Khao Yai

There have apparently been many who have rated Khao Yai among the top national parks in the world, so I opted to spend a few days there rather than the typical 10-20 minutes. From Bangkok’s Mo Chit, it was a 3-hour bus ride to Pak Chong; there wasn’t a whole lot going on in this town, but they did have one, seriously overpriced ($6!!) hotel where my room included free toilet paper and a complementary breakfast for two, but was not equipped with a working shower.

In the morning, I took a saengthaew, which dropped me at the entrance to the park. After paying the fee, it was explained to me that I was still 14km from anything of the slightest interest, but since there was only one road in the entire place, it was a simple matter of standing next to a speed bump and jumping in the first pickup that came along. The ride I chose belonged to workers rather than tourists so they didn’t stop at the lookout or the elephant/gaur/tiger/cobra crossing zones, but they did slow down at the visitor’s center and I hopped off there.

Apparently, half the trails were closed for the rainy season, but I was given a map that marked out 25km of jungle walks and gave lengthy instructions in Thai on how to tackle them. Despite all the materials I’d read about needing a guide to go anywhere, the person at the desk seemed perfectly willing to send me off into the wilds by myself, so I started out easy with the paved nature walk. Somehow (I guess I glanced up from my feet a few seconds too long) I managed to get hopelessly lost in the woods surrounding the 1km circular trail; I never saw the pavement again, but eventually found a marker for a different trail and set off on it.

Venturing through the jungle, I heard the screams of a few dozen gibbons, as well as the sounds of hornbills and various other birds, and the occasional gurgling of some large carnivore’s digestive tract. I never actually saw much of anything besides a small green snake and something resembling a bush baby; a few hundred spiders crawled across my head at one time or another, and plenty of malarial mosquitoes made their presence known.

The real fun came from the leeches; I was constantly pursued by an endless army of these blood-suckers and if ever I stopped to look for an animal or take a bathroom break, my shoes would instantly be turned black by the fat, oily masses. These were not the little worms I occasionally came across in Australia, but movie-sized slugs with huge, silver teeth that glistened in the sunlight. And what made them scarier still was their speed – I always imagined these creatures as opportunists, inching along and only latching on if you stepped where they happened to be, but these things could run – they fling their bodies end-over-end from every direction and will catch you even at a brisk walk. The guy at headquarters had tried to sell me “leech socks” but I wasn’t about to pay 70 baht for these goofy-looking contraptions; I resolved to simply dump mosquito repellant on my ankles – along with every other organism on earth, leeches don’t like deet; as soon as they reached the tops of my shoes, they would abruptly turn around and make their best attempt at escape (this could also be related to not washing my socks for a month).

Around 10km later, I arrived at the park’s most famous waterfall, Haew Suwat. Next door to that was one of the state-run restaurants; Khao Yai may be the one place in the entire country where commercial development is expressly forbidden (I’m fairly certain there are street vendors who set up shop in the middle of the prime minister’s office) and the only food to be found is at a collection of five strategically-placed cafes with identical menus. After lunch, it was another 15km hike to the wildlife-watching tower; it seemed none of the park’s man-eating tigers were lurking in the shoulder-high grass when I arrived.

After momentarily glimpsing a gaur at a spot labeled “Wang Jumpee,” (I have no clue what this means) I hitched to the campgrounds. The rental fees were just slightly higher than the original cost of the equipment; they had run out of the 1-2 person tents so I had to shell out 200 baht for a 3-4 man and 20 for an airplane pillow. The first tent they gave me didn’t include any poles and thus was a bit too two-dimensional for my tastes and the second was missing the zippers that would separate me from the seething mass of mosquitoes outside; I assembled the third in complete darkness and was never really sure whether it had all its pieces or not.

The campground canteen served a rather odd variation of Som Tom where a rancid crab was added to the mix; I find it ironic that, after 2 months of virtually nothing but street food, my first food-related illness came from a well-established restaurant.

That evening I joined up with a group of Thais to venture out on a night safari; this consisted of sitting in a saengtaew and staring out into the jungle as a kid shined a high-powered spotlight into the darkness. The problem with this was that there were about 400 people doing exactly the same thing in exactly the same places at roughly the same time; as you might expect, most of the animals made themselves scarce and we were left with only a few deer, two cats of some sort (no one knew the English word), a fox, and a very dead snake.

In the morning, I hitched back to the visitor’s center where they explained to me that I’d done all the possible hikes on the previous day; all that was left now was a mountain and the other major waterfall. I got a ride to the turn-off for Kaew Kiao and, though a helpful gardener suggested I jog the 12km uphill, I decided to wait for a tourist to come along. After 20 minutes, the first car passed and took me up to the first viewpoint. As it turned out, this group included two big-time nature photographers, and so we spent the next hour setting up shots of tiny pink flowers using a tripod that looked as if it had been ripped straight out of the space program and could balance a camera on any terrain at any angle.

After a few more viewpoints and a break for tea (the group had conveniently brought along a high-powered propane stove), we returned down the mountain and continued on to Haew Narok waterfall. Heading down the path we came across the biggest snail I had ever seen; naturally, the pros began unpacking their equipment to get the perfect shot, but in the interim I mistakenly plopped my foot down next to the thing as a reference for my own picture and scared it into its shell – I got a few mean looks for that one. We passed through an elephant fence (they apparently have an annoying habit of jumping over the falls) and came within a dozen meters of a truly impressive rainy-season cascade.

As luck would have it, the driver happened to live about a mile from my apartment and in 3 hours, I was back home.

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Florida's deadly banana spiders have nothing on this guy


Haew Suwat











A deer - now that's something you've got to go clear across the world to see


I guess since it has those boards out there it's a legitimate bridge
















Everything else in the park had a qualifier - waterfall, salt lick, etc... this was simply "Wang Jumpee"


Stretching out in my very own 3-4 man tent


















Stupid smart camera... how hard is it to see you need a flash here?







That's one big snail!





Haew Narok










AHHH! Get 'em off, get 'em off!


My attempt at a thinking piece - Butterfly with Buck Shot