Trekking at Bang Pae Waterfall

Me and my friends haven't really been to all of the places here in Phuket as we have to arrange our different schedules in the office. Last Wednesday, we were lucky to have found ourselves on a rest day from work and so we (Mel, Jerome, Rax and I) went to Bang Pae Waterfall.

This waterfall is situated at Khao Phra Thaeo National Park. We travelled for about 15- 20 minutes towards the place. After parking and making sure that we have had sunblock and bottled water, we made our way towards the falls.

While starting the trek we found a lot of concrete tables overlooking the lake. Locals would often come to this place, especially on weekends, to have a picnic or a swim or just dine at one of the restaurants located near the entrance. We also took a photo of the place's landmark.

A few meters ahead is The Gibbon Rehabilitation Center. It was around 8am and we were curious what unusual sounds were in the air. We discovered that these were made by the gibbons and their calls/voices were echoing all over the place. It was quite scary to hear them. These gibbons are caged and people are not allowed to get very close to, give food nor sing or whistle to them. The center opens at 9am so we were way too early. The souvenir shop was still closed too. It was nice to see gibbons safe and being cared for instead of being touted for tourist traps. It was kind of difficult to take a photo of them as their cage is mostly blocked by trees. We just took a photo of us being the gibbons instead. :)

We walked a few meters further and started our trek. The first part was quite easy as the path is somehow defined with cement. It is great that we've worn good shoes because it was quite slippery. We also noted that there were some insects and mosquitoes around. We were not that worried as we also applied insect repellents on our skin.

There were some fallen tress that are on the path so we either had to step on them or duck below them. Some areas have big rocks which made the walk somehow physically demanding. After about 15 minutes, we reached the waterfall.

It was way too early so we had the falls for ourselves. Got a blurry paparazzi shot of my busy friends. 

Bang Pae is known as Phuket's biggest waterfall although by international standard it is not that big. It is only around 10-15  meters high. Although Phuket experiences hard rains for about 5 months in a year, there are no huge falls here. The reason is that Phuket is made of granite rocks which are not easily eroded by water. We enjoyed the shade, literally cool atmosphere and exotic forest surrounding us. We took time sitting on the rocks and having our photos taken. 

Since we still had energy to climb, we found a steep path on the side of the falls and moved forward. This path was more challenging. We had to go through fallen bamboo trees.

We even had to cross a small river of water and hold on to trees so as not to tumble down. We didn't have a map and there were no signs that we were still on the right track.

This path of around 8 kilometers is said to reach another water fall on the other side of the hill named Ton Sai Waterfall. Here's a short video of this challenging climb.

Our friend mentioned she saw a blog before that detailed how someone was attacked by a wild animal on this path. Because of this, the fact that we don't have a map and we are not experienced climbers/ trekkers, we decided to turn back to the falls.

And stopped by the falls again to take more photos.

The way back to the entrance was quite far. (Or we did not know that we already walked that far because we anticipated to view the falls earlier.) As it was near lunch time, we decided to go to Bang Pae Restaurant. A fitting end to our trek was eating in a restaurant with the same name of the falls we went to. The food was served fresh and we had our fill of shrimps and yummy traditional Thai dishes.

It was indeed a great outdoor trip; an adventure that Mother Nature can offer. Thank you and 'til my next blog!