sorry, what?”

He nods, completely serious. “Good for crazy dream.”

There’s a pause where the entire group collectively processes that information.

“Who,” I say slowly, “was the first person to find that out?”

Yob shrugs, grinning. “Maybe very brave man.”

Or a very bored one.

Or someone who lost a bet in a much darker, much weirder version of Koh Lanta than the one advertised.

The idea lodges itself in my brain and refuses to leave.

Psychedelic elephant poo.

Of course it is.

We move on, the path tightening into something more like a suggestion than an actual track. We duck under hanging roots, squeeze between trees, and pass a large cave where Yob leads us into and flicks his torch upwards to reveal a cluster of bats, hanging like tiny, disapproving umbrellas.

“Sleeping,” he whispers.

Further along, we hit another moment.

“Wait,” he says again, dropping to his haunches beside a fallen log. “Big spider here.”

We gather, because of course we do. There’s a morbid curiosity that overrides common sense.

Yob carefully lifts a piece of bark, shining the torch into a narrow crevice.

We lean in.

There’s movement.

Not cricket movement. Not gecko movement.

Something heavier. Slower.

And then it emerges.

At first it’s just legs. Thick, deliberate, unfolding like something engineered to make you reconsider every life choice that led you here. Then the body follows, dark and dense and unmistakably real.

A tarantula.

An actual, full-sized, definitely-not-imagined tarantula.

No one speaks.

The jungle noise seems to drop a notch, like even the insects are giving it space.

It pauses at the edge of the crevice, sensing the light, the vibration, the circle of humans hovering far too close for comfort.

“See,” Yob whispers, delighted. “Big spider.”

I take a step back. Then another.

“Yep,” I say quietly. “That is… absolutely a big spider.”

There’s a strange mix of emotions firing at once. Fear, obviously. A healthy, primal, get-me-away-from-that thing kind of fear. But also awe. Because it’s not in a glass box. It’s not on a screen. It’s here. In the dirt. In the roots. Exactly where it’s supposed to be.

And we’re the ones who’ve wandered into its living room.

“Don’t move fast,” Yob says softly. “He no like.”

No one was planning on sprinting anyway.

The tarantula shifts, one leg testing the ground, then another, before deciding we’re either not interesting or not edible and slowly retreating back into the darkness.

Just like that, it’s gone.

There’s a collective exhale.

Someone laughs nervously. Someone else says something along the lines of “that was actually incredible,” which is correct, but also feels like something you say to mask the fact you were two seconds away from climbing a tree.

Yob beams. “Next time, cobra.”

Of course.

By the time we reach the waterfall, I’m soaked in sweat, lightly traumatised, and oddly exhilarated.

Khlong Chak isn’t a thundering giant this time of year. It’s a modest cascade slipping over rock into a shallow pool.

But after the hike, it feels earned.

We drop our packs, some of us wading straight into the water, letting the cool hit skin that’s been cooking for the past hour. It washes off the mud, the sweat, and at least some of the lingering mental images of eight-legged ambush predators.

Yob stands off to the side, scanning the rocks like a man who’s not quite done.

“Maybe cobra here also,” he says, nodding towards the shadows.

I laugh, because at this point, what else are you going to do?

We sit for a while, the group quieter now, the earlier nerves replaced by that post-adventure calm. There’s something about walking through a place like this, where things genuinely can bite, sting, or at the very least rearrange your understanding of scale, that sharpens everything.

Because in the end, we did see it.

Not a maybe. Not a rumour.

A real, solid, hairy reminder that the jungle isn’t a backdrop. It’s a system. And we are very much guests.

As we head back, retracing our steps through the mud and roots and maybe-cobra zones, Yob is still scanning, still hopeful.

“Next time,” he says to me, as we pass another suspicious-looking hole. “We find cobra. Big one.”

I nod, half-serious, half-already drafting my polite decline.

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”

Behind us, the jungle closes in again, swallowing the path, the sounds, the moment.

And somewhere in there, I now know for a fact, there’s a tarantula going about its day, completely unbothered by the existential crisis it’s just caused.

And possibly a cobra.

And definitely, somehow, still the unanswered question of who, exactly, first decided elephant poo might be psychedelic, and what on earth happened next.

Back at our resort, the perfectly placed Avani+ perched on an outpoint with beaches both sides, the jungle feels like a slightly unhinged fever dream I might have imagined. I’m handed a beer before I’ve even finished processing the fact that nothing here is trying to bite me. The sea glows, the sky performs, and somewhere a blender is doing important cocktail work. It’s all very civilised. Almost offensively so. Later, in my room, I kick off my boots, hesitate… and still check under the bed. Not because I doubt the resort. It’s more because Yob has permanently recalibrated what I consider “unlikely.”