Khao Raa Jungle Trek
After a day of full moon party recovery we decided to do the Khao Raa Jungle trek.
The TripAdvisor reviews made it seem like a challenging but doable climb up a cleared path on a mountain. Wrong. It was straight up hill from the start-the beginning of the trail was mostly cleared and just sandy path.
There was a couple of forks in the road where it wasn’t totally clear what way to go and we went with the direction that seemed more walked over.
It’s a 3km climb up- there were two kind of signs marking the distance- ones that looked like maybe the Parks department put them up and ones that were a little more handmade- of course they also had different distances on them. Either way about half way up any kind of created path more or less stopped and turned to hiking up and over tree stumps and vines. It had rained the day before so the ground was a little muddy in parts. It was hot regardless of the climb and half of the trek was fully covered by jungle so it was very humid. I had to stop to catch my breath a lot sometimes at spots that had beautiful over looks and sometimes it was just holding onto a tree for a second waiting for Mowgli to swing out of a tree.
It took us about an hour to get to the top. The viewpoint is of course beautiful — but very small. There was a few other people up there when we got to the top and we had to wait for them to move before we could get into the best viewpoint spot. You could see out over all of the jungle to the water and over to the other side of the island.
After a water break sitting on a rock we headed back down. The trip down was faster but I had to concentrate way more on my footing because of the vines and it being a little slippery. There is a little house around the halfway point that we noticed on the way up. There’s a sign in front of it ‘jaimes quiet place’ and ‘viewpoint 20baht’. I did not bring enough water for the trip and on the way down I wanted to stop and see if he would have water. He has a bunch of dogs on the property and we walked in to him cutting down coconuts. He laughed when I asked for water but he did have a coconut we could have. There was a pot for donations so I left him 50baht for the coconut and letting us see the view point- which was almost as good as the view from the top. Refreshed from the coconut water we finished the walk down- after one detour of going the wrong way and having to turn back on ourselves. There is a waterfall on the climb but there is no water in it currently...which is super confusing bc it’s monsoon season but that’s probably a science lesson for another day.
There is a stand at the enterance to the trail that has a taxi sign on it (and sells drinks) but there was no one at it when we started or finished. We walked into the Khao Raa restaurant to try and figure out how to get a taxi back to Baan Tai—the couple running the restaurant we’e having their lunch but we agreed on a taxi price and they brought us back into town.
