Phu Kradeung National Park

Phu Kradeung National Park is one of the 157 national parks in the Kingdom of Thailand. I've heard that some 31+% of Thailand is managed by the Department of National Parks. This includes 156 national parks, 58 wildlife sanctuaries, 67 non-hunting areas, and 120 forest parks (or provincial parks which are somewhat analogous to state parks in the US).

My trek to the top of Phu Kradeung was difficult, but I was thrilled to have conquered it. 

After arriving at the mountaintop, we still had to walk 4km along a very clear trail to the park office and campsite. 

Even though the final 4km hike was flat and thus easy enough, I couldn't have been happier when the campsite's visitor's center came into view. It had been a long and physically demanding day, and I was ready to get off of my poor aching feet.

We had hired porters to carry our gear up, but it wasn't due to arrive until evening.

Luckily, the park has excellent facilities, and has most of the gear you need available for rent for an incredibly cheap price at the top.

There's no need to carry up your own tent, sleeping pad, sleeping bag, pillow, or blanket, because all of those are provided by the park.

The campsite has all the facilities you need: 4G cell reception, solar power (you can leave your devices overnight at the visitor's center to charge), and clean showers... unfortunately the showers were not heated, though!

The campsite is huge. I've seen that it can accommodate 5,000 campers (though since it was the middle of the week and nowhere near a holiday, there was nowhere near that many people). It was so nice not to have to worry about setting up a tent after such a long day.

We checked in, dropped our gear in our tents (we each got a very roomy 3-man tent) and I collapsed on the surprisingly comfortable sleeping pad. I don't know if I had ever been so exhausted in my life!

You also don't have to worry about carrying up your own food, because there are a dozen or so local shops and restaurants that will make pretty much any Thai dish to order!

When I had recovered enough to pull myself to my feet, Karl and I (both exhausted, but me definitely more so) made our way to the one of the little restaurants. I ordered a basil chicken. I don't know if we were just starving after the long trek, or if it was really delicious, but we both enjoyed our meal so much that we came back to this restaurant for every meal during our camping trip!

The entire campsite is surrounded by an electric wire which is to keep elephants out. Elephants are cute, but they can be really dangerous.

It doesn't keep all the wildlife out, however! We saw lots of wild sambar deer hanging around... 

...mostly near the restaurants looking for dropped food!

The deer are really big but extremely tame.

Even though we were tired, we decided to walk the 4km round trip to one of the western cliffs of the plateau to watch the sunset. 

I'm glad we did. The view was spectacular!

It began getting cool on the walk back to the campsite in the dark, and by the time we had gotten to our tents, the temperature had plunged to a cold 10 degrees Celsius (50 F). That's pretty cold for Thailand, especially when you don't have any cold weather clothes! At night, the temp fell even further to around 7C (about 40F)... and let me remind you that the showers weren't heated!!!

I took the fastest, coldest shower of my life, bundled up in my sleeping bag, and fell asleep almost instantly.