Motorbike Adventures: Tai Rom Yen National Park

Sitting in front of your door in Surat, you and your motorbike are only 45 minutes away from Tai

Rom Yen National Park, or The Land Before Time. It’s an enormous mass of untamed jungles,

full of barely-there trails and stunning waterfalls. I don’t even know if it would be possible to get

there by bus; there seems to be no real tourism here. Lots of local taking a swim, but not a farang

in sight. When you get to Surat, you’ll hear all about Khao Sok, and you should totally go and

enjoy the beauty of the park and the Western comforts of the tourist village there. But here’s a

secret: Tai Rom Yen is way, way better.

To get there is a bit tricky. Because it’s apparently not very well-known among farangs and

tourists, there aren’t a lot of English signs to guide the way. Only one, in fact, literally ten meters

before the turnoff. Head south on Chonkasem until it becomes 4009. In 12 kilometers, you’ll

have to do a weird little jog around some construction. Get onto 44 going east, then almost

immediately take a u-turn in the u-turn designated lane, then a few meters later hang a left back

onto 4009. 49 will get you there, but 4009 is a smaller and more picturesque road. It eventually

turns off, at which point you follow 4015 to keep going straight. You’ll see a small sign for Dat

Fa Waterfall just before a small, local street. Immediately before it. It’s a small road and easy to

overlook, but that’s the one. Now it’s just straight on into the jungle.

This is one of the worst and most awesome roads I’ve ever seen. Never, ever drive here at night,

or if the weather’s very bad. Don’t drive fast. Don’t lose focus. Seriously, this road is bad. One

side of it is just some villages and gorgeous jungle, but the other is the precipice of a very high

cliff, and occasionally, the road disappeared in sharkbite-shaped holes. You don’t want to land

there. But if you can keep your wits about you, it’s truly astounding. It’s all rolling hills and

unspoiled forest, even before you reach the park itself.

When you arrive at the guardhouse of the park, there’s a sign requesting 100 baht. Maybe it was

because it was Sunday, or maybe he was just on break, but there was no one there when I visiting

so I rolled on through.

This road takes you all the way through the park to where the trails begin. Here you can park

your bike and start hiking. It’s about five minutes to the river, where you’ll likely see Thai

people swimming. The girls, in true Thai style, will be fully clothed.

The trail, carved stone steps and walkways, continues across and along the river. There are

various swimming holes where teenagers perform unnecessarily dangerous backflip stunts into

the water and families splash around with their kids. Eventually, you hit the first waterfall. I

thought this way the waterfall; I wasn’t dressed for a hike and didn’t continue once the path got

wild, but I was later told that if you keep heading up, the falls keep getting more and more

impressive, and that the final one, Dat Fa itself, is some ten storeys tall. This one is just the initial

fall, but I think it’s pretty damn cool.

Just to the right of the falls is a stone staircase with a rope for a handrail. It’s covered in moss

and I wouldn’t recommend you hurry up it, but it’s worth the effort to get to the top. Very, very

cautiously.

There are miles of trails and some ten waterfalls in this park. You could spend weeks exploring

it, and I intend to. But it’s also a great daytrip on your trusty little bike; it’s only 45 minutes, and

you can hike back to the first fall and take a swim within an hour. Cheap, convenient, and

gorgeous. Highly recommended Sunday afternoon endeavor.