The Most MAGICAL Place in Thailand 🇹🇭 (You Need to Visit)

Anyone who's driven past Hua Hin and carried on going south would have seen this incredible mountain formation on the left-hand side. Maybe you were driving down to Donsak to get the pier over to Koh Samui. You might have looked out the window and thought, wow, look at that. What's that? Well, that's this national park. Khao Sam Roi Yot National Park means the mountain of 300 peaks and it kind of rises up out of the ground along the coast and it's full of beautiful caves, beaches and of course mountains with loads of peaks and we're going to discover this national park together. So we're going to do the most beautiful cave and one of the most beautiful viewpoints together. Now I've gotten up nice and early and arrived here at the beginning of the trail but it's not quite open. It doesn't open till eight which is a bit frustrating because if you're going to do a little hike, you want to do it as early as possible before the heat gets too intense, right? But never mind, we've got a little bit of time to kill. So since I've got about 15 minutes before the trail opens, I'm putting on some sun cream and I thought I'd quickly tell you about another location that I filmed the previous day. When I arrived in Sam Roi Yot area, I decided to stay at the beach and this beach is called Sam Roi Yot beach and please, for the love of god, save this on your phone. Save this on google maps. This is one of the most beautiful stretches of sand in the country. Anyone who's ever experienced the southern coast of Thailand away from the touristy islands will know that there are huge long stretches of gorgeous sand and this one is a special place. There are some delicious seafood restaurants, a few bars and a lot of people, foreigners as well as Thais, who have built their homes practically on the sand and they all enjoy not only this beautiful white sandy beach with a great night market on some weekends as well as close proximity to the incredible national park itself in the distance. I couldn't make a video about Sam Roi Yot national park without mentioning this particular beach. I encourage you enormously to spend at least one night here, soak up the experience and I wouldn't be surprised if some of you who do so end up living there forever. Honestly, so chilled, so beautiful and I had to mention it before we start the hike. So over here is where you can buy a boat ticket because in order to get to the cave itself, which is inside this mountain, okay, there are two ways. You can leave from this car park here and catch a boat and the boat will go around this peninsula, drop you off at this beach and then you walk from this beach up into the cave. Or, and I only found this out because of my friend Karl in Thailand, I watched one of his recent vlogs where he decided to skip getting the boat and just hike up over this little small mountain. It gets you to the beach anyway and then you have to hike up into the forest anyway to get to the cave. So let's just skip the boat and just do the hike. I thought they might let me hike up a bit earlier since I'm here and it's just a little nature trail but eight o'clock on the dot. How much is it? 200 baht for a foreigner and then 200 baht for the one-way boat otherwise it would have been 400 baht return. But you know it's low tide so by the time I walk out to the boat I might as well have just hiked up and a half way around because we have to hike into the cave anyway like I said. So this cave, you might know it from Instagram, maybe some incredible photos and videos you've seen online. To us it might just be referred to as the cave temple but it's called Phraya Nakhon cave and obviously it has the beautiful temple inside and it's famous because above in the cave roof there's a big opening and that's where the sunlight comes in and sometimes rain and it just gives this incredible visual and there's a story to this temple and a lot of history which we'll learn once we get there. Okay this is my ticket my 200 baht national park entrance ticket right so this gets us entrance to not only this cave trail and the cave itself but it gives us access to Sai cave if we want to visit there, Keow cave, the national park itself on the other side as well as the camping sites and other boat trips and other things. This whole national park if you just get this one ticket it gives you the entrance to the whole park for one day obviously. So let's get cracking! I was so glad I decided to hike and you'll see me getting the boat back at the end of the video so you can see what both experiences are like. Honestly it's not that much of a detour and it's a gorgeous trail, quite easy to do as long as you've got a good pair of legs and a good pair of lungs it'll only add about 20 minutes to your adventure. Okay so far so good and we've come up we've got a lovely view of this beach actually this is near where I'm staying I found a little Thai guest house type thing you know the ones that they have here where they colour them different colours and it's about 800 baht just around the corner and then in the afternoon I actually came for a walk down here on the beach and met this fantastic group of dogs what do you call a group of dogs a pack of dogs and they're really friendly and we had a nice little fun play on the sand it beautiful absolutely gorgeous and in the distance is the national park itself the big area of the national park which we'll check out later in the video and the path is really really reasonable you know steps and a very easy path to follow to be honest all the usual critters in the Thai national park splendid. Okay stage one complete very simple very easy just up and over took about 15 minutes easy peasy and it's good to know that my health is still strong wow this is beautiful behind me on these two trees and feeding over by the watering hole there is this big troop the more I look the more I see a big troop of what they're called speckled langurs also known as dusty langurs they're a type of monkey that live wild in Thailand and they have these beautiful white eyes and long tails and there's a little baby hanging out with mum and they're all jumping around these trees and how beautiful that they all live here in the wild in this national park right on the beach prime location. I think it's worth mentioning as well that since you've paid the entrance to the national park if you want to do the hike and then you want to stay at this beautiful beach you can totally make a day out of it because there's lots of shade there are little picnic areas there's a visitor center and there's a restaurant which serves cold drinks water fizzy pop ice creams and food and all the rangers are getting their breakfast still so you know you don't need to feel like you need to leave once you've done the hike you could stay at this beach and enjoy it I mean it is gorgeous this sign made me crack up anyone with medical conditions please consider your ability before entering and it's true I mean it was quite steep and it was quite sweaty but again anyone with a decent pair of walking shoes you'll make it don't worry and the best part about coming early like me is you'll have the entire national park pretty much to yourself or at least that was my plan so I thought I was on my own but I'm not there must be 150 national park staff in full uniform doing this hike so my aim of being the only person at the cave has completely gone because there's 150 staff I'll find out what they're doing here they must be doing some maintenance they're probably just taking a nice picture for Instagram to be honest because they're all dressed up in their fancy uniform beautiful and so quiet but not for long we need to hurry up and get in front of these staff it was a mad dash to get in front of all of those rangers in order to enjoy the cave practically alone which thankfully I did have the chance to do now this beautiful temple is actually a pavilion a royal pavilion and it was built in 1890 for king Rama V and its namesake prayanakon is named after the person who discovered the cave over 200 years ago and it's positioned in such a way that as I mentioned the sunlight will illuminate down hit the roof hit the tiles and at certain times of the day just looks absolutely incredible okay we made it I had to rush hence why I'm sweating because I had to try and get in front of the group I think they're all staff who because they're in full uniform I think they're here to take a picture I've also just walked around the backside and there's a reef a reed what do you call them you know like a collection of flowers it must be the anniversary or the birthday of someone important or the national park itself I don't know it's all in Thai is a bit unlucky because I think yesterday or tomorrow this wouldn't have happened and I would have had it all to myself because if you come early enough and it's not the weekend as you can see there's nobody here except for the giant group of staff hence why I'm sweating buckets because I literally had to try and like say excuse me excuse me oh do you mind sorry I'm just trying to get past oh we've got yeah hi nice to meet you trying to get here quickly because I suppose that's the whole point of coming somewhere like this early if I wasn't really bothered about the crowds I would have come later in the afternoon also if you're wondering the reason that this place is very popular is that incredible photo opportunity with the sun ray coming through the entrance and lighting up the temple in such a way that it just looks absolutely incredible right well that actually only happens at certain times of the year the sun has to be at the right angle and I think it's in November December time at around 10 30 in the morning otherwise it's just straight down or just usual so just bear that in mind if you are absolutely adamant about recreating that exact photo easily considered one of thailand's most sacred most historical and most beautiful sights I'm so glad to have finally made it here and to tick it off my ultimate bucket list keeping your feelings bottled up inside heading for a collision and then now to really live you gotta die hey make this one count there's a heart wow okay so this is the other side of the 300 peak mountain the mountain that gives this entire national park its name sam royote meaning as we said earlier 300 peak mountain and as you can see absolutely gorgeous and this walkway which again is free to enter once you've already paid the 200 bar entrance from earlier on our cave hike there is this pavilion and this walkway that goes over the beautiful marshland and there are loads of beautiful birds seabirds and fish as well and it's nice breezy which is really nice on a boiling hot day to be honest I'm just gonna end the video here at this beautiful spot anyone who is in Hua Hin Cha Am or driving south from Bangkok you should try and make a detour out of this and stay overnight if you do want to enjoy this side and these incredible mountains with a morning sunrise cruise then you need to come over here earlier in the morning I couldn't do that because I wanted to do the trail at the temple cave so it was ideally this would have been a two-night trip and I could have explored the other two or three caves and made a whole two-day adventure out of this which I think a lot of people do on the weekends especially if you you know want to get out of Bangkok I'll leave you information in the description where I stayed but where I wish I'd stayed instead and a really good itinerary I think I'll put together in the description so you can make a choice between a one-night or a two-night stay in this area and include a night at the beach include a sunrise tour here on the boat and also go see the temple in the cave thanks for watching I'm gonna drive all the way back to Bangkok now so I think the next few episodes will be from Bangkok and then soon we're going to Japan