Thailand National Park

- Beautiful Lakes.
Almost every NP has a attractive Lake, either a small one at the lowest level or the waterfall, or just a other, bigger one. Some NP wildlife, show wild elephants and some big cats like leopards and a few tigers.
- Floating Raft houses
Since almost every NP has some kind of a lake it also means floating raft houses on the lakes, a nice experience.
- Various Flora & Fauna can be experienced plus a variety of bigger animals like barking deer, tapir, Asiatic black bear, but they are hard to find, maybe they heard to many riffle shots over the years.
- Some NP like the Khao Sok NP offer tree house accommodation high up in the green trees.
- Adventure a go go means elephant trekking canoeing and kayaking, rafting -includes white water rafting- or maybe play “caveman” and find some Neolithic cave paintings. Thailand is full of limestone caves, like a emmentaler cheese is filled with air bubbles

-Ko Tarutao Marine National Park

Ko Tarutao and the archipelago of 51 islands is close to the Thai - Malaysian border in the so called deep south of Thailand off Satun province at the south west coast. This is not the area where Islam insurgent are terrorizing the people, the insurgency is operating at the south west side of Thailand in a relatively small zone.

The gateway for the Tarutao Archipelago is Ban Pak Bara a small village with some jetties at the end of highway 4052, this highway comes down from Trang Thailand, there are excellent bus connection from Trang, Krabi and Phuket for Satun. After leaving the pier the ferry first stops at Ko Tarutao and after proceeds to Ko Lipe. The ship leaves Pak Bara every day early afternoon, during high season another ships starts in the morning, since departure times are changing from time to time we don’t indicate them here.

At Pak Bara is also a ferry connection to Langkawi Island in Malaysia and from there another ferry leaves for Penang Malaysia. To visit Langkawi with a car is only possible via the car Penang Ferry.

There are a few bungalow cluster at the other beaches like Ao Molae beach, but to go there is a problem, the park headquarter controls the long tail boats to go there, they charge the foreigner 800 baht for a 20 minute ride. The usual price elsewhere in Thailand is about 300 baht.

If one complain they tell, their engine is a car engine and this consumes much more petrol than the usual diesel engine, their problem is they think unfortunately all others have a similar peculiar thinking pattern like they have. I really hope that someone on Bangkok brings this people under control before they can do more damage by running wild.

On Ko Tarutao the adventure hungry can explore caves - crocodile cave on Ko Tarutao -, waterfalls - Lu Du waterfall is about 1 hour walk and Lo Po waterfall about 1 hour and a half - from the park HQ. Isolated beaches and jungle treks through virgin rain forest are a great experience. It is one of the few places in Thailand without human intervention.

From the 51 islands of the archipelago only two are inhabited, this is Ko Tarutao and Ko Lipe. Ko Lipe has a sea gypsies community who are renting huts to the foreigners, actually plenty of backpacker are around since they island is really a ideal back to nature destination and not expensive.

There are constant quarrels between the sea sea gypsies and other Thai who come there trying to make all kind of business since the sea gypsies community are the only group having permission to do some business there since this is a Thailand National Park where no people are usually allowed to stay, but also as usual there are ways around that limitations.

-Khao Laem Reservoir and National Park in Kanchanaburi Province

Khao Laem National Park Kanchanaburi

Khao Laem National Park Kanchanaburi East End

A calm morning at the Khao Laem Reservoir and National Park. Raft houses of the fishing communities are floating on the calm water of the reservoir. It’s extremely silent out here the only sound is the chirping of birds and low level whisper of the mountain wind. The reservoir is integrated into the national park to protect the environment and the mountain forest around is ideal for quiet vacation. A symphony in blue and green with only a few people around. Its quite a poor countryside where the people don’t have much possibility to produce income, it’s pure agriculture environment, around Kanchanaburi towards west it’s sugarcane and towards east, to the Myanmar border its a great water, mountain and jungle world. Most of the jungle is from bamboo. This National Park Thailand is made for the visitors from Bangkok and a ever growing number of foreign tourists.

Khao Laem National Park Sankhla Buri Kanchanaburi              Khao Laem National Park Sankhla Buri Kanchanaburi West End

You can explore the Similan Islands either by a live aboard tour, with the speedboat on a one day trip, leaving Tap Lamu pier at 8.30 in the morning and coming back to the pier by around 5 pm. One could also leave the speedboat at island no.4 and stay a night or 2 in the bungalows there -check above left for booking-. Accommodation etc. is very basic, only available on the main island -picture above- that means most of the time no electricity and also no supply for diving, only snorkeling. If you want to dive the only way is -as mentioned above- using the live aboard version, either 1 or more days.

Simila islands national park small beach

Similan islands national park scuba diving

Sting Ray at Similan islands national park scuba diving

Its a clean, pristine environment full of beauty above and under the water surface, unfortunately there are still many locals -not foreigner, it is possible to determine this by the nature of the junk-who just throw their trash, oil container, plastic bottles and everything one can think about just into the sea or on the beach. The beach shown in the top photos is one of the most famous in southern Thailand at the time we wrote this text it was littered with around more than 100 objects of plastic trash, the people in the National Park Headquarter who's job it is  to keep this area nice and clean do mainly mobile phone bla bla, chattering and try to beat the time. Try do avoid the National Park Headquarter before the pier. This is a disaster zone extremely infested with mosquitoes and unreliable and ignorant employees. Similan, Similan Islands Thailand, Similan Islands, top diving, live aboard, scuba diving, snorkeling, top diving area, beautiful diving ground, pictures of Similam Islands island Thailand, photos of Similan Islands Island Thailand , Similan Islands island movie location, diving at Similan islands Thailand, dream vacation, Thailand diving, Thailand underwater world, scuba diving. Met Sine Travel before the pier can do booking for speedboats and accommodation on the island  Tel: 076 443276, 443340 fax: 595164

-Nam Tok (= in English Waterfall) Pha Charoen National Park near Mae Sot

-Visiting Thailand national parks also means fees, Baht 200,- per foreigner, here some experiences.

Thai should pay entrance fee Baht 50,- for Thai National Parks, but in reality they pay nothing at all. Its the foreigners who get milked, with the exceptions of Similan Marine National Park and a few others where they still charge Baht 400,- entrance fee. This is particularly strange  since Similan Islands Marine National Park is one of the worst managed Thai National Park at all. They practically never clean the beaches from all this plastic rubbish the Thais  leave behind there, there is no junk from foreigners. Its very good visible from the nature of the junk where it comes from. National parks in Thailand are a real great nature experience but they are also badly used to create some under the table money and some of them are badly managed. In particular Tarutao National Park and Similan Island National Park are a very negative example how it should not be.

Some time ago I went to the Tarutao National Park -pictures below- a archipelago off the south west of coast of Thailand near the border to Malaysia. I had very negative experience there in the bungalows for rent at park headquarter, you must bring your own soap, toilet paper and towel with you, this items are not supplied, but they charge premium prices for the lousy bungalows. They tell the guest go and  buy the soap etc. in the shop, who makes the profit there? -the relative of the park manager .  Electricity is only on from 6 pm to around 12 pm, no ventilator before and after. The “self service” restaurant is substandard but the prices are top, around the same like in Patong Beach, Phuket. If you have a problem, the guy at the reception - the one with the moustache - tells - you are a stupid farang - etc., strange philosophy anyway.

The natural extension is to download our unique e-book on southern Thailand where you will find much more content and a lot of exiting full scale pictures. You can have a look on the screen and if you like you can print all content on any desktop printer, ...more e-book