This well known beach resort town in is located on the Gulf of Thailand about 25km north of Hua Hin. King Naresuan the Great reigned from 1590 to 1605, during the Ayutthaya period. Saphan Hin (walking street) is a long pier stretching out over the sea that was completed in 2011. Go fishing, take a walk before the sunset or ride a bicycle. The temple located west of Cha Am on a small hill. A large garden at the entrance. Cha Am is primarily a Thai resort with many visitors from Bangkok, but the more adventourous toursit will find the ‘real Thailand’ with lot of activities for children and none of the bar scene like found in Pattaya or Phuket. Cha Am has plenty of hotels and guest houses from 5 star to simple rooms with fan or air-con. It houses the only American university in Thailand, the Webster University, and has nearly 200 students from various countries. Weekends can be busy so it’s a good idea to book in advance. Neranchararam temple contins a six-armed Bouddha image, with the hands closing all channels of the body dipicting the cutting off of passion. The park is a limestone mountain with many caves. His statue can be seen in a small park overlooking the sea, at the north end of Cha Am. There are bungalows available for rent inside the park. The image of Buddha inside the temple was built in the Ayutthaya period. Located on Phetkasem road going south towards Hua Hin. There is a small monkey island containing a few families of gibbons. Follow the sign to Wat Cha Am Cave then climb the stairs to the cave. Climb up the mountain to discover explore the caves and enjoy a view of the coast. The water park has numerous of slids, a lazy river, a big wave pool, and attractions for all ages. There are steps all the way up, but you should wear some proper shoes. It’s not especially scenic but is a quiet place to relax and have a picnic, play football with the kids, ride a bicycle, or go for a jog.

1. Car park is a 5-minute walk away
2. Hallways equipped with fire exstinguishers
3. TV with international news channel
4. Iron + ironing board in 560 rooms
5. Audible smoke alarm in hallways
6. Public Internet terminal Hourly rate 428 THB

With more than 100 national parks, Thailand offers a veritable menu of adventures. Many can be combined for an in-depth nature tour, or contrasted with time exploring a city or downtime on the beach. A jigsaw of limestone crags line the southern coasts, touching emerald-blue waters. With all that choice, our Thailand specialists share their experiences to help you find the right park for you. Its Rainforest Camp is 20 safari-style tents each floating on a platform above Cheow Lan Lake in the heart of Thailand’s largest virgin rainforest. Inland, you’ll find forests cloaking waterfalls, rare orchids and, occasionally, elephants. At night, nothing disturbs you save the click of cicadas, and you’re woken by the screech of gibbons at dawn. The floating restaurant serves a buffet of freshly cooked Thai curries and salads. In Khao Sok, Elephant Hills has come up with an alternative solution. You can watch a bat exodus in Khao Yai, snorkel with reef sharks in Ang Thong and hike to a cave temple in Khao Sam Roi Yot – and that’s just for starters. Most Thai national parks have places to stay nearby to avoid building on protected parkland. Each tent has its own balcony: you can jump straight into the turquoise waters for a swim, or paddle out across the lake in your personal kayak.

Cobalt-blue waterways to sheer limestone crags crowned with rainforest.

The park itself was thrust up from the ocean millions of years ago, when the collision of the Indo-Australian and Eurasian plates forced a hunk of the seafloor to rise. The camp is best visited as part of a two-night, three-day experience run by Elephant Hills, with a night at its sister property, Elephant Hills Tented Camp. Elephant Hills’ representatives will meet you in the airport for the three-hour drive to the Elephant Hills Tented Camp for your first night. From Bangkok, it’s an hour-and-a-half flight to Phuket on Thailand’s southwest coast. Other activities you can join include guided hikes, kayak tours and a visit to a cave-dwelling bat colony. Here, you can help to feed and wash the resident elephants, which are being rehabilitated after working in the logging industry. The guides will tell you that it’s more ecologically diverse than the Amazon. This has crafted a landscape that veers from lowland scrub. Cobalt-blue waterways to sheer limestone crags crowned with rainforest. After your stay, you’re well located to head onward to the beach, with both Krabi and Khao Lak within three hours’ reach.

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve journeyed across Thailand, and after trekking through numerous national parks, I didn’t think there was much left to surprise me. From the village, you’re driven in an open-top 4×4, accompanied by your guide and local ranger, into the evergreen forests and grasslands of the Tenasserim Hills. Later, I toured the village and was shown a stilted hut where the farmers take it in turns to sleep out above the crops, shining lights to ward off curious elephants. They explained how they were adapting their farming methods to warn elephants away safely, including the network of glass bottles they’d installed that jangle if the beasts get too close. Historically, there has been conflict between the farmers and elephants eager to score a free snack, and you can see a community project that enables villagers to live side-by-side with their neighbours. At the village you can lunch with a local family. In total the park protects around 320 wild elephants, the largest concentration in Thailand, and it’s the only place where you’re likely to see a wild herd. You might also spot the muscly gaur (the largest bovine in the world) or packs of golden jackals. Ruam Thai village is a farming community, where a series of pineapple and rubber plantations brush against the national park boundary. The hilltop viewpoint looks down into a wide, open valley. Access is limited to a set route in the northeast of this little-visited park, near the village of Ruam Thai. There are a number of points where the vehicle is allowed to stop, and you can clamber out to look for broken branches or dung: a sign that Kui Buri’s largest inhabitants have passed by. Huai Luek Wildlife Watching Area is the last stop, and the farthest you can travel into the park. But a trip to Kui Buri National Park left me awestruck. You’d be unlucky not to see elephants here. My hosts were keen to talk about daily life in rural Thailand. My guide was eager to point out that my sighting wasn’t unique. Down in the long grass, I could see a herd exceeding 40 elephants, the tiny young tucked under their mothers.

On the outskirts of Ban Rai, Baan Rai Kong Mun is a locally owned guesthouse. The quiet fishing village of Cha Am is a two-hour drive from Bangkok, on Thailand’s east coast. A stay here combines well with a visit to Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park, detailed below, an hour’s drive away. A hotel where art photography hangs on the walls and the furniture looks straight out of a postmodern design studio, SO Sofitel Hua Hin is on a quiet stretch of sand on the outskirts of the village. From Bangkok, it’s a four-hour drive down the coast to Ruam Thai village. The pavilion was built in 1890 for the visit of King Chulalongkorn, and many Thai kings have since followed suit. From the nearby village of Bang-Pu, my guide and I caught a motorboat, and cruised along the coast to land on one of the park’s beaches. Translated as the ‘mountain of 300 peaks’, Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park is a jumble of limestone peaks that jut up from an expansive stretch of wetland like the teeth of a giant beast. While simple, each room has hot water, air conditioning and Wi-Fi. There’s no restaurant, but you can have dinner with a local family, and breakfast at a nearby ranger station with views across the park. The heart of the park is a honeycomb of caves and sinkholes, including its calling card: the Phraya Nakhon Cave. From the cave, you can walk back down to the beach for lunch in a small sand-in-your-toes restaurant, or to swim or walk along the coast. Running along Thailand’s central-east coast, the park is edged with crescents of unspoiled white beach. I suggest a day tour of the park with a guide, as while the trails are well-established, the jungle is dense in parts and there’s a fair bit of clambering involved. The roof of this huge cavern is open to the elements, and if you enter at just the right time (between 10am and 11am) rays of sunlight flood in, glinting on the gilded Kuha Kharuehat Pavilion that stands on a rise on the cave floor. From here we climbed up, along the limestone cliffs and around the headland, where the views stretch out across the Gulf of Thailand.