Wildlife spotting in Khao Yai

Last time I came to Thailand I had a second hand pair of mini binoculars I’d bought off eBay for 99p haha, and I went to countless national parks across Thailand, Myanmar, Malaysia hoping to see a hornbill, which is one of my favourite birds. In 8 months, I didn’t see a single one 😞

However, I never went to the Eastern part of Thailand, or to Khao Yai National park, which is Thailand’s oldest and one of the biggest, and is home to the largest population and diversity of hornbills… So this was number one on my list for this trip! And this time I have a fancy set of binocs which Dave got me before our trip to Africa.

It was very easy to get there, we took an “ordinary” train from Bangkok Hua Lumphong station to Pak Chong, which was a 4-hour journey and cost us only 36 Baht (about 80p)!!

We walked from our hostel in Yaowarat to the station, stocked up on snacks for the long journey, and then just enjoyed the views.

Trains in Thailand are lovely, they are on time, always very cheap (for ordinary, as opposed to the express ones), comfortable and clean. But they often have no AC, just an open window and fans. Which is fine a lot of the time, unless there’s a heatwave or a storm… And yes, there’s a heatwave here, so it was very hot haha. And weirdly, we got absolutely caked in a layer of orange dust, staining all our clothes and our backpacks… We think from the soil or the mines which run parallel to the train tracks here.

We walked from the station to our hostel in Pak Chong ‘More than sleep hostel’, which was very nice (best hostel so far), big comfy bed and the shared bathrooms were lovely and clean. But apart from one other pair of Thais, we seemed to be the only ones staying here… Definitely low season.

The night market in Pak Chong was a nice one, and was right under where hundreds of myna birds came into roost. Or maybe they roost there because of the night market…? We found one place which did us a veggie (tofu) pad thai for 40 Baht (90p) which was delicious and a relatively big portion – we went there both nights!

The next day we got up relatively early and hired a little moped to drive into and around the national park. It was quite a drive actually, it took us about 40 min just to get to the entrance and pay our fees, then another 30 min along winding roads to the main visitors centre in the middle of the park.

Along the way we drove past Km33 viewpoint and straight away Dave spotted 4 hornbills, I missed them flying as I was parking the moped, but luckily Dave saw which tree they stopped in, and we managed to watch them through the binoculars as they were quite far away, too far for photos.

We continued on past the visitors centre to walk trail number 2, which I’d read was supposed to be good for hornbills especially. We were relatively well prepared, but we did only have our hokas, and the trail was quite muddy. Also the trail is one way, you walk from the road around to 2 waterfalls then back to the road, but a lot further down. The walk on the trail is 2 hours and then back, or along the road for another 2 hours. So we just walked along the trail for about an hour then turned around and came back.

This trail was also pretty spooky haha, as there were lots of spiders webs and pretty big golden orb spiders along the way. I’d also read that rainy season has a bit of a leech problem, but we both had our thick smartwool socks on, which I thought would protect us…

We didn’t see anything on this path unfortunately, and we heard no sound of any hornbills or gibbons at all, so we decided to visit another trail on the way back.

We stopped at the visitors centre again and started along trail 1, which is a short 1.2km circular route behind the visitors centre. Since we hadn’t seen anything on trail 2, which was quite a remote trail, we didn’t expect much from this one, and Dave even joked about how it seemed a little tame at the start, since the path was a real path which was clearly maintained.

But almost immediately into the trail, about 5 mins in, I spotted a troop of Lar gibbons in the tree tops, we stood and watched them for a while. They are so graceful, apart from when they go to the toilet and it rains down haha, luckily it wasn’t on our heads!

We continued on, and then we heard the distinctive call of hornbills, a bit like a dogs bark. We saw a pair feeding in the trees, they were so big! And so beautiful!! They were amazing to watch through the trees with the binocs, but hard to take photos of…

The pair were moving between the trees and slowly getting further and further away, we continued the walk hoping to circle around them and see them again, but we didn’t ☹️

And then… Dave got leeched!! It bit him through his sock! And omg it was hard to remove from the sock, clearly it had buried its head in the sock to reach his skin. We did eventually get it off, and luckily Dave noticed it (or more felt the bite) instantly, so it didn’t cause too much damage!

We saw some other cool creepy crawlies, but the anxiety of another leech attack (haha) hastened our walk and we soon found ourselves back at the centre, where we enjoyed an ice cream and some cold drinks to cool off whilst we watched some giant squirrels in the rafters.

We started the long drive back and saw a lot of hornbills flying over the roads as we drove, probably going somewhere to roost for the night, which very was cool. We stopped at the viewpoint again hoping to see more fly past the opening in the jungle here, but we didn’t. ☹️

We ate at the night market again, the tasty pad thai, he remembered us and gave us some extra freebies and a seemingly bigger portion this time ☺️

We had a lovely day in Khao Yai. You definitely need your own transport here (to keep to a budget). The day tour with the hostel or elsewhere would have been 1500 baht each, but doing it ourselves was only the 300 baht cost for hiring a moped for the day, plus the entrance fees of 400 baht each. So essentially less than half the price. And we had our own flexibility to go where we want and do what we want. Plus it was a private trip, and much more peaceful than being on a tour.

However, I do wonder if a tour is better for seeing other animals like elephants and bears, which are also in this park. Still, the goal was hornbills and we saw PLENTY! We were very happy 😊

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