I struggled for some time (both before and after leaving on my trip) over where I should visit during my nine days in Thailand (late August 2012). One of the complications was the uncertainty as to whether I would be able to meet with any erosion control specialists in Thailand. Thus, I made no advance reservations other than for the night of my arrival from China and the night before my departure for India. I chose an inexpensive hotel near the Bangkok airport that offered a shuttle service to the airport for those two nights.
Two months before leaving on my trip, I emailed my friend Gary McBride who had spent several months in Thailand a number of years ago. I asked him if he could recommend alternatives to the popular Chiang Mai and Phuket tourist “scenes”. As I explained, “I like the idea of beautiful, cool mountain towns and gorgeous tropical beaches but I can do without the crowds, especially tourists. Do you have any recommendations for smaller, less-discovered towns in the mountains north of Bangkok and the coast to the south that I might enjoy?” Gary wrote back with several recommendations including Hua Hin along the west coast of the Gulf of Thailand and a few hours train ride south of Bangkok. With Gary’s recommendations in mind, I continued scouring the two guidebooks I’d borrowed from the library. One small photo in Eyewitness Travel’s Thailand pushed the Hua Hin area to the top of my list. It showed rugged limestone peaks in Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park, approximately 30 miles (50 kilometers) south of Hua Hin.
When I finally had tentative plans to do a three-day field trip in Thailand with Chinapatana Sukvibool from the Thai Land Development Department in Bangkok, I realized I would only have four days for some travel on my own. Thus, it was important to choose a location within a few hours of Bangkok. The afternoon following my arrival in Bangkok, I caught the train for Panburi (just south of Hua Hin). The train ride and subsequent journey to my hotel were described in a blog post a couple weeks ago.
“Boy”, the English-speaking son of the proprietors at my hotel made arrangements for an old fellow with a rickety pick-up truck to drive me the 18 miles (30 kilometers) south to Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park. Boy and I went over a park brochure, and he explained to the driver (who spoke almost no English) where I wanted to go. My “chauffer” cost me 1000 baht (about US$33) for the day. We managed to communicate OK and I had a terrific experience.
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| Sleepy fishing village within the park. |
When Is a Cave not a Cave?
My first destination in the park was the Phraya Nakhon Cave. I could have followed a trail for a couple hours to get to the entrance but elected to take a 15-minute boat ride for 300 baht (US$10) round trip over to Laemsala Beach that provided much easier access to the cave. It consisted of two large “rooms” many stories high and connected by a low, wide passage. Although the cave included stalactites and stalagmites and was formed by slow internal solution of limestone bedrock over thousands of years, it really wasn’t a cave. Why? Both of the large rooms were partially open to the sky, and judging from the debris on the cave floor, it appeared that the roofs had collapsed long ago. As a result, the “cave” rooms were flooded with light and tall trees grew from their floors toward the sky. A simple but elegant Buddhist shrine had been constructed in the larger of the two rooms. I’ve been in a number of caves in the USA but I found this one spectacular because it was so unusual. And I encountered, at most, two dozen other tourists (most of them Thai) during the couple hours I spent there but nothing like the hordes one would expect at more well-known national parks.
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| “Skylights” in Phraya Nakhon Cave separated by the “Death Bridge.” |
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| Dark passageway connecting two rooms open to the sky. |
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| Limestone draperies adorn the cave walls. |
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| Elegant Buddhist shrine on the floor of Phraya Nakhon Cave. |
Kaeo Cave – A Personal Test of Nerve & Common Sense
After lunch, my driver took me to a real cave within the park. There was no admission fee, only a sign in the parking lot pointing in the direction of the cave and a guy in a booth renting head lamps. Since I’d left my headlamp back at the hotel, I shelled out 50 baht (US$1.70) and headed up a steep trail a ¼ mile or so to the Kaeo Cave. I found a sturdy ladder in a small opening leading about 20 feet down into the cave interior. This was not your typical U.S. National Park cave because there were no admission fees, no guides, no “don’t do such-and-such” signs, no lighted passageways, no stairs, no boardwalks, no maintained path, and no other people in the cave when I entered. There was a faded map labeled only in Thai at the entrance and occasional arrows painted on the walls to indicate the route. My only companions were bats hanging from rocks above me. Once I had walked a couple hundred feet or so into the cave, the opening through which I entered was no longer visible. I was in total darkness and on my own. If the lantern suddenly went out, if I dropped it into a deep chasm between the rocks along the trail, or if I fell and seriously injured myself, I was fucked. Still I walked on, lured by the cave’s seductive beauty and great photo opportunities at every turn. At one point, I shed my small backpack as the route ahead forced me on to my stomach where I made like a lizard for a dozen feet or so before I could get up on my hands and knees and eventually on to my feet again.
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| Kaeo Cave near the entrance |
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| Dripstone detail |
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Some well-hung bats seemed aware of my presence
but didn’t freak out and neither did I. |
I was nervous but not frightened realizing that if I stayed calm, careful, and alert to the route, I wasn’t going to get lost and could find my way back out along the same route. It got me thinking about the risk of undertaking such adventures alone and the words of Colin Fletcher in one of my “bibles”,The New Complete Walker (Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1974, p. 416): …once you have discovered solitude – the gigantic, enveloping, including, renewing solitude of wild and silent places – and have learned to put it to creative use, you are likely to accept without a second thought such small additional dangers as the solitude imposes. Fletcher then adds, Naturally, you are careful. Well, I was being careful, and opted not to do the entire route which would have taken a couple hours. I easily found my way back to the entrance, and there was still enough of the day remaining for a rewarding hike.
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| I was seduced ever onward by the mysterous abyss before me. |
Khao Dang View Point – Wow!
My caving experiences were excellent but what about those rugged limestone mountains that had drawn me to Khao Sam Roi Yot in the first place? My driver took me to a trailhead and from there I ascended slowly through a tropical forest on a steep muddy and rocky path to the Khao Dang View Point. From this 322 meter (1056 foot) summit, I had a 360o view of the park and its surroundings including jagged limestone pinnacles, the Gulf of Thailand, tropical forests, rice paddy fields, and villages. Once again, I had the little mountain all to myself and got temporarily lost on the way down after taking a wrong turn. I’ll let the following pictures describe what I saw.
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| View northeast (top) and south (bottom) from Khao Dang View Point |
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| Rugged park interior from Khao Dang View Point |
On our way out of the park, we came on a troop of macaques hanging out along the road. They were very cooperative photo subjects as I was able to get within a few feet of them. Unfortunately, they are probably accustomed to humans throwing them food which is certainly not the way to keep them wild and independent.
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| Hangin' by the highway. |
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| Togetherness |
In summary, my day at Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park was one of the highlights of my trip. The scenery was awesome and the costs very reasonable, but one didn’t have to spend days of uncomfortable travel to get there. The small numbers of other tourists I encountered were unobtrusive. I ran into no large tour groups of noisy scenery consumers from Japan, Germany, the US, etc. In a world where too many places of natural beauty seem to have been discovered by tour companies and guidebook readers, it’s nice to know that it’s still possible to spend a little time alone enjoying natural beauty.
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