Salawin National Park — Attraction in Mae Hong Son Province

An absolute disappointment.

We came here to hike and to expierence the beautyfull scenery of this vast area.

As with almost all national parks in Thailand, the management seem to be just plain wrong.

Each national park has a fancy and ever expanding entrance with shops, campingplaces and picknicktables. It seems the Thai don't understand what to offer tourists that come and visit. They seem to create a luxurious picknick place and a fancy visitor center at each park and this is about it.

For Salawin National park we only had 1 trail of no more than 2 kilometers. It was pretty, but way too short. So right after, we went to the visitor center and, what a surprise, nobody spoke English. This has been a persistent problem when visiting parks and reserves around Thailand. The communication is plain horrible.

We asked if there are other entrances for the park to visit and hike. The park ranger simple couldn't explain or answer any of these simple type of questions.

The reviews of this place are primairly from the Thai and they seem to have a different understanding of visiting a vast natural area. They seem to not understand the concept of long free hikes, on plain trails in the park. The only option would be to hire a guide an literally pay hundres of euros for a hike in which the guide isn't able to properly speak in English and explain things a long the way.

We came to another disapointment by visiting this...

Went here by motorbike, 125cc Honda Click. Could have been the mistake of a lifetime. The park is absolutely gorgeous and I discovered places where probably less than 10 people set foot every day. However, what looks like a road on Google that leads through the park to Bang Tha Ta Fang is not a road at all. I had to cross a river about 50 times, sometimes knee-deep. The motorbike survived, but had it not, I would have been absolutely stranded. The first part coming from Mae Sariang is paved, then doable, then it gets worse and worse. I recommend driving until you can't drive anymore and then hike further. It's an awesome place for hiking or some wild camping. Always bring water and...

We hoped to find some other activity or route in the park, but the only person in the park – the guard – could not tell us much. We decided to have a snack and bike towards the Burmese border to see one of the longest rivers in the world Salawin in the village Mae Sam Laep. Read full story in our travelblog (link in the profile and at...