Thailand - Khao Yai National Park

Khao Yai National Park had always been one of the places we wanted to visit on this trip.

Thailand's first national park (1962), and its third largest, is known for its rainforests and vibrant wildlife - including wild elephants, gibbons, and hornbills. All the things we hoped to see. As a UNESCO World Heritage site only 2-3 hours drive from Bangkok it gets very busy at the weekends so we’d planned to avoid this and visited on a Thursday to Friday.

Packing up as dawn broke the day started with lovely morning light. Some swift lycra cyclists already out enjoying the cool of the morning zipped past. Five miles and we stopped at a cafe just outside the National park gates for breakfast. Seeing us on bikes a tour guide pulled up to us in his van to warn us - “watch out for the elephants!” There are about 300 elephants living within the park, an area of over 2200 square kilometres. As such it is fairly common to see elephants, and a few months ago a tourist had been killed by a big bull elephant in the park. The thought of seeing one was both exciting and terrifying. I had always wanted to see an elephant in the wild. As I was riding along on my bike I wasn’t sure how I would feel if one suddenly appeared. I did yearn to turn a corner and see one ahead, but from a safe distance.

We only had 20 miles to ride from the gateway in the southwest of the park to our campsite in the northwest part of the park. However, 15 of these miles were uphill with over 1000m of gain so it would be a slow and steady day!

After paying the NP entrance fee it was a wonderful ride up through the park. Lush evergreen forest enclosed the road tightly on both sides.

As we were travelling slowly upward, many types of butterflies flew with us and around us - small and large, plain in colour and ones with vivid markings. Where water had coalesced in pools, drying out to mud, they flitted around, landing briefly to take in salts.

We started to see plenty of signs and road markings noting the presence of elephants.

SPOILER: we did not see any elephants during our visit.

But… we did see many signs of elephant activity, including a roadside barrier that looked like it had been trod on as the elephant stepped over it. Large elephant sized pathways. And lots of elephant poo! Big round dollops of it on the road!

Bird calls reverberated across the forest and we caught glimpses of many birds darting about under the shade of the forest canopy. Amanda spotted a Great Hornbill. It’s one of the largest species, and she could hear the ‘chuffing’ of its huge wings as it passed overhead. As we cycled beneath a large tree Amanda happened to look up, and there, perched on an overhanging branch was a magnificent Wreathed Hornbill, who turned its head, as if to give us its best side!

Close to midday we were almost at the top, and found a small no frills restaurant. The only other customers were some official looking men in uniform and later two charity workers who we got chatting to. An English man who worked for a conservation NGO and his American colleague who was visiting as part of her organisation’s checks on how the funding was being used. The NGO itself is called the Freeland Foundation. A large organisation dedicated to preventing trafficking of both animals and humans and stop the criminal profits generated by this exploitation. He explained that he was involved with the anti poaching side, training teams and overseeing projects and had lived and worked in Thailand for over 25 years.
He told us about his tiger project and showed us video footage of a tiger from a camera trap from a neighbouring National Park. It was magnificent to know they still reside in Thailand. But for how long, we wondered.
He played us back some audio of gibbons calling which they had heard that morning by the main visitors centre! We hoped we’d hear them calling too.

Saying our goodbyes, we had the last bit of climbing to complete. The forest now opened up and grasslands appeared either side of the road. Their yellow and brown colour contrasted with the green forest beyond. We made a short detour to a salt lick and saw deer, hardly noticeable amongst the grasses. The red coloured muddy salt licks are a beacon for wildlife so we were disappointed we arrived in the middle of the day: the wrong time to see any animals.

We arrived at the busy Lam Ta Khong campsite and pitched our tent in a quiet spot underneath a shelter. The local visitors camped in style and brought their home comforts to the outdoors. Tables, chairs, electric fans, gazebos (a tent under a tent), cool boxes, music systems, stoves and other paraphernalia.

A large Sambar doe that had been wandering around started to investigate the smells of cooking around the site. Bold but not rude, she sniffed around, hoping for some titbits.
In contrast, the Pigtail macaque gangs in this campground were out in force. We watched them scrutinise all for an opportunity. Even the young ones were bold, their eyes so expressive that I felt I could tell that they were processing and weighing up plans for a heist.
The deer seemed reliant on the generosity and ignorance of humans, whereas the monkeys acted with guile and a military like acumen. Reconnaissance, spot weaknesses, opportunities and then execute!

An awful nights sleep…
The sounds of nature were punctuated by the sound of humans in close proximity. Zips being zipped and unzipped. Coughing, spitting and other bodily noises 🫢. One neighbour decided to rearrange his tent during the early hours. Another, a couple who arrived late, used a noisy battery operated inflator on their mattress. Later, it sounded like they had some kind of insect problem with canvas being slapped and noisily flicked to rid them of some form of mini-beast infestation.

We were up at dawn and enjoyed watching the deer, and particularly the macaques, have an absolute field day rifling through our noisy neighbours’ stuff whilst they slept! We rode around the back of the campsite on a quiet road as the sun crept above the distant mountains. The landscape was a sort of savannah, with dry grassland now inhabiting spaces between the evergreen forest of large buttressed trees, banyan fig and other species, dressed with longs vines and epiphytes.

Amanda had read that a good place to hear gibbons calling in the morning was the area behind the NP visitor centre’s cafeteria.
Cycling off the car park along a dusty track toward the forest, we could hear a long loud ‘whooping’ song. It was glorious. Like a deep theremin sound and similar to whale song. Both haunting and beautiful, it echoed across the tree tops. In a lush clearing, surrounded by trees and a small brook behind us, we stood and listened and looked toward the direction it was coming from. As if by magic and on cue, a gibbon appeared in the highest most branches of some very tall trees!! Nestling on the branch, we could make out its long limbs. They are weirdly proportioned. Evolved to inhabit the high tree tops and navigate the canopy without need to touch the ground.
Another appeared from the left, swinging branch to branch in the most fluid of motions, all gangly limbs but elegantly gymnastic. This made my day as I had wanted to see one since seeing them in a television nature documentary.

We turned to see what was rustling in the canopy behind us. A Giant Black Squirrel - one of the largest squirrels in the world - was searching for food whilst two pied hornbills (like we’d seen in Pangkor Island) looked on, before they both lifting into the air.

Reluctantly moving on, we made our way out of the national park, stopping to climb an observation tower on route. Overlooking a salt lick, empty of animals in the heat of late morning, it was wonderful to see across the expanse of trees in all directions and the sweep of yellow grasslands rising up to meet the trees.

It was a downhill and pedal free descent from the National Park. Steep gradients and hairpin bends meant we needed to focus, stay on the brakes and snatch the occasional view across the forested hills into the valley below, the valley where we would end up.

Back on the main road we made good progress, past the town of Khao Yai and the area around, which seemed geared toward higher end tourism - plush hotels, condominiums and slick looking restaurants. This contrasted with a sad attraction that we cycled past where elephants stood swaying in covered pens where they could be fed and ‘petted’ for a fee.

Arriving in Pak Chong, a large sprawling town, we followed the main highway most of the way in and then diverted through a covered indoor market with many stalls selling fruit and vegetables. Busy with trade, motorcycles and trucks pulled in and loaded up with produce. It was quite chaotic.
We reached the guesthouse we had booked for the night not long after. Outside the main town in a quiet suburb, it looked quite new and was peaceful in contrast to the main town. We received a lovely warm welcome by the receptionist, settled in and looked forward to a more restful sleep.Read more