Phu Hin Rong Kla National Park, Part I

This weekend May (a Thai pharmD student) and I thought we would check out one of Thailand’s National Parks, Phu Hin Rong Kla. Even though the park is only 2 hours away, it took us 6 hours to arrive at the park.

First we went to the Phitsanulok bus station at 5:40am to catch the 6am bus. After searching the small bus station, we finally found the random woman who we were supposed to buy bus tickets from. We bought our tickets and hopped on the bus, unfortunately the bus was already full. After fighting the woman for our money back, we waited at the bus station until the next bus left around 7:30am. We knew that we were supposed to get off at the Nakhorn stop, before taking a minibus to the park. May could tell by the map that we were getting close to our stop, then we heard the bus driver say that this stop was for those going to Phu Hin Rong Kla National Park. May and I got off, along with two other Thai tourists from Bangkok. I asked May about three times “are you sure this is the right stop?” because we were basically dropped off on the side of the highway with no minibus in sight. She double checked with the bus driver and “yes” it was correct. Obviously we were in the wrong place.

After talking to the locals, we hitch-hiked to the police station because apparently you can hitch-hike safer if you start at the police station. We were in luck; after standing outside the police station for about 7 minutes a caravan of minibuses full of tourists on their way to the national park drove by. We were able to hop onto the large tuk tuk full of tour guides that followed the minibuses. Little did we know that this was just the start of a weekend full of hitch-hiking…

This justifies my feelings of how difficult it is to get around Thailand by bus...I was even with a real Thai person and we still ended up lost and confused. I can't even imagine if I had been alone, because none of the people we interacted with spoke English (and of course nothing is written in English either). I would recommend anyone travelling around Thailand to just rent a car and drive yourself, it would be a lot less stressful. If you are not that adventurous, then I would suggest you stick to a tour group.

We finally arrived at Phu Hin Rong Kla National Park at noon!

Me with the English sign:

May with the Thai sign:

We first decided to walk down to Lan Hin Tak or the “broken rock field.” This mountain is the former battleground where the Thai government fought off the communists.

Next we took a walk over to Lan Hin Pum, another field of nodulated rocks located at the cliff’s edge. We also saw the old flag pole where the communists used to raise their red flag after they won a battle. Now the Thai flag is waved of course.

Me with one of the communists old guns: