Pha Taem National Park
Vantage point for Thailand’s earliest sunrise, a vast shale cliff overlooks the forested hills of Laos stretching beyond the Mekong River. On its base, a long series of paintings hint at what life was like here some 3,000 years ago. Also containing strange rock formations, fantastic waterfalls and fields of wildflowers, Pha Taem National Park packs a lot into its 340 square kilometres.
The park covers a rocky plateau gently rising from the west covered in dry dipterocarp forest, which culminates in sheer cliffs dropping down into the narrow Mekong valley. Displaying a fair amount of information on the park’s natural and historical background, the visitor centre sits near the cliff’s edge in front of a bumpy car park paved by mother nature.
From here visitors can walk right up to the cliffside to enjoy the view. Keep small children close at hand here; no guardrails stand between you and the edge of a 160-metre drop. A nearby trailhead gives way to a few concrete steps leading to the base of the park’s namesake cliff: Pha Taem, which translates as “cliff painting.”