Dong Phayayen - Khao Yai

We've done the full day tour in Khao Yai National Park and stayed overnight in the park after the tour. The second day we did the trail number 1 close to the visitor center and afterwards another half day tour by our recommandable operator Greenleaf outside the national park which however was the most memorable visit.  
 
For the full day tour we were picked up early in the morning by a Greenleaf driver at our hostel in Pak Chong which is connected by a train line to Ayutthaya and Bangkok. The car brought us to the operators' place on the road towards the most popular entrance of the huge Khao Yai NP. This area of the road is still full of commercial life incl. 7-Eleven, Hotels and restaurants. With a pick-up with benches we drove into the park. The price of 1500 THB is decent regarding the fact that it includes the 400 THB entrance to the park and enough food during the day. After spending some time at a nice viewpoint we had about 30 minutes at the visitor centre where we could arrange a bungslow for the night at the cost of 560 THB with fan and electricity. It's 1,5 km from the visitor center. We were prepared for going in a tent, but were happy that we could arrange the bungalow. There is a website to book the places online but it's so bad that it's impossible to use it. On the weekends and vacations the …

I made it a priority to visit Khao Yai National Park during my trip to Thailand in April 2018. It is the most accessible among the five protected areas that make up the Dong Phayayen-Khao Yai Forest Complex. Almost all of the other reviewers have visited Khao Yai in one way or another—as a day trip from Bangkok or as a tour from Pak Chong—so I am just going to share my experience taking a tour of the forest when I stayed in Pak Chong.

I decided to spend 2 nights at the town of Pak Chong, which is typically the jump off point for tours to Khao Yai National Park, as many guidebooks and online sources would say. The plan was to take the half-day tour (3pm to 7pm) on my first night, and the full-day tour (8am to 7pm) the following day. All of these tours were offered through my guesthouse in Pak Chong, and were reasonably priced during the time of my visit—500 baht for half-day tour and 1,300 baht for full-day tour. I also thought that getting to Pak Chong was pretty straightforward—take the bus from Mo Chit bus terminal in Bangkok to Pak Chong, then wait for the guesthouse’s car to pick me up. I was positive that my early morning flight from Manila to Bangkok would allow me to get to the guesthouse right before the half-day tour starts.

But boy was I wrong. I missed the start of my half-day tour …

In June 2014, exactly 10 years from my first visit, I had opportunity to revisit Dong Phayayen – Khao Yai Forest Complex in Thailand, but to be more precise, only the sections of Pang Sida and Ta Phraya National Parks as a part of my company project site visit near Cambodian Thai border. I was quite excited about the trip as a decade ago I only focused on the popular Khao Yai and Thaplan National Parks and wrongly assumed that I went to Ta Phaya National Park. The first stop was Pang Sida National Park. Our visit coincided with the butterfly viewing season, so the park was full of butterflies. The park ranger claimed that this year harsh summer causing fewer butterflies but still more than 500 species! But even less butterflies than usual, we really impressed with the park; I also saw a unique traffic sign of beware butterfly. We had picnic at Pangsida Waterfall, because of summer there was no water at all, but we were happy to eat with hundreds of butterflies around us.

A few days later our group went to Ta Phaya National Park, this park is located along the border, we saw ancient Khmer Temples, but after saw Angkor, there was nothing I would want to mention. Our highlight turned out to be Lalu Park, a strange area but beautiful hoodoo landform. We could not enter the park by ourselves, our guide took us to a small village, …

I only managed to visit two of the locations included in this site, Pang Sida NP and Khao Yai NP.

Pang Sida I accessed from Sa Kaeo, a station on the Eastern Line while travelling from Aranyaprathet to Bangkok. A 30 minute ride by tuktuk took me to the park where I visited the falls and the park headquarters. The road through the park was closed due to the clouds of butterflies swarming over the road and creating a hazard for motorists. But stopping to see this sight was amazing, especially the wide variety of different coloured creatures.

I spent three days at a small resort near Pak Chong and made several visits to various parts of the Khao Yai park. Apart from travelling the roads and visiting several waterfalls I also made two escorted forays into the jungle on foot. Here we found a wide vaiety of fauna and flora, especially numerous species of multicoloured birds. But I also encountered several types of snake, troops of macaques, clans of gibbons swinging high in the tree canopy, several species of deer. Also saw fresh elephant droppings, but failed to glimpse the animals themselves. One of the wierdest phenomena was at sundown, watching millions of bats emerge from underground caves and create huge clouds of the creatures as they set off for their nightly feeding frenzy.

I wimped out a little on this one, and took an organised day trip from Bangkok's tourist enclave of Khao San Road. However I have to say the trip was pretty worthwhile, but I would have preferred to spend more time in the Park proper and perhaps got a little more chance to hike around and try to glimpse some wildlife.

After some stops for general touristy things like visiting a market, we entered the park and headed straight for it's highest waterfall at Haew Narok which provided a nice glimpse of the environment. Our guide didn't seem to concerned on keeping noise down to allow a better glimpse of some wildlife, and when we did finally see a chameleon up close the other members of the group seemed a little disinterested.

We then drove through the park and spotted some deer by the road side before stopping at a view point where there was a large group of macaques.

I was impressed by the infrastructure of the park, I really reminded me of the national parks in US that I have visited, except the food stalls sold eminently more tasty looking food. This reflected a lot of what I found in Thailand, it is a rapidly developing country and amenities for tourists are very impressive.

After we left the park we went for a meal at a 'Jungle Lodge' just outside the park proper. We then got to ride Elephants, I must admit I was not really holding out …

We visited in July 2008 on a staff retreat with all the Lao WCS protected area staff. We were in meetings all day so just did walks 7-9am and two spotlighting trips (one in the rain). We saw lots of gibbons and hornbills and sambar deer, muntjac, civet (small indian and common palm), slow loris, otters, blue-bearded bee-eater, flying lizards, pig-tailed macaque, black giant squirrel, ground and arborial squirrel. We also walked in fresh elephant tracks and saw a large cat scratch on a sambar (probably tiger - no definite record of leopard as far as I know).

So it was great to see, but a pity about the insensitive nature of development in the park. Huge cleared areas around infrastructure. Great for breeding up deer, but in a national park? And also the river was very polluted with sewage, plastic bags, etc.. And the tiger die-off from introduced domestic pig disease...

If you're stopping over in Thailand it's well worth a visit. Much nicer than Bangkok!

Khao Yai is one of the two WHS that can be reached from Bangkok within a day trip (the other one is Ayutthaya). I hired a car with a driver for the day. From central Bangkok to the visitors center in the park it takes about 3 hours (largely spent in Bangkok's traffic jams). When you start seeing mountains and forests instead of cars and shops, you're nearly there. We entered the park from the North (Pak Chong). Here are many restaurants, hotels and resorts catering to the visitors staying overnight.

After paying a 400 Baht entry fee, we could drive into the park. We were met by a group of macaques, ostentatiously trying to look inside the car to see if we had something to eat.

The visitor center is in the middle of the park. It has a small display of the park's history and nature. And two stuffed tigers.

Outside the building, a short trail starts that leads you through the forest to the small Kong Kaew Falls. It's a nice and easy walk of about 45 minutes.

For more serious walking my driver left me at Pha Kluai Mai Campsite, promising to pick me up again some kilometers down the road at Haew Suwat Falls. The walking trail leading there is said to be 3 kilometers long. Although the path is quite clear, I found it rather tough going because you have to climb under or over fallen trees a lot.

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Dong Phayayen – Khao Yai is a collection of many national parks and wildlife sanctuaries in eastern Thailand not far from Bangkok. From all national parks, Khao Yai is the most famous as the first national park in Thailand and many experts consider Khao Yai as one of the best national parks in the world. I was quite lucky to have opportunity to see 3 national parks in this complex before UNESCO declared them as a WHS. (Entrance fee is about 4 euro for each national park)

Khao Yai has many amazing species of fauna and flora, during I visited Khao Yai, I had opportunity to see famous hornbills, wild elephants, millions of bats and deer. Khao Yai also famous for its many waterfalls, the most famous is the one that had appeared in Leonardo’s film “The beach”. Khao Yai draws a lot of tourists, so this park has a lot of information for natural study as well as tourist related stuffs. In my opinion Khao Yai is a perfect example for tropical forest in Southeast Asia mainland.

I also visited Thap Lan National Park which is the largest national park in this WHS; Thap Lan has a very beautiful bamboo forest and unique palm trees that Thais used these special palm leaves as paper for Buddhist texts. My guide explained how to use these palm leaves so the trip to Thap Lan is not just a natural tour but also a cultural trip.

Ta Phraya National …