Khao Yai National Park

Khao Yai National Park, Thailand

Golden evening light illuminates the dense forest hills and open grasslands of Khao Yai National Park.

Khao Yai is Thailand's first national park, a cool upland forest of hornbills, gibbons, waterfalls and dusk bat flights within reach of Bangkok.

The place

Khao Yai National Park sits on the road between Bangkok and Nakhon Ratchasima (Korat), where the central plains begin to climb towards the Isan plateau. It was set up in 1962 as Thailand's first national park, and with an area of about 2,166 km² it is the third largest. Most of it is forest: evergreen jungle on the slopes, patches of open grassland, rivers that feed waterfalls, and a few reservoirs. The highest summit, Khao Rom, reaches 1,351 m and can only be climbed on foot. Its neighbour Khao Laem, called the Spiky Mountain by locals, is second in height and involves a long walk and a rope scramble near the top. The climate is worth understanding before a trip. The annual mean is about 23 °C, but the year splits into three: a wet season from May to October, a clear and cool season from November to February, and a warm, humid stretch in March and April. Streams run hard in the rains and the trails turn leechy, while cool-season mornings are crisp enough for a jumper. Wildlife is the draw: hornbills, gibbons, deer and, now and then, wild elephants on the roads or in clearings. Most visitors come from Bangkok for the weekend, so Saturdays are busier than weekdays. The park is big enough that moving between its sights takes a car or a lift on a ranger-run truck.

Its story

Khao Yai National Park was proclaimed by royal decree in September 1962 and published in the Government Gazette as the first national park of Thailand. The naturalist Boonsong Lekagul played a major part in getting it established, and his name is still linked with Thai conservation. The park took its name from a sub-district, a tambon, called Khao Yai, which no longer exists as an administrative unit. Recognition followed over the decades. The park became an ASEAN Heritage Park, and later it was inscribed as a World Heritage Site under the name Dong Phayayen–Khao Yai Forest Complex, a grouping that joins it with neighbouring parks in the same range and with forests in the Dong Phaya Yen mountains to the north. Status on paper has not removed the pressures. Land around the park has been developed into luxury hotels and golf courses, which makes it hard to buy extra land for wildlife, and that matters for animals such as elephants that range widely. Houses and villas have also been built illegally inside the protected boundary, and illegal logging remains a problem. The result is a park that is a conservation success story and, at the same time, a place under steady strain from its own popularity and from its closeness to Bangkok's money.

What to see

Culture

Khao Yai National Park is a good place to see how Thai attitudes to nature work in practice. Many visitors are Thai families and school groups from Bangkok and Korat, who treat the park as a weekend outing, with picnics, music kept fairly low, and plenty of photographs at the viewpoints. The idea of a national park is relatively young in Thailand. The first one, created in 1962, owes much to the naturalist Boonsong Lekagul, whose name still carries weight among Thai conservationists and birdwatchers. Rangers, guides and drivers form a small community of their own, and paying for a guide is both a safety measure and a way of putting money into it. Buddhist habits shape daily manners here as elsewhere in the country: a polite wai, a calm voice, and a dislike of open anger or fuss. Spirit houses, small shrines on posts, are common across Thailand, and people often leave a flower or a drink there. Hornbills, gibbons and elephants matter to Thais as much as to foreign visitors, and staff talk about them with obvious affection. Respect for the animals, rather than any single ritual, is the real etiquette of the park. Keep well back from wild elephants, never feed any animal, and stay quiet at observation towers so that everyone nearby can watch too.

What to wear

Traditional dress around Khao Yai follows the wider culture of Thailand's north-east. Silk and cotton are woven in the Korat area and across Isan, often in mudmee, a tie-dyed ikat pattern, and made into wrap skirts called pha sin, sarongs and shawls. These are worn for temple festivals, weddings and official occasions rather than on an ordinary day. In the park itself, people dress as hikers and weekenders do anywhere: quick-dry T-shirts, leggings or light trousers, caps, trainers, and the occasional matching family outfit for photographs. Rangers wear uniform. Visitors should dress for forest rather than beach. Long, light trousers and sleeves protect against leeches, nettles and mosquitoes, and closed shoes with a good grip matter more than anything else on wet trails. Leech socks are sold and worth wearing in the rains. A light rain jacket is useful from May to October, and in the cool season the mornings and nights can be cold enough for a jumper or fleece. A hat and sunscreen help on the open grassland, where there is little shade. The park has no formal dress code, but shoulders and knees should be covered when stopping at a temple or village on the way, and shoes come off at any temple building.

What to eat

Plan it

Best time. November to February is the cool, clear season, with sunny days and cold nights, and it is the best time for hiking. March and April are warm and humid. May to October is the rainy season, when streams and waterfalls are at their fullest but trails are wet and leeches are common.

How long. 2–3

Getting there. Khao Yai lies on the Bangkok–Korat route. Take a train or bus from Bangkok to the town of Pak Chong, then hire or share a songthaew (a pick-up taxi with bench seats) to the northern gate. A southern entrance is reached from Prachinburi by road.

Budget. mid

Tips

Etiquette

Nearby

Sources