Kaeng Krachan is a band 3 park: 300 baht for a foreign adult, 150 for a foreign child, 60 and 30 for Thai visitors, plus 30 for a car. It is Thailand’s largest national park at 2,914.70 sq km, spanning Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan. Its annual closure runs 1 August to 31 October and applies to Ban Krang and Khao Phanoen Thung only — the headquarters by the reservoir and Pa La-U on the Hua Hin side are not in it. The park is the largest component of the Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex, inscribed by UNESCO in 2021, which is a bigger property than this park alone.
What it costs to go in
Schedule 1 of the Department of National Parks regulation B.E. 2564 sorts every national park in Thailand into four bands. Kaeng Krachan is the first name in band 3, which contains exactly nine parks: Kaeng Krachan, Khuean Srinagarindra, Doi Pha Hom Pok, Doi Inthanon, Sai Yok, Than Bok Khorani, Huai Nam Dang, Ao Phang Nga and Erawan. Being in band 3 makes it more expensive than Khao Yai at 200 and three times Doi Suthep-Pui at 100.
| Who | Adult | Child |
|---|---|---|
| Foreign visitor | 300 baht | 150 baht |
| Thai visitor | 60 baht | 30 baht |
| Car / motorcycle | 30 baht | 20 baht |
A child is three to fourteen complete years, or not more than 140 cm tall. A foreigner is anyone without Thai nationality; there is no rate for foreign residents, work permit holders or spouses. Clause 6 means a day visit with no overnight stay is charged once. Clause 16(1) exempts monks, novices and clergy of other religions residing in Thailand, Thai people aged sixty complete years and over, disabled people, and children under three. On how the two-column sign works, see dual pricing in Thailand.
The closure is partial, and the part that closes is the part you came for
Search for Kaeng Krachan closing dates and you will find headlines saying the park shuts for three months. The department’s own record is narrower and more useful. It states that in the rainy season travel to the sites is difficult, the impact on natural resources is high and visitors may be endangered, and therefore:
The park closes tourism and overnight stays specifically in the Ban Krang and Khao Phanoen Thung areas, between 1 August and 31 October of every year, for the safety of visitors and to give nature the opportunity to recover.
Ban Krang is the forest camp partway up, and Khao Phanoen Thung is the ridge above it reached by a narrow one-way mountain track. Between them they are the wildlife and birding core of the park and the stretch that a wet season genuinely makes dangerous. What the closure does not name is the park headquarters at the reservoir, or the Pa La-U ranger station and waterfall on the Hua Hin side — and the Royal Gazette accommodation annex corroborates that geography independently, because it treats headquarters, Ban Krang and Pa La-U as three separate zones with their own units.
This is the same shape as Phu Kradueng, where the summit closes for four months while the foot of the mountain stays open, and it is the detail that gets flattened every time. Separately from the annual window, single areas here do shut at short notice — Khao Phanoen Thung for road repairs, Ban Krang camp for water shortage in a dry year — each announced on its own. Telephone 0 3245 9293 or 0 3246 7326 before you drive out.
One park, three Royal Gazette instruments
The area figure the department publishes is 1,821,687.84 rai, or 2,914.70 sq km, and the reason it is precise to two decimal places is that it is arithmetic across three separate decrees spanning seventeen years.
| Instrument | Royal Gazette | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Royal Decree creating the park | vol. 98 part 92, 12 June 2524 (1981) | 1,548,750 rai / 2,478 sq km. Thailand’s 28th national park. |
| Royal Decree extending the park | vol. 101 part 194, 27 December 2527 (1984) | +273,125 rai / +437.00 sq km, onto the Hua Hin side. |
| Royal Decree revoking part of the park | vol. 115 part 64 Kor, 24 September 2541 (1998) | −187.16 rai / −0.30 sq km, for two reservoirs. |
The 1998 revocation was requested by the Supreme Command Headquarters and Phetchaburi province to build the Huai Mae Phriang reservoir, 28 rai 2 ngan, and the Huai Pa Daeng reservoir, 158 rai 2 ngan 64 square wa, in tambon Huai Mae Phriang and tambon Pa Teng. If you see Kaeng Krachan given as 2,915 sq km, that is the 1984 total quoted before the reservoirs came out.
The founding story is on the record too. On 29 October 2522 (1979), at Kaeng Krachan dam, King Bhumibol summoned the Director-General of the Royal Forest Department and asked that the headwater forest of the Phetchaburi river be protected from logging and clearing, because the alternative was drought. The survey followed in March 1980 and the decree the following year.
What the park actually is
Kaeng Krachan spans amphoe Nong Ya Plong and amphoe Kaeng Krachan in Phetchaburi and amphoe Hua Hin in Prachuap Khiri Khan, and it is the headwater forest of both the Phetchaburi and the Pranburi rivers. The reservoir accounts for about 45 sq km; above it the ground rises into the Tenasserim range along the Myanmar border, mostly granite with limestone in places, averaging around 500 m and topping out at Khao Ngang Nikyuak Tong at roughly 1,513 m. Rainfall runs 986 to 1,140 mm a year and forest covers 85.64 per cent of the park across four types — tropical rainforest above about 400 m, dry evergreen, mixed deciduous and dry dipterocarp.
The reason it holds the species it does is geographical rather than scenic. The department explains that the Tenasserim range links north into Myanmar and south into the Phuket range, so animals spreading down from India and Myanmar and up from Malaysia both reach this ground, making the park a meeting place for wildlife from two directions. Its own list names Asian elephant, sun bear, dhole, jackal, leopard, tiger, serow, tapir, banteng, sambar, Fea’s muntjac, white-handed gibbon, stump-tailed macaque, woolly-necked stork, grey-headed fish eagle, white-fronted scops owl, the giant Asian river frog and the elongated tortoise.
That meeting-of-realms argument is the same one UNESCO accepted. The Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2021 under natural criterion (x), covering 408,940 hectares across Ratchaburi, Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan, and made up of three national parks — Kaeng Krachan, Kui Buri and Chaloem Phrakiat Thai Prachan — plus the Mae Nam Phachi Wildlife Sanctuary. Kaeng Krachan is the largest piece of that property. It is not the property, and the citation for eight cat species including tiger and for the critically endangered Siamese crocodile belongs to the complex as a whole.
Sleeping in the park, at Royal Gazette prices
The annex to Schedule 4 of the fee regulation prices 39 government units here across four named zones — more than any other park on this site — and the zones are themselves a map of how the park works. Zone 1 and zone 2 are the headquarters, one set back and one on the reservoir. Zone 3 is the Ban Krang ranger station, and it holds nothing but four forty-bunk youth camps. Zone 4 is the Pa La-U ranger station on the Hua Hin side, with eight small bungalows and four twenty-bunk camps.
| Unit | Zone | Sleeps | Baht / night |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kaeng Krachan 104 (Chom View) | Zone 1 - park headquarters | 8 | 2,400 |
| Kaeng Krachan 102, 105-108 (Jai Phaen Din 3, Prasopsuk 1-4) | Zone 1 - park headquarters | 9 each | 2,700 |
| Kaeng Krachan 101, 103 (Jai Phaen Din 2 and 4) | Zone 1 - park headquarters | 6 each | 1,800 |
| Kaeng Krachan 204 (Chan Pha) | Zone 2 - headquarters, reservoir side | 10 | 3,000 |
| Kaeng Krachan 203 (Rim Nam) | Zone 2 - headquarters, reservoir side | 8 | 2,400 |
| Kaeng Krachan 208-215 (Rim Nam 1-8) | Zone 2 - headquarters, reservoir side | 4 each | 1,500 |
| Kaeng Krachan 202 (Pho Hin) | Zone 2 - headquarters, reservoir side | 3 | 900 |
| Kaeng Krachan 931-934 (youth camps) | Zone 3 - Ban Krang ranger station | 40 each | 2,000 |
| Kaeng Krachan 401-408 (La-U 1-8) | Zone 4 - Pa La-U ranger station | 3 each | 1,200 |
| Kaeng Krachan 941-944 (youth camps) | Zone 4 - Pa La-U ranger station | 20 each | 1,000 |
Clause 14(1)(a) discounts accommodation 30 per cent from Monday to Thursday outside public holidays. Your own tent on park ground is 30 baht per person per night — the land rate, not the 80 baht charged on an island — and a park dome tent for three without bedding is 225. A caravan is 300 a night untowed, 600 towed, 200 for a rooftop tent. Note what zone 3 tells you: the only roofed accommodation at Ban Krang is bunkhouse camps, so anyone going up there in the open season for wildlife is realistically camping, and the whole zone is shut from 1 August to 31 October.
The binoculars are priced in the Royal Gazette
A small thing that says a lot about how Thai park law is written. Schedule 3 of the fee regulation prices recreational equipment nationally, and among the line items is a category for birdwatching equipment: binoculars at 50 baht per pair per day, a monocular at 200 baht a day, and a bird guidebook at 20 baht a volume a day. There is a star telescope at 200 a day, a field lantern at 30 a night, and a picnic table with four chairs at 100 a night.
For the park most associated with birding in Thailand, that matters twice: the rate is checkable rather than negotiable, and arriving without optics is not the wasted trip it looks like. What the regulation does not do is tell you whether a given station has stock on a given day, so ask when you telephone.
Getting there
The park headquarters is at Tambon Kaeng Krachan, Amphoe Kaeng Krachan, Phetchaburi 76170, telephone 0 3246 7326, 0 3245 9293 and 08 6166 2991, fax 0 3245 9291, email k.krachan_np@hotmail.com. It sits by the reservoir, inland and south-west of Phetchaburi town, and it is the gate for Ban Krang and Khao Phanoen Thung above it. Pa La-U is reached separately from the Hua Hin side.
We could not read the department’s own travel directions for this park — that part of its site is loaded dynamically and did not render in the archived copy — so there are no road numbers, distances or driving times on this page rather than numbers taken from somewhere else. The Khao Phanoen Thung track is a restricted one-way mountain road with timed gates in normal operation; get the current arrangement from the park rather than from a blog, because it changes.
What we could not confirm
- Opening hours and the Khao Phanoen Thung gate times. The track runs on timed one-way slots that have changed more than once. No government source we could read states the current times, so none are printed here.
- Road numbers, distances and driving times. The department’s travel section did not render in the archived copy of its page.
- Which discrete closures are in force right now. Ban Krang and Khao Phanoen Thung have each been shut outside the annual window for repairs and for water shortage, announced separately and often at short notice. The annual window is the rule; it is not the whole picture.
- The freshness of the departmental record. The archived capture of the department’s park page used here was taken on 28 September 2021. The closure sentence and the area figure still appear on the live page as indexed, and the three Royal Gazette instruments do not change, but the contact details and any newer note on that page could not be re-read.
- The department’s own live pages. On 8 September 2026, for the third consecutive run of this work, nps.dnp.go.th did not answer at all and dnp.go.th and portal.dnp.go.th returned an automated challenge rather than content, from two separate networks. What is attributed to the department here was read from its fee-regulation PDF, which is still served, and from an Internet Archive capture of its park record.
Frequently asked questions
300 baht for a foreign adult and 150 for a foreign child, against 60 and 30 for Thai visitors, plus 30 baht for a car or 20 for a motorcycle. That is band 3 of Schedule 1 of the Department of National Parks regulation B.E. 2564, published in the Royal Gazette on 9 December 2021 and in force from 7 June 2022. Kaeng Krachan is the first name listed in band 3, which contains exactly nine parks in the whole country. A child is three to fourteen complete years, or not more than 140 cm tall; a foreigner is anyone without Thai nationality, and the regulation provides no residency rate. Under clause 16(1) entry is free for monks, novices and clergy of other religions residing in Thailand, Thai people aged sixty complete years and over, disabled people, and children under three.
No - and this is the half that most write-ups drop. The department's own record states the closure of tourism and overnight stays applies specifically to the Ban Krang and Khao Phanoen Thung areas, from 1 August to 31 October every year, for visitor safety and to give nature a chance to recover. Those are the forest camp and the mountain road above it, which is to say the wildlife and birding heart of the park and the one stretch that becomes genuinely dangerous when the rains wash the track out. The park headquarters by the reservoir and the Pa La-U ranger station on the Hua Hin side are not named in that closure. Individual sites do also close outside those months for road repairs, drought at Ban Krang and similar, announced separately, so telephone 0 3245 9293 before you drive.
The Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex is, and that is a bigger thing than this park. UNESCO inscribed the complex on the World Heritage List in 2021 under natural criterion (x), covering 408,940 hectares made up of three national parks - Kaeng Krachan, Kui Buri and Chaloem Phrakiat Thai Prachan - together with the Mae Nam Phachi Wildlife Sanctuary, across Ratchaburi, Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan. Kaeng Krachan National Park is the largest component of that property, not the property itself, and the citation for eight cat species including tiger, the critically endangered Siamese crocodile and the meeting of zoogeographical realms belongs to the whole complex. We make the same distinction on Khao Yai, whose listing is likewise a five-park complex rather than the one park.
It is the largest national park in Thailand at 1,821,687.84 rai, or 2,914.70 sq km, and that oddly precise figure is the sum of three Royal Gazette instruments rather than one. The original Royal Decree, published in vol. 98 part 92 on 12 June 2524 (1981), created a park of 1,548,750 rai or 2,478 sq km and made it Thailand's 28th. A decree of extension published in vol. 101 part 194 on 27 December 2527 (1984) added 273,125 rai or 437 sq km on the Hua Hin side, taking it to 1,821,875 rai. Then a decree of partial revocation in vol. 115 part 64 Kor on 24 September 2541 (1998) removed 187.16 rai - about 0.30 sq km - for the Huai Mae Phriang and Huai Pa Daeng reservoirs. Subtract the third from the second and you get the number the department publishes today. Round figures like '2,915 sq km' are the 1984 total, before the reservoirs.
Yes, and the rate is set in a Royal Gazette regulation rather than by the ranger at the desk. Schedule 3 of the fee regulation prices birdwatching equipment nationally: binoculars at 50 baht per pair per day, a monocular at 200 baht a day, and a bird guidebook at 20 baht per volume per day. There is also a star telescope at 200 a day, a field lantern at 30 a night, and a picnic table with four chairs at 100 a night. For the park most associated with birding in Thailand, having the optics priced in law is a quietly useful thing to know - it means the number is checkable, and it means arriving without your own binoculars is not the trip-ender it looks like.
People do, and the geography is the reason. The park spans amphoe Nong Ya Plong and amphoe Kaeng Krachan in Phetchaburi and amphoe Hua Hin in Prachuap Khiri Khan, which puts the largest protected forest in Thailand within an hour or so of one of the country's established coastal property markets. That is the appeal: cool air, the reservoir, and a two-hour run to Bangkok. Two things temper it. Wild elephants use the ground between the park and the farmland outside it, and elephant movement is a real and recurring issue for property on that fringe rather than a theoretical one. And the boundary of a park assembled from three decrees over seventeen years is not obvious from a road; land near it needs the title and the surveyed boundary read against the park map before you commit. BAANLYY is a listing portal, not a law firm, and that check belongs with a Thai lawyer and the Land Department.
Related guides
- National parks in Thailand — the four bands, the booking system and the rules that carry a fine.
- Hua Hin — the coastal market an hour from Pa La-U, and what living there costs.
- Phetchaburi — the province the park headquarters is in, and the cheaper side of the same drive.
- Prachuap Khiri Khan — the province the 1984 extension reaches into.
- Phu Kradueng National Park — the other park where only part of it closes.
- Erawan National Park — the other band 3 park within reach of Bangkok.
- Trekking in Thailand — the protected areas, the guide rule and the seasons.
- Thailand’s seasons — why so many parks shut between June and October.
Hua Hin is the coast with a rainforest behind it
Thailand’s largest national park is an hour inland. Worth knowing where its boundary runs before you buy near it.
Sources & References
- Royal Gazette, vol. 138 special part 301 Ngor, 9 December 2021, pages 57-58 - Department of National Parks Regulation B.E. 2564 on the collection of service fees. Read directly from the department's own PDF for this guide. Schedule 1 places Kaeng Krachan in band 3 (Thai adult 60 / child 30, foreign adult 300 / child 150) as the first of exactly nine parks; Schedule 3 prices binoculars at 50 baht a day, a monocular at 200 and a bird guidebook at 20; Schedule 4 and its annex price all 39 Kaeng Krachan units by name across four named zones, including the Ban Krang and Pa La-U ranger stations
- Department of National Parks, Wildlife and Plant Conservation - the department's own park record for Kaeng Krachan on its booking site (nps.dnp.go.th, park id 130). Source for the annual closure of Ban Krang and Khao Phanoen Thung from 1 August to 31 October and its stated reason, the three Royal Gazette instruments that create, extend and partly revoke the park, the current area of 2,914.70 sq km, the districts and provinces it covers, the highest peak, the forest cover figure and the wildlife list, and the park address and telephone numbers. Read via the Internet Archive capture of 28 September 2021 because the department's own host did not answer on 8 September 2026; the same closure sentence still appears on the live page as indexed
- UNESCO World Heritage Centre - Kaeng Krachan Forest Complex, inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2021 under natural criterion (x), 408,940 hectares, comprising three national parks (Kaeng Krachan, Kui Buri and Chaloem Phrakiat Thai Prachan) and the Mae Nam Phachi Wildlife Sanctuary across Ratchaburi, Phetchaburi and Prachuap Khiri Khan
Primary and official sources are cited above. Government rules, fees and procedures in Thailand change over time and vary by office; always confirm current requirements with the relevant authority before relying on them. BAANLYY never takes paid placement in editorial content.
